Headbones Gallery is again mounting an exhibition with an overview of works born and bred in the Okanagan Valley.

Contemporary means with-the-times, in-the-now. It connotes a position in history against the back drop of what has come before and prefixes what is to come next. The fine arts have often been associated with concepts of the avant-garde – in advance of time.

Okanagan is the featured place and from Penticton to Salmon Arm, the artists assembled for this exhibition live and work in the extended valley framework. We see the same skies, breathe the same air and feel the same atmospheric temperature fluctuations within a similar range but still with astounding diversity; we have all had the experience of being in one  spot under sunshine and yet looking at a vista where the dark clouds pour. And just like the weather, within the valley is a simultaneous artistic variety.

Rank-and- File is membership in a club and the visual arts is a ‘club’ where the stylistic variables are tied together by an unavoidable belief in the importance of art. There is no official roster, the ‘group’ is not so much organized through art as immersed in art.

There is a small r word, registered, after the capitalized Rank-and-file of our title which indicates Headbones Gallery’s ongoing commitment to cataloguing each exhibition.

Exhibiting the work especially in the context of a yearly show has a long history in the visual arts from famous salon shows of Royal Academies to the historic public and private investments made to establish galleries and museums in which art is made accessible to a greater audience.