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NOSTALGIA $5.95 Display until August 31st. ANDRÉ LAPOINTE PM40020854/R471313 MIKE GOUGH GRAEME PATTERSON JOHN DEVLIN
visual 36 arts
nVOLumee 36 Numberw 1 Summers 2014 8 Contents Decoding Graeme Patterson 2 Feature by Audrey Nicoll 2 5 The Nostalgia Issue e ditorial by Lizzy Hill 6 M ike Gough’s RE T R ACE 24 r eview by Jennifer M cV ei gh 31 M a gi c a n d R ea l i s m 8 e ssay by Aaron Weldon
R ose Adams: Survival, 15 death and remembering 6 Feature by Tila Kellman 17 E xhibition Listings 24 R evisiting rebellion 40 Feature by Hilary B ea u mont 26 A conversation with John Devlin 37 Q& A by E r y n Fos t er Natural Fake: André Lapointe 31 Feature by M i k e L a n d r y
S o me whe r e s u n ea s y 33 impermanence r ev i ew by leonard paul macpherson
36 m elanie Colosimo’s M i d p o i nt 26 r eview by Katie B el ch er 33 37 nichola feldman-kiss’ embedded art 15 Q&A by Veronica Simmonds 40 Tamara Huxtable on coming clean Atlantic Spotlight by Daniel Higham
Visual Arts News is published three times a year in May Contributors (Summer), September (Fall) and January (Spring) by Visual Arts Nova Scotia (VANS), a non-profit charitable associa- Editor: Lizzy Hill tion. Charitable registration number 11906 3618 RP001. ISSN 004-0512. © 2013. All rights reserved. Reproduction Art Director: Bob Williams without permission of publisher is strictly forbidden. Views Advertising Sales expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily Manager: Janet Doble those of individuals connected to Visual Arts News or VANS. 902.455.6960 [email protected] Not responsible for unsolicited material. Publications Mail fax: 902-446-0299 Agreement No. 40020854. Registration Number 471313. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to Visual Arts Print Manager: Peter Fennell News, 1113 Marginal Road, Halifax, NS Canada B3H 4P7. editorial Committee: Katie Belcher Email: [email protected] Kathleen Higgins Daniel Higham Subscription rates for one year including HST: Individual in Audrey Nicoll Canada $15. International $30. Institutional $32. Publisher: Briony Carros Visual Arts News is a member of the Magazines Canada. Web site: visualartsnews.ca VANS gratefully acknowledges the support of the Nova Scotia Department of Communities, Culture, and Heritage. Subscription and Cover image: editorial enquiries: Visual Arts News, André Lapointe, 1113 Marginal Road, Laminaires, 2010. Halifax, Nova Scotia Canada B3H 4P7 902.423.4694 [email protected]
S u m m e r 2014 Visual Arts News 1 Suspended memory Decoding Graeme Patterson
AUDREY NICOLL
nter into the imaginary world of Graeme Patterson’s Secret own childhood adventures and turning points as we assume the ECitadel, where memory, invention and fantasy collide to provoke role of one or the other of the characters. a multifaceted narrative of childhood friendship, rights of passage Although natural enemies in the wild, this unlikely pair and adult isolation. Conveying a much more personal psychology form the binding link between the four sculptures, which allude than the social resonance of his iconic Woodrow (2007)—a to four pivotal scenes in their relationship. The bison and cougar multimedia installation inspired by his family’s Saskatchewan appear in various incarnations throughout, from lifeless costume homestead—Patterson’s Secret Citadel reveals the breadth of his hides suspended mid-air to bouncing animated video projections. creativity and the complexity of his imagination. It is an ambitious These two characters begin as whimsical compatriots and end exhibition that integrates sculpture, animation, robotics, music and as somewhat maudlin loners; their transformation underscores video projections with humour, insight and melancholy. the vagaries of a life and implies a rather pessimistic depiction of Patterson admits the subjective nature of this work as growing up and becoming an adult. an incarnation of his memories and imaginings of a lost Patterson’s trademark model making skills are as fastidious in childhood friendship and male friendships in general; and he their detail as his earlier work, but there is a noticeable difference in chooses two animal avatars, a sprightly blue bison as himself their materiality and tone. Almost a boyish creativity is evident in and an energetic orange cougar as his childhood friend Yuki, paperclip hinges, toothpick furniture and blanket fort mountains, to guide our way through his tale. The transmutable nature of which evoke childhood and adolescent pastimes. Except for in his these avatars invites the viewer to imagine or remember our Player Piano Waltz (2013), which retains a detached coolness and
Graeme Patterson, Camp Wakonda, 1.8m H x 3m W x 2.1m L. Wood fabric, mixed material, video/audio components. Installation view from Secret Citadel, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax, February 1 to May 30, 2014.
2 Visual Arts News S u m m e r 2 0 1 4 finesse. Not surprisingly, Player Piano Waltz references the last animation integrates detailed homemade puppets and sets with scene, where the bison and cougar are solitary adults wandering sophisticated digital projections to create a quirky hybrid throw aimlessly through the rooms of a fading gentleman’s club. back to 1960s cartoons like Davey and Goliath or the Thunderbirds. Once again as in Woodrow, the model is meticulously The gymnasium stage for the animated wrestling match sits constructed and void of any three dimensional characters within the under and behind the bleachers, and includes two drawer-like space itself. Instead the set integrates the narrative through looped attachments of a locker room and washroom alongside a weight animated projections viewed through the external windowed walls room and coach’s office. It almost feels like a giant Barbie palace of the club. The viewer is held at bay, unless a coin is dropped into for boys that could be folded up and set up in your bedroom. the pay box to initiate the musical score of the player piano, which Despite the playful elements, competition is the focus of this high serves as the base for the sculpture. Patterson also wrote the lilting school match, where potential alpha status is declared and clique music reminiscent of early Tom Waits. alignments develop. Grudge Match severs the common bond of In the three other sculptures, Patterson moves away from the imaginative play and adventure evident in The Mountain (2013) and self-contained voyeuristic miniature style of Woodrow towards a Camp Wakonda (2013). more openly inviting physicality of space. Grudge Match (2013) Camp Wakonda (2013) is a haunting installation featuring two allows viewers to choose a team and sit on their side of wooden charred bunk beds as the platform for a reconstructed summer gymnasium bleachers to watch the animated high school wrestling camp and vehicular accident. It links the structured independence match projected onto the wall. Patterson’s style of stop-motion of camp with the freedom of a driver’s license as complex rites
Graeme Patterson, Grudge Match, 3.4m H x 4m W x 6m L. Wood, mixed materials, video/audio components. Installation view from Secret Citadel, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax, February 1 to May 30, 2014.
S u m m e r 2014 Visual Arts News 3 of passage. Each rite carries its own inherent danger, but is an version of his “Fortress of Solitude”—where Superman would go essential step in personal character development. Manly adult to contemplate and rejuvenate after saving the world. Of all the skills such as archery and wood chopping are practiced and tested sculptural works, The Mountain is the most joyful, perhaps because in projected animations onto the top bunks’ replicas of the open it reflects the artist’s studio practice—A practice that is connected framed camp buildings—while the lower bunks’ projections find to the creative abandon of childhood rather than the dismal our protagonists locked in a battle within, as the civilized avatar boredom of a gentleman’s club. fights off its wild counterpart. It is a layered and complicated Interspersed between these four works are wall projections that narrative that culminates in the final collision between childhood fill out the narrative of the bison and cougar. Patterson includes and adolescence portrayed in the flaming accident between school an array of technical styles. Some are live action models dressed in bus and family sedan. the bison or cougar costumes, and others involve his puppetry. All The story begins, however, with The Mountain (2012), a are relatively short loops that can be caught between viewing the massive sculptural installation with a white blanket covered sculptures to add another layer of insight and detail. But one must mountain cloaking the ideal artist’s studio within. Two suburban not miss the Secret Citadel (2013), a thirty-minute stop motion family homes straddle either side of mountain linked by telephone animation that tells the unabridged story of bison and cougar, and poles that stretch over the top of the mountain and a secret passage showcases Patterson’s considerable animation skills. It’s a visual tunnel that runs underneath the dining room table base. One house and aural delight. Patterson is an artist with a substantial range of has its furniture neatly stacked outside indicating either a move in technical accomplishment, but he seems to hold animation with a or out of the neighbourhood, simultaneously bringing the friends particular affection. together and tearing them apart. The mountain’s physical inference After watching Secret Citadel, the rest of the exhibition shifted to a blanket fort with imagined secret passageways connects the context. Initially, the sculptures stood independently as sculptures, imaginative play of childhood to the imaginative play of an artist. yet afterwards they evolved into elaborate sets for the animation. It’s possible to envision the young buffalo and cougar running over Not that one category holds more value; rather one reveals a to share their latest comics and practice their super hero moves. lingering childhood fascination with Saturday mornings. n Patterson seamlessly relates these childhood pastimes to his secret artist’s studio deep within the mountain, which evidently Audrey Nicoll is a visual artist, art educator and writer based in refers to Superman’s “Secret Citadel”—the earliest comic book Nova Scotia.
Tom Forrestall Thomas (Tom) De Vaney Forrestall
Tom Forrestall is one of the best known realist painters working in Nova Scotia today. He has lived and worked most of his life in the province.
Thomas was born in Middleton, NS, and studied painting at Mount Allison University under Alex Colville and Lawrence Harris Junior. Following graduation, Thomas traveled in Europe and accepted a short-term position at the Beaverbrook art Gallery in Fredericton.
