Amundson and Gour's "Not the Whole Picture" at Whatcom Museum through July 27

The Whatcom Museum will present Not the Whole Picture, a comprehensive exhibition of Garth Amundson and Pierre Gour’s collaborative work and the first major museum exhibition for the Bellingham-based artists. The exhibition will be a visual compilation of 35 years of photography, painting, and mixed media installation, which often centers queer identity while exploring the arc of their collaborative and personal partnership.

Not the Whole Picture takes its name from a new, large-scale photography installation that will anchor the exhibition. Printed photographs are stitched together into enormous, radiating rings that evoke devotional mandalas. The photographs explore the universality of everyday moments – birthdays, travel, shared meals, pets, celebrations, mourning – and, in ring form, act as calendars imbued with time and memory.

Amundson and Gour primarily draw their source imagery from their own extensive personal collection as well as from those contributed by community members. The aim for the artists is that through universal and wide-ranging themes, visitors can envision themselves in the artwork, prompting conversations around empathy and understanding through shared experience.

About Garth & Pierre

Garth Amundson received his MFA from Syracuse University, and Pierre Gour received his MFA from the University of New Mexico. Together, they are tenured faculty in the Department of Art & Art History at Western Washington University (WWU). They exhibit both nationally and internationally and have completed several residency programs, both independently and collaboratively, at The Banff Center, Alberta, Canada; Sculpture Space in NY; Cimelice Castle near Prague; Fundación Valparaíso in Spain; Lademoen in Norway; Fulbright in Mexico; and a Rockefeller Foundation Residency Award at The Bellagio Center, Italy. In the summer of 2016, they participated in a residency at the Santa Fe Art Institute entitled Immigration/Emigration.

Thematic exhibitions have included Whipping it Up at the University of Idaho’s Prichard Art Gallery; Queer Me at the LGBTQ Center in NYC; and Random Acts at the Round House Gallery Art invitational exhibition in conjunction with the Pride Festival in Vancouver, BC. They have also presented research at conferences around the United States. Additional exhibitions have been shown in Gallery Gowoon, Changwon, South Korea; Catherine Edelman, Chicago IL; and SHIFT Gallery, Seattle, WA.