VICTORIA, BC.- Experimental West Coast artists are behind a thoughtful new exhibition on view at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. From crocheting with paint, installations that destabilize our perceptions of space, to a souvenir totem pole emerging through historic wallpaper, the vastly different works of art have one thing in common: they pose important questions about making things.

It’s in the Making demonstrates how the acts of making and thinking are inextricably linked and lead to innovation. The artists, Angela Teng, Shelley Penfold and Jess Willa Wheaton, Nicholas Galanin, Cedric, Nathan and Jim Bomford, are known for taking familiar materials, and through the process of making, present us with new kinds of objects.

“The exhibition invites us to consider the role of the imagination and asks what kind of knowledge does art produce that is different from other kinds of knowledge,” says AGGV curator Haema Sivanesan, who co-curated the exhibition with the AGGV’s Nicole Stanbridge.

“Contemporary art is about a process of inquiry that encourages experimentation, risk, intuition and play as necessary to innovation,” adds Stanbridge. “The artists in this exhibition use the act of making as a process of thinking and as a way to challenge set ideas of how things should be.”