Since that time, he has painted full-time, “Apple Barrels in the Valley” Watercolour 14 ½” x 19 ½” and has exhibited his work all over Canada and internationally. 5415 Doyle Street, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3J 1H9 www.zwickersgallery.ca e-mail: [email protected] Member of the Art Dealers Member of the International Tel: (902) 423-7662 Fax: (902) 422-3870 Association of Canada Society of Appraisers Founded in 1886
4 Visual Arts News S u m m e r 2 0 1 4 E DI T OR I A L BY LIZZY HILL
The The nnoostalgiastalgia ississueue recently found myself glued to my browser, attempting to ‘walk’ to go back to something, someone or someplace now lost to you I to my childhood home in Appalachia using Google Earth. Upon and a state of emotional turmoil. Philosopher Albert Camus even seeing my old street, a surge of buried memories suddenly resurfaced. linked nostalgia and bloody rebellions in his essay “The Rebel: An But instead of remembering how isolated I’d felt as a child leaving Essay in Man in Revolt,” writing that each political act of rebellion, Canada to live in the Southern US, I remembered how loud the frogs “expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence croaked on balmy, sticky nights; images of secret caves and rivers of being.” twisting alongside pink Magnolias surfaced in my mind; and I felt In this issue of Visual Arts News, nostalgia often emerges a strong craving for fried green tomatoes and sun brewed ice tea. as bitter-sweet, serving as a portal into the psyche of the artists This issue of Visual Arts News explores the common, yet mysterious, and viewers—Graeme Patterson creates elaborate models and experience of nostalgia. animations that take viewers on a never-ending loop through his Nostalgia has been blamed for a whole slew of negative things childhood in his exhibition Secret Citadel; Artist John Devlin chats throughout history, ranging from murder to disease. The word as with our writer Eryn Foster about his desire to create a utopian we know it first entered our lexicon back in 1770 when a fleet of version of Cambridge University as it once was and as it ought to sailors aboard the HMS Endeavor fled a storm of fire darts on the be; And Halifax’s new generation of activists joins forces with the coast of New Guinea. The ship’s botanist kept a diary, in which city’s 70s-era gay scene in a new publication, Queer Looking, Queer he noted that upon leaving New Guinea, the sick began to appear Acting Revisited. well again: “The greater part of them were now pretty far gone This issue also features the work of artist Tamara Huxtable, with the longing for home, which the physicians have gone so far who’s most recent project Come Clean encourages everyone to as to esteem a disease under the name of nostalgia.” The origins confess to moments of subtle racism. Because, of course, perhaps of the word itself are also worth noting—nostos is the Greek word equally important to those things we enjoy remembering, are those for ‘return’, while Algos means ‘suffering’, connecting the desire that we conveniently forget. n
S u m m e r 2014 Visual Arts News 5 REVIEW
Untidy geography Mike Gough’s RETRACE The Rooms, St. John’s NL
ne of the most striking things about Mike Gough’s paintings form of the vessel is present, its precise outline seems to oscillate. Ois the space within them. Stark white and, in once case, black The artist has drawn several different hulls, one on top of the other, ground makes up most of the surface of each composition. By like layers of preparatory sketches, but without one highly polished isolating every mark, whether precise or gestural, the artist has version to hide all the work behind it. exposed the sometimes untidy struggle of his creative process. This is The shape of a narrow harbour entrance is more certain—hills not a technical struggle, but the struggle of remembering, of pulling sit solidly on the waterline. The texture of the stone, however, is images from physical and emotional experiences, rather than from comprised of layers of handwriting in graphite. Like a sort of visual visual references. aphasia, the structure of language is present with the appearance Two large canvases anchor RETRACE (on view from Dec. 20, of words and sentences, but devoid of legible content. These notes 2013 – April 20, 2014). In the first, Trust In This to Guide You Home, are a constant motif in Gough’s work, providing a strong, wordless, the shape of a boat is evoked in the foreground. While the general narrative drive.
Mike Gough, Trust In This To Guide You Home, 2013. Acrylic, enamel, pastel and graphite on canvas, 152 cm x 183 cm.
6 Visual Arts News S u m m e r 2 0 1 4 of handwritten script, like banks of fog. This is emotional geography, rather than a cityscape. A series of five paintings on birch panels occupy the main wall of the exhibition space. In the first, After All We Are A Product of Time, a dark formation arches over a street of row houses. This is not a protective structure, but a confining one. In Face to Face, a horizon is constructed completely from lines of handwriting—piled on one another, rubbed out, crossed out and rewritten, sometimes violently. Fear Of Losing You is perhaps the rawest of the group. Drawn in one long overlapping spiral, a long tunnel darkens to black at the centre of the composition. A yellow/gold stripe spikes towards this point from the bottom of the panel, growing brighter as it narrows into infinity. In We Made This Our Home, a group of buildings is underpinned by a colossal dark structure, as if a patch of the city was scooped up along with the ground underneath it, and marooned like a ship or perhaps an island, in the sky. Remember, You’re In Good Hands examines the dynamic between a group of figures gathered around the central subject of a woman, whose features are washed out by white paint, using brushstrokes that seem to indicate both comfort and confrontation. RETRACE is the result of Gough’s Elbow Room residency at The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery in St. John’s, and the exhibition reflects this concentrated period of visual and conceptual exploration. Several pieces though, indicate exploration in other Mike Gough, After All We Are A Product Of Time , 2013. Acrylic, pastel and graphite on birch panel, 122 cm x 91 cm. directions. Displayed as a set with Paint Study I, Paint Study II (Black) sets the stage Down by the shore, parts of a settlement seem to be missing— for Gough’s experimentation with dark ground. The panel In Search perhaps eclipsed by a large patch of bright red glinting off the water. evokes a very different atmosphere, where bright colours and bold This mark could be read as sunlight, fire or even blood, setting the gestures turn sharp and harsh. Neon signs at night may not be warm landscape off-kilter once again. Along the hill though, as if sprinkled or comforting, but provide direction nonetheless. by a hand from above, several tiny wooden houses are rendered in The topography Mike Gough has mapped in RETRACE includes crisp, photographic detail. numerous gaps and erasures. Some elements are clear, while others The second large canvas, You Will Return And Know The Place fade into the background. A few are lost in layers of mark making, For The First Time, plots the curve of a steep city street with the obscured by multiple attempts to get it just right. Crucially, it is in dark blue silhouette of two figures climbing the hill. Along one side this vulnerability, in the space opened up by these uncertainties, that are thick, vertical stripes of colour—signifiers perhaps of the iconic the viewer finds room for their own experience. n painted houses of St. John’s. At the top, a group of structures look like church buildings, with a graveyard marked by a wrought iron Jennifer McVeigh is a writer and editor living in St. John's. She can be fence. Underscoring all of these marks though, are the same layers reached at [email protected].
S u m m e r 2014 Visual Arts News 7 Magic and Realism
An essay by Aaron Weldon
There’s a book sitting on the waiting room table called The Magic of Reality. It demystifies complicated things like plumbing and auto mechanics by taking them apart and reassembling them. It’s a manual for the practical universe; a manifesto against mystery and it’s amazing how many things can be taken apart. For ovens, microwaves, hairdryers, rice cookers, mystery is just a misunderstanding. The ‘mystery’ can be
removed from a toaster because the toaster is not an illusion. I flip through The Magic of Reality looking for a chapter on pictures; a few words on how to take the mystery out of images. Nothing. ‘Disillusionment,’ the absence of illusion is more of a sensation, like sinking or running into a brick wall. Illusionism is the appearance of reality but Disillusionment is the feeling of reality.
Nova Scotian Realism at the Dalhousie Art Gallery illustrates both the feeling and appearance of our most provincial reality. It’s here that a goose is free to look like a goose and a classic wooden boat sails past post-impressionism dripping in nostalgia. A decaying cottage demands skill over thought in this insistent, ubiquitous regional ‘ism.’ Painting represents Art and it’s not charming, but there is something
disarmingly honest about Capture 2014. The show is a sincere cacophony of perspectives exhibiting Realism (social, photo, hyper, capitalist, etc.) as a difficult regional ‘ism’ drowning between illusion and disillusionment. Richard Davis’ high definition images pin Reality to the wall like a trophy. He paints a world glazed in time that favours austerity, moderation, patience and accuracy. Davis’ craft-based paintings demand hundreds of hours of labour in being made and much less in being seen. An employee of the Image, Davis divides his time from your time, and is incredibly generous, asking of the viewer only seconds more than nothing. This kind of refinement, a painstakingly mediated message, is not perfect:
“The highest definition of the medium corresponds with the lowest definition of the message […] the highest definition of sex (porn) corresponds to the lowest definition of desire.” -Jean Baudrillard, The Perfect Crime, "The Automatic Writing of the World," 1996
Unemployed wooden fishing buoys painted in egg tempera, and a 1965 Volvo: if Davis has a ‘message,’ it definitely has something to do with the past and it’s overwhelmed by presence. Impressive, virtuosic, technical and romantic: although Davis’ painting isn’t fashionable, it also successfully avoids
being timeless. More subtly skillful, Tom Ward doesn’t overachieve. In Looking Up his naturalism illustrates the personality of a stone. Reality, doesn’t pretend and Tom Ward mimics granite to the extent of good taste.
Pictures by Katie Melanson and Christopher Gorey, more like windows, successfully open up the wall,
8 Visual Arts News S u m m e r 2 0 1 4 8 while Robyn Listening by Ed Huner, The Classics by Malcolm Callaway, Brush Pile at Sunset by Alan Batemen and Symphony #2, by Peter Gough are knick knacks of interior decoration that help refer us to an elephant in the room.
“A lot of artists are selling out of their studio and you never see the work again so we’re kind of capturing it in its plight as economic capital but also cultural capital…it’s a completely different culture than I’ve worked with.” -Peter Dykhuis
I approach Steven Rhude’s Road to Idiot Cove remembering that my introduction to Rhude’s work arrived years ago on a birthday card from my grandmother. Commercial exchange flavours this exhibition at Dalhousie Art Gallery. It may be useful to remember the moment in the 18th century when artisans
became artists: it was the invention of ‘art,’ as the word ‘art’ emerged from artisan. Art by the 1800s was newly commodifiable and supported by an emerging middle class for the first time in history. It may be worthwhile to remember this—the simultaneous beginning of ‘art’ and the middle class—particularly at this moment, as Realists lobby for public walls, while newspapers tell us that the economic middle class is becoming endangered.
‘Nova Scotia Realism: A Survey of Art Your Kids Wouldn’t Do’ ‘Welcome to the Real World’
The attitude of the show’s co-organizer PLANS (Professional Living Artists of Nova Scotia) would tickle Duchamp and a lot of young Realist artists working today, because there’s been an attitude adjustment amongst illusionistic painters. I’m thinking of Brad Phillips, Cheyney Thompson, John Currin and Wilhelm Sasnal, who at times make both ‘paintings your kid can’t do’ and ‘paintings your kid shouldn’t see.’ Not all Realist paintings in the exhibition are made for a wall; some are more suitable under a mattress like Adam Gunn’s Unknown, Unknowns. He notices the real world includes objects other than buoys. Ambera Wellman pays lip service to the confusions of gender, and Onni Nordman, Derrick Dale Johnson and Anthony Clementi help to totally confuse the exhibition.
