The Galleries
The Main Space gallery was first established in 1988 by the Students’ Association as a space to aid in the professional development of students and alumni. The gallery is run like a nonprofit artist center and is administered by current and former students which allows students entry-level practice in the arts application process and provides professional development opportunities in exhibiting, installation, arts administration and the professional grants and gallery application processes.
We now have two exhibition spaces, the Main Space in the Main Mall and the Window Space in the LRT Hallway to showcase your work to both the AUArts community and local arts communities.
01 - Main Space Gallery
02 - LRT Window Space Gallery
Marion Nicoll
Marion Nicoll (1909-1985) studied art at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto and continued her education at the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art (which is now the Alberta University of the Arts) from 1929-1932. After further study abroad, she returned to the Alberta University of the Arts in 1939, where she became the first woman hired by the institution as a permanent instructor and she continued to teach for thirty years. She was the first woman in the prairies to become a member of the Royal Canadian Academy and was a member of the Alberta Society of Artists and Print and Drawing Council of Canada. In 1958 she was awarded the Province of Alberta Achievement Award.
Marion produced watercolours, drawings and oils through the 1930s, 40s and 50s. While teaching at the Banff School, she met Jock MacDonald who introduced her to automatic drawing, which became a bridge to her later abstract works. Her paintings and prints are distinctive in their bold composition and imagery. She experimented with many printmaking techniques, including woodblock and clay prints. She is remembered as one of the first abstract painters in Alberta.
Marion Nicoll, CA. 1971, With Batik, CA. 1967. Glenbow Archives.
The Team
COORDINATOR
Bex Snoddon
(they/them)
My name is Bex, I’m the coordinator of the Marion Nicoll Gallery. I'm a textile-focused artist and researcher with a background in print media, whose artistic practice is motivated by a desire to find and reflect the light of humour and hope through life’s shadows.
I believe strongly in the importance of play, and my goal as an administrator is to introduce experimentation and freedom to the institutional form, balancing tradition with novelty. My recent work at TRUCK artist resource centre has focused on equilibrating access to creative materials and opportunities, space, knowledge, and mutual support.
I am a reader, crafter, and dedicated learner who is inspired by the natural world and lives by an ethos of earnest and defiant whimsy.
TECHNICIAN
Birdy Loughlin
(any/all)
I am Birdy Loughlin, and I am the gallery assistant and technician of the Marion Nicoll Gallery. I am currently pursuing a BFA in Sculpture and Minor in Media Arts at the Alberta University of the Arts. My practice and research are about life, more specifically about the confluences of land, love, labour, and leisure. It is relational, spiritual, lingual, relational, conversational. I am also a founder and co-director of the artist group and outfit known as THE HILL and a former director of The Ivan Gallery.
My friends and I have compiled a list of key terms describing myself and my practice they are as follows:
Artist, friend, dancer, musician, writer, painter, poet, dj, jock, Xerox machine enthusiast, b-baller, cowboy, wizard, rambler, star-core, pool shark, maths and science, retired wrestler, soup girl, geno fashion haus, Physics, sparky, economics, nerd, freak, learner, photographer, designer, Operator Technician, Pearl, Alberta, Dirty Bird Deeds, performer, fabricator, socially engaged, site-specific, site-intervention, responsive, self-referential, Home town, conceptual, abstraction, radio host, material curiosity, willingness to help, love, sonically and pictorially motivated, experimental.