This week at the gallery we’re starting something new: over the next month we’re opening up our Community Gallery space for the Summer Members’ Series. We’ve invited four of Edmonton’s most interesting artists who also happen to be Latitude 53 members to bring their latest work into the gallery, one each week, and to come celebrate with us at the Rooftop Patio on Thursday.

This week, Scott Smallwood is starting things off with his unique solar-powered noisemakers. Smallwood currently teaches music composition at the University of Alberta, but as well as writing music in more traditional ways, he creates these small works which create sounds electronically or mechanically and are powered by ambient light. In his own words:

“Rainforest Arcade” is a sound installation based on a series of solar-powered sonic mobiles, critters, and musical automatons. Throughout the day as the sun’s luminosity waxes and wanes, this listening space moves through lively, insect-like chattering to soft clickings and silences.

He’s installed them next to the windows facing out to the Patio, so their sounds will change over the course of the day, and even from viewers and visitors casting shadows across them. If you lean in close to listen to them, you may find the sounds they produce changing or falling silent entirely in your shadow.

In the coming weeks, look forward to Marc Siegner, Gerry Dotto and Elaine Wannechko giving you even more reasons to make it out to the Rooftop Patio, or stop by the gallery during the day. Meanwhile, our main galleries will be hosting Draw and, come July 30, two new shows of photography.