Ortona Diaspora is a group exhibition that celebrates a dispersed arts community that faced an uncertain future in 2019. Ortona Artists’ Reach Society (OARS) is proud to feature artists of the Ortona Armoury Arts Community from past and present through an array of mediums. OARS is multidisciplinary, multicultural, multilingual, and multi-generational, inspired to assemble with their cherished and supportive community partners (listed below). This Edmonton-based grassroots community is once again alive, expanding, and growing in encouraging and unforeseen ways. Ortona Diaspora is a dynamic reflection of this unique arts community in flux.
The Ortona was home to many artists, including misfit anarchists with a punk rock ethos. Prior to the recent gutting of its historic 1940s interior naval design, the Ortona Armoury Arts Building had been open to the public and was home to a steel drum band, a film co-op, filmmakers, conservators, writers, cinematographers, editors, photographers, painters, musicians, poets, performers, composers, dancers, actors and agitators, as well as eleven in-studio artists along with their collaborators, enthusiasts, volunteers, family and friends. The artists of the Ortona always invited and included the wider public community at every opportunity. This exhibit captures a glimpse of the Ortona powerhouse of Art.
OARS is motivated to highlight the significant work of these artists who were dispersed due to their 2019 renoviction from their home, the historical Ortona Armoury Arts Building in the Rossdale neighbourhood.
Community partners include: Art Gallery of Alberta, The Works International Visual Arts Society, Metro Cinema, Collins Studio Gallery and Rossdale Community League
Funding generously provided by the Edmonton Arts Council and the City of Edmonton
Curated by the Ortona Art Committee of the Ortona Artists’ Reach Society (OARS)
Committee members include Tim Rechner (Chair), Krista Acheson, Shawn Pinchbeck and Patrick Arès-Pilon.