“The more we brought in [the various forms of Realism], the more we destroyed the possibility of any commonality in defining what realism is.” -Peter Dykhuis
Maybe Realism like most ‘isms’ is obsolete—although some of our best regional images are not.
8 S u m m e r 2014 Visual Arts News 9 Mary Reardon, Memory Landscape 46, 2011. Acrylic on canvas. Photo: Steve Farmer
Yanina Movchan, Still Life with Two Guardians, 2013. Oil on linen. Image courtesy of the artist
10 Visual Arts News S u m m e r 2 0 1 4 Ambera Wellman, There is Nothing to Fear, 2013. Oil and acrylic on canvas. Image courtesy of the artist S u m m e r 2014 Visual Arts News 11 Susan Gibson, Parade, 2013. Pastel on drawing paper. Photo: Steve Farmer
Recently the major Polish painter Wilhelm Sasnal repainted Alex Colville’s 1967 work Pacific, and in the movie Heat, Michael Mann reuses the same image, casting Robert De Niro as Colville’s main character. The magic part of reality is not a regional concern. Illusion, the appearance of reality, will always be a mystery because it’s an appearance that keeps changing. Peter Di Gesu’s One Night in L.A. II re-presents Bas Jan Ader’s In Search of the Miraculous, but Di Gesu’s landscape painting feels more like an apology to Ader—as if, in a search for the miraculous, illusion needs to explain itself.
In the public domain, […] explanations, while they may give wider access to your work, can often be futile and even self-destructive (I have come away from some, entirely disillusioned). -Dennis Young (at an address to graduating students at NSCAD University)
Illusion is the appearance of reality while disillusionment is the feeling of reality. Capture 2014 contains small portions of both and as we wander into our century the question for illusionists remains: what can your magic do?
Aaron Weldon has eight generations of roots in Northern Cape Breton. He has painted portraits for the University of King’s College and contributed to exhibitions at the Owens Art Gallery (NB), Plug In ICA (MB), the National Gallery of Canada (ONT) and The Confederation Centre Art Gallery (PEI).
12 Visual Arts News S u m m e r 2 0 1 4 Ron Shuebrook Drawings Organized by Thames Art Gallery John Kissick, Curator 24 May through 10 August 2014 Representing over 30 years of production, Drawings has much to teach viewers about process. Freed from the burden of representation, Shuebrook’s hard-edged geometric figures in black compressed charcoal interlock in dynamic tension, generating graphic elegance from the visibly erased and reworked remnants of false starts and new decisions.
Big Organized by MSVU Art Gallery 23 August through 28 September 2014 A selection of large works from the Mount Saint Vincent University permanent collection including sculpture, painting, and textile-based art by Frances Dorsey, Gathie Falk, and Peter Walker among others.
www.bountyprint.com
6359 Bayne Street Mount Saint Vincent University Halifax, Nova Scotia Halifax, NS B3K 2V6 Canada B3M 2J6 902.457.6160 Phone: 453-0300 www.msvuart.ca Fax: 455-1370
Christine Koch
Landscape Dreaming May 9 – June 1, 2014
796 Queen St., Fredericton, NB 506-454-5192 • www.gallery78.com
S u m m e r 2014 Visual Arts News 13 OCTOBER 24 – OCTOBER 27, 2014 METRO TORONTO CONVENTION CENTRE OPENING NIGHT PREVIEW OCTOBER 23
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14 Visual Arts News S u m m e r 2 0 1 4 Rose Adams Survival, death and remembering
TILA KELLMAN
ose Adams’ mid-career retrospec- Rtive, Birds, Bones & Brains, curated by Robin Metcalfe, covers 24 years of a passionate practice devoted to uncovering the co-dependency between people and nature in the food chain, in memory and death. In a practice that has unfolded through large thematic exhibitions, among them Fundy Suite (1997), Aves (2002), and IMAG/in/ING (2010), she explores how we live, remember and die intertwined physically and metaphorically with the natural world. Primarily a painter, Adams employs diverse media and wide- ranging references, from symbolic still life to diagnostic brain images in her latest exhibition (on view January 11- March 9, 2014 at Halifax's Saint Mary's University Art Gallery). At her best, she drags objective scientific representation into a profound conversation with visual art’s emotional, metaphoric power. Adams re-thinks her life through her paintbrush. The earliest painting in this show, The Forgotten Dead (1987), a semi-abstract image of maguey, announces her ongoing current concerns: death, remembering and motherhood’s care. Following several family deaths, she gratefully discovered in Mexico the exuberant Day of the Dead celebrations with their libations of pulque which can also symbolize a mother’s abundance and care. By 1989, living in Port Lorne, Adams became concerned about food sustainability and was named CUSO director for sustainable development in Atlantic Canada. In her 1993 Garden of Delights series, her delight and commit- Rose Adams, Sur v ival, 2007. ment shine through in Composting Photo: Steve Farmer Skeleton and The Tomato Bed, contrasting chemically-assisted growth with organic food production in a Adams “cuddled them like a baby” in one arm, she says of the bright, almost naive, painterly style, framed with seaweed. discarded sea creatures, while drawing with the other, producing Neighbouring fishermen, who dropped off by-catch from pieces such as the stunning Dogfish and Monkfish in dorsal their lobster traps in her mailbox or the back of her truck for her and ventral views. These luminous drawings in pastel, charcoal to draw, prompted Adams’ concern with fishery sustainability. and coloured pencil depict vivid characters in the throes of
S u m m e r 2014 Visual Arts News 15 death, metaphors of decline in the fishery. Drawn in swift strokes with bright carmine accents, hinting at crucifixion imagery, an elegant dogfish glances out with innocent charm, as though disbelieving its fate. In contrast, a monkfish drawn with almost contour lines over colour washes produces an expression resembling tortured horror, blue eyes glaring and mouth helplessly agape. With her Aves exhibition (2002), birds, especially her backyard crows, became a metaphor for Adams’ life experience. Science confirms crows’ intelligence, memory, family orientation and how they manipulate their world. They appear early in Adams’ practice associated with death and memorial (e.g., Crow With Tulips, 2001), and scientific study (e.g., Drawer of Ravens, 2004). These develop into Adams’ mature style: a colourful, multi-layered collage-like grid juxtaposing a profusion of flowers, birds and fragments of texts. The texts are not always legible; Adams is a poet for whom language itself is “ground.” Reigning over all is the crow, inspecting its surroundings, gazing at the viewer, keeping tabs. They become interlocutors and, I believe, can stand for the artist herself. Adams’ exploration of memory and death peaks in her work involving brain imaging, arising from her family experience with Alzheimer’s and a 2004-05 residency at the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Memory Disability Clinic in Halifax. Adams hopes to inspire people to “think emotively about brain images.” For me, the didacticism of pairing areas of the brain with the kinds of memories or damage located there, or factual depiction, is distancing [e.g., 60 Days Free Trial (2007), My Semiotic, Episodic and Procedural Memories and Pre and Post Operative Life (both 2010)]. Deep Brain Stimulation (2010), based on an x-ray of a diseased brain without “commentary,” is far more evocative. Likewise, in Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down (2010), a drawing of a brain coated with with ashes that gradually fall to the floor, the feeling of physical deterioration becomes palpable without being didactic. Adams succeeds best, I believe, where her painting integrates symbolic flowers and birds with less scientific images of the brain. Rose Adams, Monkfish, dorsal view, 1996. Presided over by a crow, Looted Memories (2004), Photo: Steve Farmer contextualizes looted artifacts from the Baghdad Museum with symbolizes resurrection, it reminds viewers that celebrating a brain and blinded man to release associations of loss, both remembrance reaches towards life. n public and private, historical and contemporary. Finally, in the luscious Survival (2007), Adams as “crow” herself, juxtaposes Tila Kellman is a writer, independent curator and art historian in a dead pet parakeet with memorial flowers and a lizard tasting Antigonish, Nova Scotia. an open fruit. An intimate image of pure delectation that
16 Visual Arts News S u m m e r 2 0 1 4 Exhibition Listings Vol. 36 No.1 Material intended for inclusion in the Fall issue (September-December) exhibition listings must be received no later than July 4, 2014. Send high-resolution photos (300dpi) to [email protected] for editorial consideration.
