If you met Peter Robertson at work over 20 years ago, you probably wouldn’t have guessed he would soon open one of Edmonton’s most beloved independent art galleries. Back then, he likely would have customized your clubs or given you a tip on your swing at the Glendale Golf and Country Club.
But the former golf pro sold Canadian art to help pay for his university art classes. This connected him to Robert Vanderleelie, who hired Robertson before he eventually took a big swing, career-wise, and made the gallery his own.
“I think we’ve been remarkably lucky,” Robertson says, looking back at two decades of art curation. “I mean, we’ve managed to survive in the art market, which is a tough ask. We’re really blessed to have a really good stable of artists that show right across the country, and it’s really been my good fortune to have people that are sought after and that I can really promote within this market.”
In a time of ever-increasing, broad commercialization, creating exhibits is his passion, and he’s curated it over the years, too. But getting better at something doesn’t make it easy. “Selling pictures is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, because you can go ahead and put great work on the wall and do everything perfectly, and then nothing happens. You have to have a real strong constitution.”
To many people, “art curator” is a curious job in that it’s so far removed from what most people think of as a job-job, but it involves much more than just hanging pretty pictures. Robertson recalls flooding the gallery in six inches of water for a 2016 Steve Driscoll exhibit, or blacking out one side of the gallery for a recent sensory deprivation piece by Gary James Joynes.
Whether it’s an immersive work or a painting on a wall, Robertson wants works that make an impact. “In the art business, people like telling me, ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,’ but to me, that’s all baloney. There’s good art and there’s bad art, and developing an eye is one of the tricks to deciphering it. Eye of the beholder is the same in anything, like food — maybe a Big Mac is great, but is it great food?”
But far from being an exclusionary art connoisseur, bored-looking patrons (often on the arms of their art-curious partners) actually excite Robertson. “I really enjoy when they come in and you can tell they don’t care. The classic example is a guy comes in with his wife, and he’s on his phone — he couldn’t give a shit about what’s going on. Then all of a sudden, one day, he comes in and starts telling me about what the artist is doing lately. When people start seeing things, and looking into things, that really jacks me up.”
Choosing 35 works to encapsulate 20 years of creation might be Robertson’s toughest exhibit yet. So instead of finding a unifying theme (beyond the fact they appeared in-gallery at some point over the past two decades), they each get their own space as vignettes for people to enjoy. And whether you saw them on their original runs or will see them for the first time, Robertson encourages you to take a long, close look — for your benefit.
“The more we’re exposed to things, the more we learn to see, and they refine how our brains process things, and enrich your life, whether it’s music, art, food, whatever. Really substantial things don’t expose themselves in 10 seconds. You’ve got to take some time and pay the price a little bit.”
Pay the price — and reap the artistic rewards with Peter Robinson’s 20th Anniversay Exhibition — now until October 5.
