the BALCONY gallery

It’s always great to see new and innovative ways to display artwork. What intrigued us here at Opus about this project in Victoria was the unique gallery space, a balcony, located in an industrial area. As an alternative to a gallery wall, it broadens what can be produced and showcased. Xchanges and everyone here at Opus put the challenge to you - create and submit your ideas and incorporate a balcony any way you imagine it. The deadline to submit has been extended to April 15th, 2010. Don’t delay!

The first Balcony gallery, known simply as The Balcony, was a part of the Toronto arts scene from approximately 2001 to 2005. It’s difficult to know the exact details about the Toronto Balcony because once the project was ended and the website dismantled, very little evidence remained online. What is known is that The Balcony was founded by Canadian artist James Carl when he invited his friends to make art for his apartment balcony located in Kensington Market. Much of the work chosen to show was two dimensional, colourful and playful, generally concerned with language, advertising and the balcony itself.

I discovered The Balcony a few years ago through the links page on the Open Space. The concept was immediately appealing and similar in many respects to Victoria’s most interesting gallery spaces. The Balcony was a low budget, do-it-yourself, artist driven exhibition space: the kind of space that demands a high level of creative vision from artists.

An alternative gallery space, whether a window or a balcony, elicits unusual art making; it moves art away from studio generated two dimensional drawing and painting, towards site-specific installation work. This can be some of the most challenging work to create, to exhibit and to interpret. And because many alternative spaces are perpetually under-funded, they require artists to be fully committed, beyond considerations of money, time and labour, to art.

Victoria is home to a powerful community of artists, but it wasn’t until Isaw the new Xchanges location that I knew we could bring the BALCONY gallery project to BC. Xchanges’ newest location includes a long, second story balcony complete with a concrete courtyard. This balcony is located in a semi-industrial, extremely busy, and decidedly non-beautiful neighbourhood of Victoria.

In the city of gardens, this balcony is without much other than a few rogue dandelions and some brave chickweed holding on in cracks and potholes. It is entirely utilitarian in purpose, but it has good bones, romantic bones. It is, as all balconies must inherently be, entirely evocative of the ages-long human drama, social, architectural and theatrical, and because it is such a paradox, being something of an ugly balcony, it actually sets the stage for a rich and complex interpretation of the balcony as a human space.

Xchanges gallery coordinator, Jillan Valpy, and the other members of Xchanges have been very enthusiastic about the project and so far the response from artists has been enthusiastic as well. The deadline to submit has been extended to April 15th. We are looking forward to our first opening night!

We have a blog at http://thebalconygallery.blogspot.com where all the information for artists can be found and later, when the season begins, this is where we will document and feature all of our artists and their work.

We'd like to invite you to come and make some art for our BALCONY!