NOVA SCOTIA Morrill, Virginia Stoddard, Janel Warmington and Kate Wasteneys, to name a few. Acadia University Art Gallery July 13–August 10 Beveridge Arts Centre, Wolfville, NS The Art of Being Human: Annapolis Shambhalla 902.585.1373 http://gallery.acadiau.ca Group show August 17–September 14 Anna Leonowens Gallery Talk Big: Rion Microys & Stephanie Dean-Moore 5163 Duke St, Halifax, NS B3J 3J6 902.494.8223 http://www.nscad.ns.ca/students/gallery_intro.php Canadian Museum of Immigration Exhibitions open every Monday at 5:30 pm at Pier 21 | Musée canadien de June–August l’immigration du Quai 21 Summer Artist-in-Residence Exhibition Series 1055 rue Marginal Road,Halifax, NS B3H 4P7 Julie Beugin (DE) www.pier21.ca | www.quai21.ca Denise Hawrysio (UK) Margret Hoppe (DE) Cape b R ETON Centre for Craft Lisa Steele + Kim Tomczak (ON) and Design B ill Curry, Bald Eagle Pair. Seripop (Yannick Desranleau + Chloe Lum) (QC) 322 Charlotte Street, Sydney, NS B1P 6T7 Viewpoint Gallery 902.539.7491 [email protected] Art Gallery of Nova Scotia Halifax 1723 Hollis Street, Halifax, NS B3J 3C8 Cape b R ETON University Art Gallery with their mentors Michael Fernandes, Eleanor King 902.424.5280 www.artgalleryofnovascotia.ca 1250 Grand Lake Road, Sydney, NS B1P 6L2 and Ericka Walker. Until May 30 902.563.1342 http://www.cbu.ca/art-gallery May 8–June 1 Secret Citadel: Graeme Patterson Until May 23 Then and Now: Lynn Rotin On permanent display Gold: A Nova Scotia Treasure. Lynn Rotin will be exhibiting works from throughout her Shifting Ground June 13–August 15 career from 2002 to 2014. Charting the changing currents in contemporary Doing Our Own Thing: Back-to-the-Land in Eastern June 5–22 Aboriginal art across Canada as seen through the AGNS Canada during the 1970s Awakening Permanent Collection, this exhibition takes a circuitous Curated by Amish Morrell and Pan Wendt The Dartmouth Visual Art Society presents their annual route that begins here, on the East Coast, and finds its way This exhibition looks to the utopian imagination of show and sale. to the Arctic. the back-to-the-land movement, considering both its ambitions and its failures to see what we might Dalhousie Art Gallery Art Gallery of Nova Scotia Yarmouth recuperate from this history, almost forty years later. 6101 University Avenue, Halifax, NS B3H 1W8 341 Main Street, Yarmouth, NS B5A 1E7 The exhibition consists of documentary photographs 902.494.2403 [email protected] 902.749.2248 www.artgalleryofnovascotia.ca of back-to-the-land families from western Cape Breton www.artgallery.dal.ca Island that were taken during throughout the 1970s by Until May 18 Argyle Fine Art George Thomas, a reading room housing The Whole Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture 1559 Barrington Street, Suite 102 Earth Catalog Library and a sculptural installation by Halifax, NS B3J 1Z7 Cape Breton-born artist and second-generation back-to- Eyelevel Gallery 902.425.9456 www.argylefa.com the-lander, Fenn Martin. Co-presented by Cape Breton 2159 Gottingen Street, Halifax, NS B3K 3B5 University Art Gallery (Sydney, NS) and Confederation 902.425.6412 www.eyelevelgallery.ca Art Sales & R ental Gallery Centre of the Arts (Charlottetown, PEI). 1723 Hollis Street, Halifax, NS August 22–October 31 Gallery 215 902.424.3087 Chris Reid 8247 Highway 215, Selma, NS 902.261.2151 www.artgallery215.com ARTsPLACE Centre for Art Tapes 396 St. George Street, Annapolis Royal B0S 1A0 2238 Maitland St., Halifax, NS B3K 2Z9 Gallery Page and Strange 902.532.7069 www.arcac.ca 902.422.6822 http://www.centreforarttapes.ca/ 1869 Granville Street, Halifax NS [email protected] April 26–June 22 902.422.8995 http://www.pageandstrange.com/ May 11–June 15 All That Glows (at the AGNS) Machinations:Paul Bernhardt Lucie Chan (Vancouver), Barry Doupé (Vancouver), Harvest Gallery June 22–July 27 and Libby Hague (Toronto) 462 Main Street, Wolfville, NS B4P 1E2 The Golden Shrine:Cynthia Dinan-Mitchell The artists in All That Glows are brought together by 902.542.7093 www.harvestgallery.ca August 3–September 7 their exploration of the human condition through the First Flowers: Sarah Maloney artistic genre of animation. Lucie Chan, Barry Doupé H ermes and Libby Hague employ painting, automatic drawing 5682 North St., Halifax Chapel G allery, A nnapolis R oyal and installation design for a multi-media installation. 902.403.0030 www.heartofhermes.com ( facility rental) Co-presented by the Centre for Art Tapes & the Art Gallery May 11–June 1 of Nova Scotia. Curated by Mireille Bourgeois Inverness County Centre Sky/Sea: Charlotte Wilson Hammond, RCA for the Arts June 8–July 2 Craig Gallery at Alderney Landing 16080 Highway 19, Inverness, NS B0E 1N0 The Elephant and Th'YARC an exhibit of recent prints from 2 Ochterloney Street, Alderney Landing 902.258.2533 www.invernessarts.ca members of Elephant Grass Print Collective Parker's Cove Dartmouth, NS B2Y 3Z3 and Th'YARC Printshop, Yarmouth. Artist(s): Bonnie Baker, 902.461.4698 [email protected] Jo b EALE Gallery Ivan Blades, Donna Boyko, Shela Breau, David Cain, June 25–July 31 10327 Peggys Cove Road, Glen Margaret Diane Clapp, Cecil Day, Micheline Gushue, Anne Harding, The Visual Arts Nova Scotia Mentorship Program: 902-823-1960 www.jobealegallery.net Janet Larkman, Jane McBurney Racine, Isao Sanami Andrew Maize, Annalise Prodor, and Sera Senakovicz
S u m m e r 2014 Visual Arts News 17
Opened in 1978 the Acadia University Art Gallery offers a year-round exhibition programme of contemporary and historical work.
Gallery hours: Closed Mondays. May 30-July 13 Scavengers, Scoundrels & Scallywags Ray Mackie & Deb Kuzyk Tuesdays – Sundays: 12-4pm July 18-Aug 31 Presence of Absence Jeffrey Cowling & Free Admission/ Tour Groups Welcome (call ahead) Catherine Beck Sep 5-21 Residency Works Summer Residents Sep 26-Nov 9 Peacework NSDCC Members 10 Highland Avenue, Beveridge Arts Centre, Wolfville, NS, B4P 2R6 Tel: 902-‐585-‐1373/ email: [email protected] /web: http://gallery.acadiau.ca
18 Visual Arts News S u m m e r 2 0 1 4 K hy b er Centre for the Arts 5523 Cornwallis St, Halifax, NS 902.422.9668 [email protected] www.khyber.ca June 13–July 24 The World Has A You Shaped Hole In It Claire Greenshaw Employing a broad range of media including sculpture, drawing and photography, The World Has You Shaped Hole In It explores perception, space and scale. Greenshaw’s artwork uses humor and strategies of appropriation to explore and destabilize perception as the materials and images reveal their illusionary qualities. This collection of work examines the way we see things, how we understand ourselves and our environment and the inevitable breaches of logic that occur when we try to reconcile our interior, subjective space and our external, corporeal existence.
Lunenb urg Art Gallery 79 Pelham Street, Lunenburg, NS B0J 2C0 902.640.4044 http://www.lunenburgartgallery.com/
Lyghtesome Gallery David R. Harper, To Remind, or to Warn (installation detail), 2012. 166 Main Street, Antigonish, NS B2G 2B7 Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery 902.863.5804 [email protected] www.lyghtesome.ns.ca August 23–Sept 28 Organised by the Doris McCarthy Gallery in partnership May 6–31 BIG with the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery and Kenderdine FRESH POTS AND PAINT A selection of large works from the MSVU Art Gallery Art Gallery Julia Redgrave of The Worn Doorstep Gallery permanent collection including sculpture, painting, In Entre le chien et le loup, Harper explores the doctrine Introducing a new line of white stoneware pottery and textile-based media. The exhibition features and traditions of esoteric orders and secret societies, produced by distinguished Nova Scotia visual artist and artists Frances Dorsey, Gathie Falk, and Peter Walker juxtaposing the nuances of ritual against the explicit potter, Julia Redgrave of The Worn Doorstep Gallery in among others. message of traditional monument. His works consider Annapolis Royal and Fresh Work by a variety of artists the idea of order, whether in mystical terms or in the associated with Lyghtesome Gallery celebrating the ( ( (Parentheses) ) ) Gallery structures we create every day. Speaking to domesticity, Coming of Spring! & Art Projects spirituality, nature and mortality, Harper engages the June 3–28 2168 Gottingen St, Halifax, NS B3K 3B4 viewer in a dialogue on the metaphoric weight that the LIFELINE 902.403.3932/902.229.4180 objects present both historically and emotionally. LINDA JOHNS [email protected] July 1–August 30 St. Francis xAV IER University SUMMER SHOWCASE - A Slice of Nova Scotia at its Visual Peer Gallery Art Gallery Best! New and Recent Work by Gallery Artists and Artisans 167 Lincoln St, Lunenburg, NS Bloomfield Centre St. FX Campus including a few surprises! 902.640.3131 www.peer-gallery.com Antigonish NS B2G 1G2 May 10–22 902.867.2303 Mary E. b LACK Gallery Primavera Por Favor Suite 140, 1061 Marginal Road Diane Wile-Brumm Secord Gallery Halifax, NS B3H 4P6 902.492.2522 May 24–June2 6301 Quinpool Road, Halifax, NS B3L 1A4 Apr. 11–May 25 Bigger, Higher, Darker: Bob Hainstock 902.423.6644 www.secordgallery.com To Have and To Hold – Emily Doiron New Landscapes is an ongoing series of mixed media Four-Word-World – Mengnan Qu work that Annapolis Valley artist Bob Hainstock has Studio 21 Fine Art Two side-by-side solo exhibitions of emerging metal allowed to evolve over the past 14 years. Hainstock's new 1273 HollisStreet, Halifax, NS B3J 1T7 artists whose intricate jewellery invites close scrutiny. work in the series has become much larger and much 902.420.1852 [email protected] May 30–July. 13 darker, but with the same aerial perspective of Valley www.studio21.ca Scavengers, Scoundrels & Scallywags landscape patterns and textures. The artist has moved May 9–28 Ray Mackie & Deb Kuzyk his pallet and tones into dramatic, dark times of evening Mark Grantham Colorful characters, those known to us as common and night, finding colors and contrasts not available pests of flora and fauna, decorate this amazing display in normal daylight conditions. Most of the new works Swoon – Fine Art, Antiques & Fashion of functional and whimsical sculptural porcelain. measure in the 4'x4' range or larger. 