Staycation: The Art of being There – Exhibit at Winnipeg Art Gallery

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Area in art gallery leading into Staycation: The Art of being There exhibit

An art exhibit at WAG-Qaumajuq in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada explores the sense of place

A staycation is defined as a vacation spent at home or nearby. I have written in the past about how exploring your home city or region as a tourist and learning more about it on an ongoing basis can help you to discover new-to-you treasures and give you a better appreciation for the place in which you live.

WAG-Qaumajuq in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada has used that term staycation to title an art exhibition that invites you to experience your surroundings through new eyes–offering both a playful escape and a grounded sense of belonging. WAG-Qaumajuq holds an impressive collection of over 27,000 artworks spanning centuries, cultures, and media, including the largest public collection of contemporary Inuit art in the world. Staycation: The Art of Being Here features a focused selection of Manitoba-related artworks from its permanent collection and runs until April 26, 2026.

Painting of a residential street leading off an intersections with green expanses of lawn and white houses — *View from the Bridge* by William Pura, oil on canvas

The exhibit is the reimagining of a 2020 exhibit In Place: Reflections from Manitoba, shifting its original pandemic lens of “sheltering in place” to one of acknowledging the privilege of staying put by choice.

A panel at the entrance to the exhibition talks about the spirit of Staycation, which reflects themes of place, representation, collecting, the curious, signs and symbols, spirituality, and materiality. The last sentence in the panel reads as follows:

“Acknowledging the layered histories and relationships that exist beneath our feet the exhibition asks: What can we discover when we stop seeking distance and instead reflect on the everyday, the regional, and the environments we inhabit?”

Panels of information throughout the exhibit explore the themes textually while the artworks around them speak to the theme in a more visual, interpretive manner.

The Geographies Within panel says that place is more than a location. It is a constellation of experiences, memories, and emotions and a site of collective history. Artworks explore complex relationshipd between outer environments and inner psychologies.

Stylized painting of a bedroom with women lying in bed and man standing in shades of pink, yellow, and blue — *Bedroom IV* by Sheila Butler, oil on canvas

The Assemble to Accumulate panel talks of exploring collecting as both impulse and critique and invites us to consider our own relationships to the things we gather.

*Multiples* by Eva Stubbs, 14 fired clay components arranged in an intallation

Display case of sculptures in centre of gallery room with two abstract paintings visible on wall behind — A collection of sculptures with paintings visible on wall behind (*Down With Up & Up With Down* by Dan Donaldson, Untitled by Tony Tascona)

The Signs Speak section focuses on the signs that fill our world and explores the intricacy of communication.

A very large horizontal painting of many small faces grouped together to form a mass of colour with lots of red — *Red Giant* by Neil Farber, ink on paper

A Taste for The Shadows groups art pieces that lean to the eerie and the uncanny, the unsettling and the bizarre where artists reflect on the complexities of the human experience. It calls this the place where beauty and revulsion intersect, where artists blur the line between the ordinary and the bizarre.

Two eerie paintings (one hung over the other) with cats and bunnies having macabre expression with no eyes, just empty sockets — *Cat and Bunny Puppets with Mid-Century Architecture* and *Baba Yaga Church Communicating Via Telephone Lines*, both by Chris Reid, chalk pastel on paper

The Matter Dreams panel says materials carry the traces of where they came from. “By experimenting with both traditional and unconventional methods, or by using one material to evoke or imitate another, artists reveal how matter actively shapes what we see and how we understand our relationship to place, history, and to one another.”

Large horizontal painting of a collection of different coloured cloths — *Hymenal View of Lunacy* from the series *Hysteria Chronicles* by Bev Pike, gouache on paper

Some ideas live in spaces we cannot see or fully understand. The Space Between focuses on works that inhabit the space between the real and the imagined, the physical and the spiritual, and invite the viewer to pause, reflect, and consider how art can be a bridge to other ways of sensing, believing, and understanding.

Yellow-background Jackson Beardy painting of a bird swooping down on fish with stylized version of river underneath — *Myth Image* by Jackson Beardy, gouache on paperboard

Painting of an orb with circle in centre resembles an eyeball — *Orb 7* by Susan Turner, archival inkjet on paper

Artwork in a collection of different shaped paintings (circle, rectangle, square) in shaded of teal and corral — *Ice Dreams* by Esther Warkov, oil on canvas

painting of a plan atop triangular shape wearing goggles with contorted images of human faces filling the rest of the shape — Untitled by Marielouise Kreyes, acrylic on canvas

“Mirrors show us who we are–or who we think we are–while windows offer a view into the life of others.” The panel entitled Mirror-Window speaks of using these as metaphors for the ways artists use representation to explore identity, belonging, and visibility.

Artwork of four connected panes of painting showing chaise chair and swirls or wind or activity with fetuses in sacs — *Deciding (2)* by Patti Johnson, monoprint on paper

I have highlighted only a small sample of the works on display in Staycation. Although the exhibition contains Manitoba-related artworks, the themes it raises about place are relevant to any place.

Large art work featuring lines with repeating words - Every Good Boy Deserves Fun — *Good Boy* by Patrick Mahon, silkscreen on wallpaper

One large artwork covers almost an entire wall. Its repeating words “Every Good Boy Deserves Fun” is a twist on the mnemonic “Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge” used to help remember the notes EGBDF on the lines of the treble clef in music notation. As a former piano student, this made me smile, but it contains more serious messages around the concept of deserving fun as a reward for hard work. What you don’t see in this photo are stylized images of athletes working out along the side edges.

Check the WAG-Qaumajuq website for hours and admission prices.

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