Your mind may undergo a strange warp when looking at Calgary artist Jennifer Wanner’s floral images. They play with familiar tropes of botanical imagery, from scientific drawings to the genteel watercolours of so-called “lady painters” of a bygone era. Yet there’s something decidedly creepy about the awkwardly jointed sprawling forms and mismatched flowers and foliage that emerge from a single root system. It’s almost like Monsanto meets Audrey II, the voracious plant from Little Shop of Horrors, with freaky results. Wanner soon sets things straight: Her series of 14 hand-cut paper collages to be displayed as part of Second Nature at the University of Lethbridge’s Helen Christou Gallery until June 2, are a commentary on endangered plant species. There’s one work for each province and territory, plus one for Canada as a whole, each containing many species of vascular plants that are close to disappearing. For instance, the British Columbia collage features 50 different extirpated or endangered species, including coast manroot, a large vine-like plant, and the pink sand verbena, a tiny prostrate perennial with succulent leaves. Also included are the phantom orchid, the limber pine and the coastal Scouler’s catchfly. “It’s a little tongue in cheek,” says Wanner, who points to recent developments in the genetic modification of plants. “But it’s not that far from the truth.” Wanner will also show the series in Calgary next fall at the Glenbow Museum, along with a related body of work at the Paul Kuhn Gallery. More ►

– Portia Priegert

Fred Herzog’s Two Men in Fog (1958) and Granville Street at Night (1959) are among 18 striking photographs of Vancouver and other localities featured in the exhibition Fred Herzog: Shadowlands, on view at the Audain Art Museum in Whistler, B.C., through May 22. Audain curator Darrin Martens wanted to examine how the use of shadow, the tension between light and dark, and the relationship of presence and absence all contribute to Herzog’s urban social narrative. The men in Two Men in Fog pass each other on an otherwise empty sidewalk, a few cars visible on the foggy street. The figures read as silhouettes, their shadows and those of telephone poles cast across the pavement. Despite their similar attire in overcoats and hats, and their proximity to each other, they exist in separate worlds, anonymous and unknown. Conversely, the Granville Street photograph is crowded with pedestrians, cars, buses, and bright neon signs that provide light, reflections and colour. Yet even in all its bustling vibrancy, the dark shadows of people seen from behind suggest that life in the city can be isolating. In addition to several self-portraits and photographs of window reflections, the exhibition includes the quintessential Herzog images of people on the street, going about their daily lives, like the smartly dressed father and daughter walking their dog on Pender Street (Black Man Pender, 1958). More ►

– Rachel Rosenfield Lafo

Much art uses the strategies of collage, cobbling together disparate elements and exploiting juxtapositions and contrasts to explore and challenge boundaries. Perhaps that’s little wonder, as collage seems such an apt metaphor for many of the foundational experiences of adult life, whether falling in love, starting a family, or even just travelling to a new place. For Calgary artist Kristine Zingeler, that latter experience is distilled through images from the Life World Library, a series of American books about life in other countries that was published in the ’60s, a time when overseas travel was more of a luxury than it is today. After cutting images from the books without any explanatory text, Zingeler layers them together with paint scraped from her palette knife, creating mysterious reflections on place and the passage of time that she then photographs and presents at a much larger scale. The paint scraps become miniature abstracts juxtaposed with grainy photographic reproductions, effectively blending two modernist dialogues, one mainstream and matter-of-fact, the other metaphorical and emotive. With a sense of unity created by shared tonalities, or other formal qualities such as shape or size, the resulting combos point to new ways of reading shared histories. Indeed, Zingeler says she found herself wondering about the people portrayed in the books – whether they had ever seen their images, and what they would have made of the way Western photographers presented their lives. While there’s no shared theme between her pieces, she thinks there is common ground. “They’re not all about something specifically,” she says. “But I think what links them is this desire to give a voice to those who don’t have a voice.” Zingeler’s show, Terra Mobilis, on view at the Edge Gallery in Calgary until March 11, is her first in a commercial gallery since she graduated from the University of Calgary in 2011. Zingeler, who also maintains a painting practice, was a finalist for the 2013 Kingston Prize for Canadian portraiture. More ►

– Portia Priegert

When Geraldine Moodie created a 1906 portrait of several Inuit mothers with their offspring, including two naked babies, her camera captured an atmosphere of maternal ease and warmth. Inuit women and children at summer camp, Fullerton Harbour, Nunavut, like many of her other images, reflects her affinity for northern women. Like her subjects, Moodie, who lived from 1854 to 1945, raised a family in isolated communities. Once her six children were grown, she and her husband, Douglas, a senior officer in the North-West Mounted Police, travelled to the Far North in 1903, where they documented the way of life in settler and Inuit communities for the following seven years. Now, the work of this talented and adventurous couple is the subject of an exhibition, Historic Photographs of the Canadian North, on view at Calgary’s Glenbow Museum from Feb. 18 to Sept. 10. “This is an extraordinary collection of vintage negatives donated to the museum in 2015,” says Melanie Kjorlien, the museum’s vice-president of access, collections and exhibitions. Using digital technology, the Glenbow reproduced 70 black-and-white images from glass plates. “They are high-quality, large-format prints,” Kjorlien says. “Viewers will appreciate the detail.” Most of the images have never been displayed for the public. More ►

– Janet Nicol

A group show at the Nanaimo Art Gallery on Vancouver Island looks at an unusual topic – harbours. The gallery, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary, is just a block from Nanaimo’s  waterfront. “Harbours have their own particular features and histories, but they can also articulate shared characteristics as places of both refuge and dislocation,” the gallery says, noting he displacement of the Snuneymuxw people, the arrival of mine workers from China, Britain and Scandinavia, and the Second World War internment of Japanese-Canadians who ran herring salteries and boat-building companies. Landfall and Departure: Prologue, which runs until March 25, features a range of art including historical paintings by E.J. Hughes and Jack Shadbolt, as well as contemporary work by Stan Douglas, Hajra Waheed, Marina Roy, Graham Meisner and others. It’s the third in a series of three exhibitions that look at West Coast resource industries. Black Diamond Dust, in 2014, considered coal mining; the second, Silva, responded to forestry. Landfall and Departure is a two-part project that will continue until 2018. More ►