1410 Hammonds Plains Road, Hammonds Plains NS July. 18–Aug. 31 902.444-8279 www.swoonfineart.com Presence of Absence Port Loggia Gallery May 3–June 1 Jeffrey Cowling & Catherine Beck Halifax Seaport La Vie en Rose:Andrea Pottyondy Commemorative funeral urns and contemporary 1107 Marginal Road, Halifax, NS And New Work by Rosemary Clarke Young mourning jewelry explore themes of loss and And Members of the Nova Scotia Potters Guild remembrance R oss Creek Centre for the Arts June 7–29 555 Ross Creek Road, Canning, NS B0P 1H0 You Are Here: Kristina Sobstad McCarthy Gallery 902.582.3842 www.artscentre.ca And New Work by Rosemary Metz 36 Arthur Street, NSCC Campus And New Work by Bob Morouney Truro, NS 902 893-5322 Saint Mary ’s University Art Gallery July 5–27 Loyola Building, 5865 Gorsebrook Avenue, Halifax How Sweet It Is - A Group Show MSV U Art Gallery 902.420.5445 [email protected] And New Work by Angela Melanson and Blythe Church Seton Academic Centre www.smuartgallery.ca And New Photography by Mariette Roodenburg 166 Bedford Highway, Halifax, NS B3M 2J6 June 7–Aug 3 August 2–31 902.457.6160 [email protected] Ursula Johnson: Mi’kwite’tmn (“Do You Remember”) New Work by Anna Horsnell Wade and Carol Smeraldo www.msvuart.ca August 23–October 5 And African Textiles and Art May 24–August 10 David R. Harper: Entre le chien et le loup And New Work by Lou Schellenberg Ron Shuebrook: Drawings Curator:Ann MacDonald John Kissick, Curator
S u m m e r 2014 Visual Arts News 19 CURIOSITY IGNITES
“[NSCAD] JUST SEEMS TO BE A BREEDING GROUND FOR NEW IDEAS.” – Denise Markonish, MASS MoCA Curator
my.nscad.ca The Nova Scotia College of Art and Design offers an interdisciplinary educational experience unlike any other art school. For over 125 years, 5163 Duke Street our students, faculty and administrators have shared a lasting commitment Halifax, NS B3J 3J6 to experimentation and cutting-edge art and design. (902) 444-9600
20 Visual Arts News S u m m e r 2 0 1 4 unique performances of their work, share skills in public workshops, take part in provoking discussions and participate in a 24 hour marathon of live art making. This year, artists working with ideas of chance, spectacle, and the uncanny take center stage at this years’ Art Marathon Festival as we explore the theme Carnival. August 30–October 4 Cloud Ascention Mikiki Play Against JEFF & GORDON
Eptek Centre 130 Harbour Drive Summerside, PEI 902.888.8373
Gallery 78 796 Queen Street, Fredericton, NB 506.454.5192 www.gallery78.com
Galerie d’art Louise et R eub en-Cohen Université de Moncton, Édifice Clément-Cormier Moncton, NB E1A 3E9 Canada 506.858.4687 June 26–Sept 21 Oh, Canada - Contemporary Art from North North America
Gallery Connexion Chestnut Complex, 440 York Street Fredericton NB, E3B 5B4 Ron Shuebrook, G aze. Photo courtesy of the Collection of 506.454.1433 [email protected] The Robert McLaughlin Gallery Galerie Sans Nom 140, Botsford, #12B, Moncton, NB E1C 4X5 V iewpoint Gallery May 17–September 7 506.854.5381 www.galeriesansnom.org 1272 Barrington Street, Halifax, NS This Anne Place: Anne of Green Gables as Idea, Book, and Until May 30 902.420.0854 www.viewpointgallery.ca Musical On a Silver Platter: Mathieu Léger Bird is a Verb: A Photographic Look at Birds and their May 24–January 4, 2015 Habitat Five Decades: A Canadian Art Collection Moncton Gallery Until June 1 An overview of the collection featuring significant works City Hall, 655 Main Street, Moncton, NB E1C 1E8 Bill Curry of art by some of Canada’s finest contemporary, modern, tel: 506.853.3593 [email protected] June 4–15 and historic artists, including selections from our exten- http://moncton.ca Nova Scotia Community College Photography Exhibition sive holdings on Robert Harris (1849-1919). Acquired since May 5–June 5 June 18–29 the Art Gallery opened in 1964, these works are touch- Vicky Lentz Atlantic Photo Supply Photo Salon stones of our history and culture. June 9–July 3 July 1–August 3 Co-curated by Kevin Rice and Pan Wendt and organized Vanessa Pesch The Topography of Wonder by Confederation Centre Art Gallery Portraits tend to fall into two categories, either serious/ Colin Campbell June 26–September 21 contemplative or happy/smiling; Between Takes explores August 5–31 Oh, Canada the spectrum in between the acceptable poses. With the death is no parenthesis contrast of icy grey eyes and comical mouths, these por- Paul Vienneau Craft Council of Newfoundland traits captivate with their defiance of being lumped into a and Lab rador singular category of emotion. Zwicker ’s Gallery 59 Duckworth Street, St. John’s, NL A1C 1E6 July 7–Sept 3 5415 Doyle Street, Halifax, NS B3P 1H9 p:709.753.2749 f: 709.753.2766 Annual Juried Exhibition 902.423.7662 www.zwickersgallery.ca www.craftcouncil.nl.ca
New b RUNSWICK Museum ATLANTIC REGION Eastern Edge Gallery Market Square, Saint John, NB E2L 4Z6 72 Harbour Drive, St. John’s, NL, A1C 6K1 506.643.7666 www.nbm-mnb.ca The Andrew and Laura McCain 709.739.1882 [email protected] Art Gallery www.easternedge.ca Owens Art Gallery 8 McCain Street, Florenceville-Bristol, NB E7L 3H6 Until May 28 Mount Allison University 506.392.6769 www.mccainartgallery.com Proliferations 61 York Street Sackville, NB E4L 1E1 Andrée-Anne Dupuis Bouret 506.364.2574 www.mta.ca/owens b EAV ER b rook Art Gallery June 6–27 Until June 1 703 rue Queen St, PO Box/CP 605 One Night Stand, Performance Series A Vital Force: The Canadian Group of Painters Fredericton, NB E3B 5A6 Coral Short, Kailey Bryan, Evelyn Donnelly June 26–September 21 506.458.2024 www.beaverbrookartgallery.org July 16–Aug 14 Oh, Canada Your Own Grad School Gisele Amantea, Bill Burns, Cedar Tavern Singers, Michel Confederation Centre Art Gallery Cliff Eyland and Jeanne Randolph de Broin, Mario Doucette, Michael Fernandes, Hadley 145 Richmond Street, Charlottetown, PE, C1A 1J1 August 14–17 + Maxwell, David Harper, Wanda Koop, Diane Landry, 902.628.1864 [email protected] 24 Hour Art Marathon: Carnival Micah Lexier, Luanne Martineau, Kim Morgan, Clint http://www.confederationcentre.com The Art Marathon Festival is a celebration of Neufeld, Annie Pootoogook, Ned Pratt, John Will, Janice Until May 18 contemporary artistic practice held each August in St. Wright Cheney Somewheres John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. Local, national A landmark exhibition of more than 100 works by over A survey of emerging contemporary artists from the and international artists come together to present Maritimes.
S u m m e r 2014 Visual Arts News 21 Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life -Pablo Picasso
June through August New & Recent Works by Gallery Artists
Upstairs at 6301 Quinpool Road, Halifax, NS B3L 1A4 tel: 902-423-6644 Fax: 902-423-8834 www.secordgallery.com Email: [email protected]
Call for Submissions Submissions due: July 15, 2014 Welcoming applications from all professional artists – from the traditional to those who work in new and digital media
46th SCA National Juried Show Salmon Arm Art Gallery Salmon Arm, British Columbia Sept 5th - Sept 27th, 2014 Announcing the new Mary Pratt Crystal Award
societyofcanadianartists.com 22 Visual Arts News S u m m e r 2 0 1 4 SCA 60 Canadian artists, organized by the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and curated by Denise Markonish. This large exhibition will be presented in a collaborative, multi-venue format at the Owens Art Gallery, Mount Allison University; the Confederation Centre Art Gallery; the Louise-et-Reuben-Cohen Art Gallery at Université de Moncton; and Galerie Sans Nom, Moncton. Sponsored by TD Bank Group with funding from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Province of New Brunswick.
Grenfell Campus Art Gallery Fine Arts Building, University Drive Corner Brook, NL A2H 6P9 www.swgc.mun.ca/artgallery Until May 17 BFA Visual Arts Graduating Exhibition 2014 June 21–September 13 Plexus Barb Daniell Daniell’s 8 x 40’ long installation is comprised of sculptural units ranging in size from 2” to 8’. The sculptures are based on individual natural elements such as plankton, diatoms, spores and roots and function as contemporary hieroglyphics charting elements and processes observed Andrea Mortson, You Are Loved, 2009-10. in the natural environment. Photo: Roger Smith Galerie d’art Louise-et-Reuben-Cohen Struts Gallery & Faucet Media Arts Centre 7 Lorne Street, Sackville, NB E4L 3Z6 506.536.1211 [email protected] http://www.strutsgallery.ca/
The R ooms 9 Bonaventure Avenue, St. John’s, NL, Canada A1C 5P9 709.757.8000 [email protected] http://www.therooms.ca/artgallery/ To May 30 Natural Selection: An Evolving Idea of Canadian Landscape May 10–September 7 Pam Hall: HouseWork(s) Newfoundland artist Pam Hall’s creative and social engagement with community is a long-standing and sig- nificant part of her artistic practice. She invites members of the non-art community to be creative collaborators – among these, a medical school, a fish processing plant and a small rural parish hall. The house – with all of its physical, emotional, cultural, social and gendered conno- tations – is the broad theme of this exhibition. The works displayed and those performed create the union of Hall’s solitary and collaborative practices with the active recep- tion of the gallery audience. May 31–Sept 21 Pointed North: Rockwell Kent in Newfoundland and Labrador
Third Space Gallery 39 King Street, PO Box 20060 Saint John, NB, E2L 5B2 506.696.0862 http://thirdspacegallery.ca/
UNB Art Centre Memorial Hall, University of New Brunswick 9 Bailey Drive, Fredericton, NB E3A 1A3 506.453.4623 May 9–June 19 Eastern Seaboard Cabinetmakers: Furniture Making in the Maritimes: 1765 to 1880 This exhibition will look at furniture made on the east coast of Canada, from the Pre-Loyalist Planters to the Late Victorians, from the perspective of 2013.
