The Whisper of Stones

PNINA GRANIRER Two Rivers Gallery

Prince George, British Columbia October 11, 2012 January 6, 2013

Two Rivers Gallery Prince George, British Columbia

Pnina Granirer at the entrace to the exhibition

The Whisper of Stones

Pnina Granirer is a senior BC artist living in Vancouver, whose work

has lately received considerable international attention. This exhibition

will flesh out in more depth the context of a series of mixed media paintings in our collection, representing an abandoned millstone quarry on Gabriola Island that was used as a source for grindstones for the pulp and paper industry in the 1930s. As part of a series from the 80s and 90s called the Carved Stones, it explored the almost surreal sandstone formations of the Gulf Islands as a kind of homage to that

unique landscape. Thirty years on, the artist has started to revisit and
initiate new work based on this series. This exhibition provides an exciting look at what has proven to be one of the artist's most significant and enduring bodies of work. George Harris, chief curator

General view of installation

Discovery at Gabriola, 22x30 in., mixed media on paper from the permanent collection of the Two Rivers Gallery

Pnina Granirers first visit to the Millstone Quarry on Gabriola Island, BC 1985

Mystery at Gabriola 1, triptych, mixed media on paper, 44x90 in. from the permanent collection of the Two Rivers Gallery

Installation view with Millstone Quarry works from the permanent collection of the Two Rivers Gallery

Abandoned Gabriola Millstone Quarry, 2012

Abandoned Gabriola Millstone Quarry, 2012

Mystery at Gabriola, diptych, 22x60 in., mixed media on paper from the permanent collection of Two Rivers Gallery

Installation view of works from The Carved Stones Series

Visions of Nikke at Gabriola, 39x22 in., mixed media on paper

Carved Stones, mixed media on paper, 44x60 in.

Time Bridge with Nikke, 30x56 in., mixed media on paper

Humans in the Landscape Suite

Humans in the Landscape 1, mixed media on wood and plexiglass, 27x19 in.

Humans in the Landscape 2, mixed media on wood and plexiglass, 27x19 in.

Installation with works from the Blue Stones Series

Barrier, mixed media on paper, 22x30 in.

Blue Rock Opus 2, mixed media on paper, 30x40 in.

Blue Rocks 4, mixed media on paper, 22x30 in.

Stoneheads Blue, Yellow,Red

Stonehead Yellow, mixed media on paper, 30x22 in.

Stonehead Blue, 30x22 in., mixed media on paper

Stonehead Red, 30x22 in., mixed media on paper

Artist talk at Opening of exhibition

In 1986, another trip to Gabriola Island acted as a poetic trigger. On this island, fertile with sand stones and indigenous

pictographs, the artist discovered strange hollow cavities carved directly from the bedrock, now filled with rainwater and
wild grasses. These were the remains of an old millstone quarry abandoned since the mid-30s. Its absolute strangeness gave birth to a plastic series, The Millstone Quarry, but also to poems and photographs. The triptych Mystery on Gabriola Island (1987), below, is part of that series.

When Pninas exhibition in a Strasbourg gallery opened in 1987, a visitor compared those mysterious holes to the holes she saw in the Vosges mountains. The Celts used rock cavities for libations. Had I been present at that exhibition, I would have found a similarity with the sanctuary at Panias, in Trs-os-Montes, Portugal, where the Romans sacrificed animals to the somber gods atop granite rocks where they had excavated similar cavities.

Jos Miguel Prez Corrales Departamento de Filologia Espanola Universidad de la Laguna Tenerife, Spain, November 21, 2012