Bev Pike is a Winnipeg-based visual artist who paints large cinematic baroque landforms. Grottesque, current work on climate catastrophe, is a series of interconnected underground sanctuaries based on seventeenth century shell grottos. Pike also creates video art and publishes artist's books as well as opinion pieces for CBC, MSN, and the Winnipeg Free Press among others.
In the Hysteria Chronicles as well as Grottesque bodies of work, Pike explores playful and sardonic dystopian refuges using monumental scale and fragile glazes. Curator Mary Reid, described them as, "mountainous bundles of clothing...creating a visual topography of overlapping social histories and constructions of gender." For the 2018-2020 Canadian tour publication, the Dunlop Art Gallery's Assistant Curator Blair Fornwald analysed the gouaches on paper: "...lumpen bezoars of bedclothes, knitwear, yarn, and fabric coalesce into compositions resembling quasi-landscapes, details from domestic spaces, and the cavernous fleshy interiors of the body." Museum London's Curator/Director Cassandra Getty wrote in their publication, "Evocative titles like Cavernous Sun Parlour, Buried Dance Pavilion, and Subterranean Day Spa suggest that these spaces comprise the leisure sites of a new underground civilization." In her June 2018Border Crossings review, Sandee Moore called this work "...a tour de force of demented whimsy..." Of the 1990 solo show at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Curator Shirley Madill described Pike's Boudoir Series as a "...balance on the threshold between reality and the inner space of dreams....to imbue everyday reality with poetry, magic and doubt." The paintings have shown extensively at large public galleries and artist-run centres across Canada. Pike has received grants from Canada Council, the and the Manitoba Arts Council, including several prestigious Major Arts Awards. In addition, paintings and artist-books are in public collections in Canada, the UK and the US. As a feminist activist and cultural advocate,, Bev Pike has lectured at universities and colleges across Canada. She has been on many boards and action committees, a mentor at Mentoring Artists for Women's Art and is a founding member of the Wendy Wersch Memorial Lecture Series. Papers are at the Archives of Manitoba and Artexte.
Publications
Autobiography of an Eccentric Line, Swallowing Safety Pins Agony Aunt's Cavalcade of Mysteries. Her videotapes, distributed by Video Pool Media Arts Centre, include Agony Aunt Tarot and Suffragette Sight Gags.