Amalie Atkins, Three Minute Miracle: Tracking the Wolf, 2008. Felt tent, mixed media, video. Confederation Centre Art Gallery
S u m m e r 2014 Visual Arts News 23 Revisiting rebellion Millennial artists encounter the 70s gay and lesbian scene
HILARY BEAUMONT
igns, buttons and t-shirts that once pushed Sthe envelope in Halifax gay rights marches in the 1970s are once again seeing the light of day. After 25 years, curator Robin Metcalfe and the Khyber Centre for the Arts are re-launching a catalogue from 1997 exhibit Queer Looking, Queer Acting: Lesbian and Gay Vernacular. For the Khyber’s 125th anniversary and to pay tribute to the city’s vibrant new generation of queer rights activists, the Halifax arts institution that once hosted a prominent gay and lesbian club called The Turret decided to re-launch the catalogue and exhibit. But while the catalogue launched in February, the exhibit has been put on hold due to asbestos concerns at the historic building. However the new book—which includes essays and works from the original catalogue as well as 24 new pages of essays and art by Emily Davidson, FLAP Material Making Party , young activists—can, as Metcalfe explains, Feminist League for Agitation Propaganda, 2010. Photo: B eck Gilmer-Osborne be read as a conversation between Halifax’s gay activists of the 1970s and today’s younger generation of queer activists. Importantly, the curator says, that dialogue reveals the axis of the movement has shifted. While sexual orientation was the chief focus of the queer liberation movement of the ‘70s, today’s agenda revolves around trans rights and gender identity. The re-launched catalogue contrasts old and new visual works that were never meant to be hung in a gallery. Their creators intended for them to be worn, posted in public, carried as placards or brought home in pockets. “The objects were not made as artworks, but I put them in an art gallery so you could look at them with the kind of critical eye that one brings to artwork,” Metcalfe explains. Both the older and newer works employ strategies of collage and appropriation, re-reading existing materials against the grain to create narratives. For 70s-era gays and lesbians, The NSCAD Queer Collective’s reconstructed original 1977 work by Rand Gaynor and contemporary graffiti’d response. Khyber Centre for the Arts, Halifax, NS, 2013. Photo: B eck Gilmer-Osborne
24 Visual Arts News S u m m e r 2 0 1 4 rights movement, so a 25-year retrospective seemed appropriate. The original show was arranged around the idea of spaces— the dance floor, the office, the cruising areas and the street—the sites where queer identities were born. The street was home to the demonstrations and marches that pushed the movement forward. Just as the fight for gay and lesbian rights has stumbled backward in Russia due to the country’s censorship laws, Halifax’s queer community fought a similar battle. For one liberation march, Halifax artist and first wave gay rights activist Jim MacSwain painted three signs (featured in the new book), each in the shape of a man-monkey: a police officer with his hands covering his eyes, a CBC broadcaster with his hands over his mouth and a customs officer with his hands blocking his ears. In the 1970s, the CBC refused to broadcast a gay organization’s public service announcement, Canadian customs intercepted books destined for queer bookshops and activists accused the police of having their own agenda. “All was not smooth and fabulous in the first wave,” the artist says. He isn’t merely referring to the movement’s fight Stacks of the book OUT: Queer Looking Queer Acting Revisited by Robin Metcalfe (2014). against the status quo; the queer rights movement had its own internal struggles. It much the same as trans and gender queer people today, there was was bumpy at times in terms of inclusiveness. Activists experienced and is no positive visual representation of their culture. It had to be despair and contradictions. Trans people and gender identity didn’t recreated from bits and pieces and found objects. have a space in the movement, he acknowledges—they were a Some of the current works included in the re-launched minority. He hopes, though, the movement’s win will allow gender catalogue include printed matter by the Feminist League for rights activists to push the conversation forward today. Agitation Propaganda, or FLAP, partly organized by local artist Just as the gay and lesbian rights movement fought homophobia, Emily Davidson. There’s also a cartoon featuring a frustrated- the next major hurdle for the queer rights movement is transphobia. looking person looking at the male and female washrooms with “They’re now challenging preconceptions around gender, which are the caption, “There was a sudden spike of bush growth during the programmed into us on the level of the language, so those are pretty month of April.” During that month, Halifax activists challenged deeply engrained cultural ideas,” Metcalfe says. “Even for someone their friends not to use any gendered spaces for 30 days, calling who is sympathetic to it like myself, it takes a lot of re-wiring to it the Gender-Neutral Washroom Challenge. And, not to be missed, break out of gender binaries, and not everyone is happy to do that— is Genevieve Flavelle’s “tits and lipstick” mural, which depicts there’s a lot of resistance to that.” exactly that. For the new catalogue, OUT: Queer Looking, Queer Acting These works will be printed alongside original materials Revisited the message is this: any successful movement becomes from what Metcalfe calls the first wave of queer rights activism in institutionalized. To Metcalfe, the re-launched catalogue communi- Halifax. The first catalogue and exhibit, printed and displayed cates “how the world we know has come into being and where it in 1997, grew out of his practice of saving ephemera. “I’m a bit might be headed next.” n of an amateur archivist, which is a polite word for pack rat,” he jokes. Halifax’s Gay Alliance for Equality formed in 1972, Hilary Beaumont is a freelance journalist from Halifax. marking the beginning of Nova Scotia’s organized gay and lesbian
S u m m e r 2014 Visual Arts News 25 Current Condition s and f oreca s t s
Escape to New Cambridge A conversation with John Devlin
ince 1984, John Devlin has created 675 letter-size sketches centred Saround King's College in Cambridge. It’s a site that has captured his imagination, also prompting a series of long saga-like poems, short stories and a dream diary. The Nova Scotia artist’s work has made an international splash, finding a home in permanent collections ranging from Paris’ abcd Collection to London’s The Museum of Everything and the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne, Switzerland. Eryn Foster catches up with Devlin as his spring show opens at Paris’ Christian Berst Gallery and he prepares for a solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in 2015. Eryn Foster: In the late 1970’s, you applied, and were invited, to study theology at Cambridge University. After one year, you left England and returned home to Nova Scotia. Could you talk about the circumstances that led you away from your calling to the priesthood, and also what propelled you to eventually become an artist? John Devlin: In the two or three years following the breakdown in my health in 1980, it became clearer to me and to my bishop that we ought to part ways. I thought as late as 1981 that it would be possible for me to return to Cambridge and finish the tripos. But Bishop Hayes’ feeling was that my illness was a sign that I did not have a true vocation. In a way, that was fine with me—it was becoming clearer to me that maintenance of my illness was going to be a long- term matter, and I would be ill-suited as a pastor. So I was footloose and unemployed and fell back upon my family to support and house me. A considerable strain for my parents and sister! I was put on John Devlin, untitled, March 1988, 21.6 x 28 cm, multimedia on paper. Image courtesy of Galerie Christian B erst lithium for a while, then had a manic episode in August 1982 that led me to another stay in the Nova Scotia Hospital. While there I 1982—it was then that my BC ended and my AD began. was put on another anti-manic drug Tegretol and in less than a week EF: The “pile of drawings” that you mention, were these the I was in my right mind. After that I never looked back. beginnings of your three decades-long nova cantabrigiensis project? I don’t want to give the wrong impression here, but it was JD: Yes. I began in 1984 not knowing where I was going. Only (and remains to this day) my very unscientific hypothesis that gradually did my ideas firm up and I saw I was creating a fictive that drug (Tegretol) working on my particular brain, was what world I could inhabit. I do in fact vicariously inhabit that world—I was responsible for an outpouring of artistic content—literary and draw myself (and a friend’s dog) into many sketches. visual. It was a pleasant side-effect. Up until that time everything EF: Can you tell me more about the origins of nova cantabrigiensis? I did (even when well) was tentative and amateurish. After I began JD: The origins of the work—when I first had the idea of a the Tegretol, the art poured out of me. Being an artist is, for me, university in the middle of the muddy Minas Basin—is, like most largely—but not entirely—a chemical thing, I think. I still take origins, rather murky. Easier to answer is the origin of the term Tegretol, and must for the rest of my life. ‘nova cantabrigiensis’: it first appeared as a throw-away expression I did not plan to become an artist. It just sort of happened. One in an exhibition proposal I sent to Acadia University Art Gallery drawing led to another, one idea led to another and by 1988 I had a on October 2, 2010. pile of drawings big enough to show Cliff Eyland, who at that time The first ‘New Cambridge’ was Harvard College: founded by headed the resource centre at TUNS Architecture. Cliff discovered the Cambridge man John Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts. me and exhibited me for the first time, at TUNS, in the fall of 1988. Harvard University I see as a forerunner of my nova cantabrigiensis. But I think in retrospect that I became an artist in August Universities were invented at the end of the mediaeval era in Italy
26 Visual Arts News S u m m e r 2 0 1 4 John Devlin, Organ Chapel for Boot Island, King's Co., NS, March 1988, 21.6 x 28 cm, multimedia on paper. Image courtesy of Henry B oxer Gallery out of the monastic tradition. They were repositories of the new of the culture, where the hubris and arrogance of the ethos of old humanistic learning that was to become the Renaissance. The Oxbridge would be absent, and where the destructive pressures University of Paris was the first founded outside Italy. Wandering of excessive study and exams would also be absent. I had suffered scholars moved from Paris and started Oxford. Then disgruntled because of the pressures to perform in Old Cambridge and I wanted students left Oxford to found Cambridge in the Fen country. John none of it. I also wanted a Cambridge in Canada which could be a Harvard, upon the conclusion of his studies at Emmanuel College, retirement colony, where there was no pressure to leave after three Cambridge in 1637, left England for America. I wanted to continue or four years and one could live permanently. I had studied at the the migration of this university ideal from Italy to France to only modern Roman Catholic college in Oxbridge (St Edmund’s) England to USA to Canada. Bishop Charles Inglis fled the colonies and I liked the monastic ethos of the place as a place to dwell in, and during the American Revolution to settle in Nova Scotia. In 1788 not simply to pass through. he founded King’s College in Windsor, N.S.—a stone’s throw away The drawings that compose the work nova cantabrigiensis led from the Minas Basin and another forerunner. out of these contexts and ruminations. My feeling was that the old Cambridge University in East EF: Did this act of creating an imaginary world allow you to escape Anglia had lost its existential isolation in the Fens. Present-day from the difficulties of living with mental illness? Cambridge is strangled by traffic and surrounded by science parks. JD: Very much so. This world was the scenography for a Jamesian Building a near-replica in the wilds of Hants County where students opera based on The Golden Bowl which I was reading over and over could study or retire—far from the excitement of the larger centre again at the same time I sketched. It’s pretty over the top! of Halifax—echoed the old Cambridge where the foundation was EF: I am curious to know how you feel about being an artist who is far from the metropolis of London. identified, and also exhibits, within the category of Art Brut? I also wanted a Cambridge University in Canada which was JD: I like it! My only hesitations are that my art sometimes is too a reformed institution: where alcohol did not form so large a part genteel. The Art is not Brut enough. But all in all I like the quirkiness
