David Candler says he waited for a quarter-century for a gallery to open shop in Edmonton to exhibit contemporary art that matched his tastes. “Nobody else was opening that gallery,” he says. “I just decided that the commitment and the support I could bring to artists that I believed in through collecting work was less than what I could do by opening a space that could then promote their work here and work on trying to export it and promote their work elsewhere.”
In 2012, David, a doctor by trade, opened up dc3 art projects, a gallery near Oliver Square that would showcase works designed to be topical, edgy and challenging to anyone entering the premises. Since then, dc3 has delivered on that promise, via works from artists who refuse to play it safe.
Past exhibitions include Ruth Cuthand's beaded replicas of pathogens in glasses of drinking water, Tammy Salzl's unnerving watercolour portrayals of nudes bearing the ravages of life and audio-visual designer Gary James Joynes's murals of sand creating unique images after being blasted by low sound frequencies.