Maltwood Gallery – Victoria
The World Tea Party, Victoria, project examined the influence of the simple act of drinking tea on various artistic and social cultures, which are represented by objects in collections in British Columbia.
The project used a multidisciplinary approach to look at collections, revealing how something as simple and common as meeting over a cup of tea can reveal an interconnection between visual art, decorative arts, architecture, archival photography, and social meeting rituals, multicultural activities and contemporary cultural production.
The research was archives- and collections-based and included the cataloguing of relevant public and private collections. The main public collections that were researched are housed at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (AGGV), the Maltwood Art Museum and Gallery and the Royal BC Museum.
The project exhibition at the AGGV, ran from June 25 to August 29, 2004, and featured art and artifacts related to the many tea cultures from around the world represented in British Columbia, as well as examples of contemporary British Columbia art that highlighted tea culture as a living tradition. The exhibition was accompanied by an extensive series of community events in the gallery and in several Greater Victoria venues.
The research and exhibition were documented in a publication edited by Judith Patt, entitled World Tea Party, Victoria . Copies of the publication can be obtained from the Maltwood Art Museum and Gallery. To provide additional access to the project, the Victoria tea party event will be added to the current World Tea Party website.