S u m m e r 2014 Visual Arts News 27 John Devlin, monke y s, July 8,1995, 21.6 x 28 cm, multimedia on paper. Image courtesy of Galerie Christian B erst
28 Visual Arts News S u m m e r 2 0 1 4 Portrait of John Devlin, 2014. Photo: Ken Kam that goes with being in the category. What I was drawing in 1984- store on Hollis Street in Halifax. This changes the entire aesthetic 88 was much more forceful and driven than what I do today. Even of the drawings. violent. But in 1988 nobody very much was paying attention to The ‘Apologia’ derived from mainly imagined charges that my what I was drawing (with the exception of Cliff Eyland). It was not new work lacked the inspiration of the older. I just wanted to explain until 2012 when Henry Boxer expressed interest in representing me that my style was different, but that I was in fact consistent, that my that people (I guess) started noticing what I was doing. But I am subject matter has remained the same. The obsession with numbers still drawing, and probably it will take another 26 years for what and the chapel at King’s has not changed over 26 years, changes in I do now to ripen (or rot). I am more ‘minimalist’ these days; still that time to my medication notwithstanding. obsessed with the front court of King’s Cambridge (as I was in 1988) I did not really feel I let my ‘appreciators’ down. I was suddenly but drawing it in a different way—sparer, leaner, more ‘white box’. I alive to the psychological reality of being an ‘artist’ and what it felt am giving my dots and dashes room to breath on the white surface like to inhabit that skin. I didn’t like it. Drawings that were exhibited of the paper. A lot of Art Brut nowadays is congested, dense. What in North Carolina and Paris in 2013 and 2014 were—to me—all old I do now, because it is not so congested and dense, makes me think hat. People ‘get’ those drawings (I guess) but I have moved on and of parting company with the category of Art Brut. But I am not a changed, and my ego was at first hurt that people didn't ‘get’ the curator, gallerist or art theorist. My business is to make images and new stuff. I now see that that is a good thing. It puts me back in the let the chips fall where they may. existential zone of isolation I was in when I lived in Walton. EF: I’d like to know more about the dots and dashes, and also, why EF: In a previous conversation of ours, you talked about how your you recently felt compelled to write an “Apologia for an art of dots recent success as an artist has left you feeling corrupted. What did and dashes?” Do you feel like you have let your appreciators down you mean exactly? by making work that is so much more minimalist? JD: The attention of the Paris show in 2013 flattered my vanity, JD: As I leave my 50s and enter my 60s I have less artistic and of course, but temporarily killed the muse. Now I have regained physical stamina, so by necessity am forced to adopt a more my balance and feel less an artist or Outsider artist than this economical style. The problem remains the same: how to represent regular dude who does doodles for art therapy. That’s all. As long King’s chapel on a piece of 8.5 x 11 inch paper. I used to be naïvely as I can keep ahead of the curve and maintain a time lag, I will representational; now I use a code or shorthand of dots and dashes. stay in isolation, and hence able to doodle uncompromised and My instruments have changed as well. From my early to mid 30s I uncorrupted. n used whatever was at hand in my parents’ Walton cottage: Crayola crayons, Laurentian colour pencils, cheap markers and ball point Eryn Foster is an artist based in Halifax Nova Scotia. Read more of pens. Now 59, I think more self-consciously about posterity and her interviews with Atlantic Canadian artists, Current Conditions & use ‘archival’ Japanese Pigma Micron colour ink pens and black Forecasts, at visualartsnews.ca German Faber-Castell pens purchased at the NSCAD art supply
S u m m e r 2014 Visual Arts News 29 This summer visit the Owens Art Gallery
On view 26 June to 21 September Oh, Canada A landmark exhibition of more than 100 works by over 60 Canadian artists, organized by the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and curated by Denise Markonish. Sponsored by td Bank Group with funding from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Province of New Brunswick.
Open July and August Colville House The home of renowned Canadian artist Alex Colville, his wife Rhoda and their four children from 1948 to 1973.
Janet Werner Blondie/Joan Collection of the Owens Art Gallery, Purchased with funds from the Friends of the Owens Art Gallery and the Canada Council for the Arts Acquisitions Fund
Owens Art Gallery Mount Allison University Sackville, New Brunswick Canada e4l 1e1 www.mta.ca/owens
30 Visual Arts News S u m m e r 2 0 1 4 Natural Fake André Lapointe writes us into the landscape
MIKE LANDRY
n his knees, André Lapointe removes sand by the handful, Know Your Own Artists series (Jan 23 – April 27, 2014). Oreaching under the pile of rocks he’s assembled on a spit This collection of Lapointe’s nature art, constructed stretching from Shediac Island into the Northumberland Strait. in various Maritime locales, is obviously derivative of the last He’s trying to retain the environment’s delicate, subtle, “refined” 40 years of environmental art. The uncredited replication of composition that caught his attention. But he can’t achieve that Andy Goldsworthy’s snowballs in four of the works is particularly balance. His two sculptures—stacked layers of shale, mimicking the unabashed. So, why are Lapointe’s efforts worth discussing? shape and growth rings of the many bivalves on the beach—have Let’s return to Shediac Island. Lapointe approaches the project “spoiled it all.” believing the landscape is inherently harmonious, and it’s possible “My artwork is about picking one item out of this landscape to commune with this space. Call this romantic notion Naturalism and magnifying it, transforming it, to make it different, to reveal 101, something very much hardwired into environmental art. In it, to create sculpture that seems to be an entity or an entire Art Nature Dialogues, editor John K. Grande presents this standard world itself,” says Lapointe while reviewing the documentation ecological moralizing: “Nature is the art of which we are a part … of the finished project on Shediac Island in the documentary we can gather a holistic sense of purpose in our lives that would Playing Fields. “But I’ve failed.” otherwise be relegated to distraction, delusion, and distempered Lapointe’s failure on Shediac Island offers an entry point—as life.” “the way we perceive a problem can be itself part of a problem”—to It’s this premise that’s the real problem with Lapointe’s the celebrated New Brunswick sculptor’s 15-year fascination with bothersome bivalves. If we are so “a part,” how can something nature art. A retrospective of this work, along with Playing Fields, created in nature, with nature, be unnatural? The hokum answer and two new sculpture installations, was presented in the exhibition would be that the endeavour lacked the mystic, je ne sais quoi of André Lapointe: Maritma as a part of the New Brunswick Museum’s nature. But is this element really the key to trigger recognition in
André Lapointe, Oursin, Gaspésie, Quebec, 2004.
S u m m e r 2014 Visual Arts News 31 Andre Lapointe, Fleur de glace, Campbellton, NB, 2005. a viewer? This exploration of recognition, more so than anything Goldsworthy says documentation is his way of understanding the ethical or ecological, is what drives Maritma. work. With documentation, recognition is achieved due to the basic The two sculptural works, Fantômes (2013) and Archipel de sel aesthetics of composition, particularly Lapointe’s decision to use (2013), emphasize this interest in recognition. From afar, Fantômes, cloyingly attractive, large aluminum prints. arranged on a table top, looks industrial, architectural, fantastic, Yet, we credit any connection to the power of nature itself, but it’s a series of plaster pieces cast from plastic food container some kind of truth to which nature and humanity share. We want waste. Archipel de sel, a collection of stones in a pool on the floor, to say this recognition exposes the roots with nature, that Lapointe’s reveals itself as salt rocks as the sculpted chunks disintegrate into use of local materials says something true about our relationship the water and the salt reconstitutes itself as crystals. In both pieces to the natural world in the Maritimes. But this is disavowal. recognition is eventually possible. We delight in that moment. But This work, its documentation and carefully staged scenes, reveals it’s plaster, not plastic; rock, not salt. Why are we so quick, and so nature, that which is proudly Canadian, as a myth. Investment in satisfied, by recognition even when it is misguided? this myth masks our true relationship to nature, one in which we’re The show’s catalogue says Lapointe’s work speaks to “the always implicated. The oil sands are as much “our true north strong ongoing relationship between man and nature.” It’s a vague and free” as beavers and maple trees; it’s the myth that delineates statement that could lead to ecological moralization, but maybe the three. this “ongoing relationship” is recognition, a word connoting both At its best, Lapointe’s Maritima exposes the myth of nature. the action of recognizing and being recognized. More than the whimsical creations with sand, rock, snow, ice, No matter how surreal the environments, Lapointe’s work leaf and stream, it’s Roache noire that resonates. For the wayward remains intelligible. Watching viewers interact with the large- hiker, Roche noir is a spectacular discovery, but it’s a ruse. What is format photographs, they wore the delight of recognition on their spectacular is the ability to engender this reaction. Such a power smiling faces. Except for one piece—Roach noire (Burgeo, NL) 2008. forces us to consider and acknowledge the role we have in regards to The installation featured two photographs of a black boulder in ecology, environment and the world. a remote, barren landscape and a map indicating the rock’s location. When Lapointe exhibited some of this work in 2008, he wrote The two photographs were almost identical, but not quite. A trio of “Esthétique humaine ou naturelle ? Le dialogue est ouvert.” And women struggled to interpret the work, entering into a frustrating it’s a dialogue in which contemporary art in the region should be game of spot the difference. engaged. Would that Lapointe keep this question more at the fore, They couldn’t see that Lapointe had polished the boulder, the better he could build upon Roche noir. n interested in the notion that he could infuse meaning through his interaction. Such meaning is possible not in the before-after Mike Landry lives in Saint John, New Brunswick, where he is Arts contrast, but in the striking characteristics after intervention. The & Culture Editor of the Telegraph-Journal. He may be reached at contrast is just confounding. [email protected]. This reveals the crucial role of documentation—even
