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TOSH exhibit in Qualicum Beach explores work of enigmatic Canadian artist

Georganna Malloff worked under residencies for Canada Council for the Arts
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TOSH is hosting an exhibition by an enigmatic and under-appreciated Canadian artist, Georganna Malloff, who drew inspiration from dreams, meditation and her adopted West Coast home. The exhibition is on display until Sept. 3. (Kevin Forsyth photo)

The Old School House Art Centre (TOSH) in Qualicum Beach is hosting an exhibition by an enigmatic and underappreciated Canadian artist, who drew inspiration from dreams, meditation and her adopted West Coast home.

Georganna Malloff is a mixed-media artist who worked under a number of residencies for the Canada Council for the Arts, but unfortunately her work was never archived.

Illana Hester, executive director of TOSH (122 Fern Rd.), discovered Malloff’s work by chance a few years ago, when a TOSH volunteer was walking Malloff’s dog, Willow.

Malloff painted, carved wood and marble and created glass-works, in addition to carving several large maypoles, which were unfortunately confused with totem poles and seen as culturally insensitive.

“They were raised by like 300 people, they were these huge poles,” Hester said. “The media at the time didn’t understand what a maypole was and so they called them totems. Through that semantic error, they’ve now been taken down.”

She started one of the first women carver collectives, organizing large, equitable and diverse groups, including female and Indigenous carvers, according to Hester.

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Several paintings feature Malloff’s dogs, she used to breed Rhodesian Ridgebacks.

She lived in several Vancouver Island communities, including Parksville, and several Gulf Islands after moving to Canada from the U.S. decades ago.

Malloff had a long career and was still creating art until just a few years ago in Parksville, Hester said. The TOSH exhibit represents a very specific era of her work, the 1970s.

“All of these works come from dreams and meditation and channelings,” Hester said. “She talked a lot about that, she would have these kind of inspiring, magical moments and a lot of the work has poetry on the back.”

The exhibition has a psychedelic feel to it and it is inspired by the West Coast’s landscape. One painting shows several children, possibly a niece and nephew, at the beach, with an octopus-like creature in the background.

“She was down at the ocean with them and she said she could just imagine this creature coming from the deep,” Hester said. Similar creatures appear in several of Malloff’s paintings.

Though a prolific artist, Malloff’s work was never properly archived and, like many women artists of the time, her work is underappreciated, according to Hester.

“She’s a little infamous in a way,” Hester said. “There’s little pockets of information on her all over the internet and people are looking for her, but there’s no concise catalogue for anything.”

TOSH worked with a person involved with the estate of Malloff, who is now well into her eighties and living in a care home, to give the public an opportunity to see the artwork.

Georganna Malloff: a retrospective will be displayed at TOSH until Sept. 3, after which the art will go back into storage.


kevin.forsyth@pqbnews.com

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TOSH is hosting an exhibition by an enigmatic and under-appreciated Canadian artist, Georganna Malloff, who drew inspiration from dreams, meditation and her adopted West Coast home. The exhibition is on display until Sept. 3. (Kevin Forsyth photo)