32 Visual Arts News S u m m e r 2 0 1 4 Creative dislocation Somewheres’ uneasy impermanence
leonard p aul macp her s on
ay bales stand sentinel, silently guarding the premises, giving With Scott Saunders’ Some Assembly Required, the idea of Hitch to each and anyone who approaches. Ellipsis at the gate an IED in this relatively idyllic setting unsettles. He presents as of an uncompromising structure. The Wallace stone walls mount still lifes, rather preciously, the makings of three home-made a disaffected gaze, while the bales hold ground, shoulders up and bombs. The itemization nears innocence, and you have to question, squinty eyed. Against the wind, but without complaint. This is uncomfortably, whether they would actually work. Research that Becka Viau’s Monument. The seasonally affected piece considers will no doubt land him on some soon-to-be-leaked list. “the living cultural and social qualities of the hay bale in contrast to A junk drawer has been rifled through and inventoried on the dormant, or suspended qualities of the Confederation Centre.” a mini-putt carpet in Aaron Weldon’s Currency. There are black It’s a quiet introduction to themes that will unravel inside a building vortexes of all shapes, where the thing you were hoping to find has first designed to respond, on a most unsentimental level, to human found another dimension. Tactile and vague, the arbitrary use or movement and congregation. design of each is put on a most strange altar of green, telling it like As disparate as the approaches are, there is an undeniable it isn’t. Weldon challenges us to project purpose and clarity onto vocabulary that informs this show. On his site visits, curator Pan items that are quite arbitrary and alien away from whatever over- Wendt noted the deft and subtle handling of “themes that came up packaging they may have come with. again and again—vernacular tradition, failure of communication After frustrating yourself with that clusterfrig, you’re hit or translation, place as myth, tourism and nomadism.” A ways by the sharp smell of defeat that is Mathieu Leger’s On A Silver away from larger centers, Wendt also found an anxiety of place that Platter. Tarnished silver plates are mounted as mock pithy awards. permeates the region. The title winks at this. The engraving, off-centered and unceremonious, slumps itself In Brutalist Song, Will Robinson isolates the blueprints for into the middle. With cheeky self-awareness, the words negate any the Confederation Gallery and Theatre. The trace, staff, and decorative flourish the dinnerware once held, and spite its history. composition are presented in print, cold and professional, belying Leger’s second work in the show, Methodologies for Tourists, perhaps the playfulness of the experiment. Eyes closed and earphones on, more chin-up, is an evolving document of the artist as he stretches the building rises, resolute and harsh. Distortion is the softening his legs. grace, adding life and atmosphere to the stark plans. The glory of old master painting is mocked in large-scale by
B ecka Viau, installation view of Monument, exhibited in S omewheres, Confederation Centre of the Arts, PEI, February 15-May 18, 2014. Image courtesy of the artist
S u m m e r 2014 Visual Arts News 33 Amanda Dawn Christie, installation view of Spectres of Shortwave, exhibited in S omewheres, Confederation Centre of the Arts, PEI, February 15-May 18, 2014. Image courtesy of the artist
Remi Belliveau’s Allegory of the Triumph of the Acadian Pastoral— They are more mindless doodle than drafterly. They taunt you with another artist in the show wryly repurposing defeatism as a tool futility and an unwillingness to vary. against unchecked grandeur. A proud ram, cobbled together in D’Arcy Wilson dives into unknown, yet finds more uncertainty, serigraph, is lord of his scrubby landscape. All the historical in her Night Watch series of 3 archival inkjet prints. In the woods, depression and comedy, and the kind of crummy, scant parcels that at twilight, when your eyes play with you most, she captures what Acadians seemed to be relegated, in gold frame kitsch. might or mightn’t be there. This challenge of communing with Personal moments punctuate wider commentary, as with nature is further tested in the video Protect Your Love. Walkie talkies Alisa Arsenault’s The Dumps: Always and For Never, which covers perch in a stand of trees, occasionally piercing the muffled stillness a cardboard dollhouse in dust bunnies of reality. Wallpaper, with a bleep and a hello and no answer. wainscoting and photos collect a story that, even from the source, And so, the getaway turns you inward. A delightfully dry is never quite fully told. We might be protecting something or take on shared nostalgia, Kate Walchuk’s Rainbow Haven, the time have willed details out of our brain—Tales of a people, having you lost your glasses in the Atlantic ocean allows you to experience been jostled and lugged around for centuries, only recently given a the little moments of mundanity and disappointment that occur chance to rest in writing. between vacation photos, and make them keepsakes. Further Impermanence tugs at all the works, and is perhaps most up the weathered boardwalk, Cooper bold lettering wishes pun- present in Eleanor King’s huge wall painting, Rocky Point. An filled platitude upon the existential t-shirt diary entries of sophia homage to Garry Neill Kennedy, one might think of the cover bartholomew’s the one that i think i am, the one i want others to of an old Canadian reader workbook, with many lessons inside. think i am, the one the photographer makes use of to exhibit his art. The shore, dog-eared, creased and notated by water. Slowly, it Introspection rejects the fold. takes back the short-sighted story of human imposed order. King Now the heaviest piece floats in a dim back corner. Amanda explores “the romantic notions of the pastoral clashing with Dawn Christie’s Spectres of Shortwaves: Radio Towers Like Wind unsustainable practices of cultivation (or extraction) for our Chimes rings with unease. Something so imposing is made exclusive benefit,” in a process that parallels the subject, “working unnervingly delicate by Glooscap’s upcycle project. There’s a fog hard on something monumental that will disappear.” over what messages came through the Tantamar marsh and never Future can’t be articulated and, so, can’t be sought in Sandi left, where these decommissioned shortwave radio towers once Hartling’s Else: the idea of myself as created from future time stood. unknown and past time largely remembered inaccurately through On the margins, quantum-cultural and insulated by distance, a bad joke. In pristine script on the wall, “else” is lit, exalted, and we can pick up the receiver to a richly static-filled party line. n untouchable. At your hands, just the perforated leaves of a hastily ripped notebook, a horizon marked by obsessively repetitive lines. leonard paul macpherson lives and writes in Charlottetown, PE.
34 Visual Arts News S u m m e r 2 0 1 4 J U N E 2 6 - S E P T E M B E R 21, 2 0 14 a i d e m d e x i m , 9 0 0 2 , o n i a t g n e s i e R t i n i f I n o f t g h i n K , Y R D N A L
E N A I D
Check out this acclaimed exhibition of work by 60 contemporary Canadian artists presented in a
collaborative, multi-venue format at Galerie d’art Louise-et-Reuben-Cohen, Université de
Moncton, Galerie Sans Nom, Moncton, Owens Art Gallery, Mount Allison University, Sackville,
and Confederation Centre Art Gallery, Charlottetown. www.ohcanadaeast.com
Oh, Canada is organized by MASS MoCA. The exhibition is curated by Denise Markonish and made possible by the generous support of TD Bank and the Canada Council for the Arts.
SPONSORED BY
O w e n s A r t G A l l e r y
S u m m e r 2014 Visual Arts News 35 REVIEW
Shifting boundaries Melanie Colosimo’s Midpoint
elanie Colosimo’s drawing process alternates between Millustrative and poetic. Her lines are deliberate in their description of architecture. As a whole, her work is clearly driven by an attraction to both material and process. Varying thicknesses of pencils determine layers that create depth. Cut-outs in paper confuse that depth, flattening the work even as they create shadows. Her hand describes an object until that observation breaks open into a mere remembrance. Colosimo’s Midpoint, a body of work she exhibited at Halifax's Parentheses Gallery & Art Projects in January, is made up of four components. Scaffolding-like drawings were exhibited as Structure, at AKA Gallery in Saskatoon in the fall of 2013. She created the rest—Grids, Chain Link Fence and MTN (drawing and sculpture)—during a residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts this winter. Over coffee, Colosimo described a transitional state both artistic and psychological as she and her drawings ricocheted from a peninsula to a flat plain to a mountain valley. The prairies, like Nova Scotia, felt expansive—a horizon line similar to that of the ocean giving its inhabitants a shared understanding of the vast and minute. By comparison, there was no horizon to be found in Banff. She describes feeling locked in. The landscape likely echoed any studio concerns as she faced the lull that naturally follows an exhibition. Instead of having time to reflect, she found herself in a studio, amongst a group of colleagues, in the mountains. Melanie Colosimo, Grid I, 2013. Graphite on paper & cut out Landscape—both natural and built—informs the people who 97cm x 102cm. Photo: Mary Ellen Oxby live amidst it and the community that is built within it. Like much Colosimo worked on a roll of paper twenty-five feet long, of the West, Banff was planned around the CP railway. Little allowing the drawing to roll up behind and ahead of her. The process pockets of isolated communities were born around stops on the line. before her had no past, no future. Building only on the lines drawn The railway was, in essence, a line drawn to create structure in an just before, she refused to study what she’d already drawn. Like an otherwise open landscape. exquisite corpse, her drawing was done more from imagination The meaning that arises from Colosimo’s work is more than than reality. Unlike the Surrealists—for whom the more dreamlike simply descriptive; it is a study of resilience. At once reinforced the exercise, the more successful—Colosimo’s exquisite corpse and broken, a community’s buildings are braced by scaffolding and was born of a desire to draw a real object. Drawn primarily from scotch tape. Grids buttress recognizable buildings—farm, church, memory, her result recreates the idea of a chain link fence. factory, bowling leagues—while others describe only their own We discuss drawing’s immediacy and how this project was structure. MTN sits atop a persistent mass of graphite. Chain Link designed to teach her to let go of elegance and rigid planning. She Fence, built to keep divisions divided, stretches, condenses and describes her return to such concerns as “hiccups,” wondering eventually breaks wide open. occasionally, “will it be good when I’m done?” The poetics arrive A nuanced metaphor, this latter drawing begins with the simple mostly when she falters. I can observe her marks as her hand pattern of a chain-link fence. Walking the length of the drawing, desperately seeks to mend the fence as it parts. At the end of the roll, I read Colosimo’s studio concentration; she focuses on where the she ceases trying to connect it, allowing the chain to break away, chain connects and where it opens, where the links close again. and leaving a tear in the drawing. n I witness the representation give way to drawing as it heads towards a pattern. This system struggles to stay together with the human Katie Belcher is an artist, curator and the Director of Eyelevel Gallery, hand’s errors. in Halifax.
36 Visual Arts News S u m m e r 2 0 1 4 INTERVIEW
Conflict Zone nichola feldman-kiss’ embedded art
n 2010, nichola feldman-kiss spent six weeks in specialized nfk: What I proposed was something that was a storytelling piece, Itraining, before getting deployed to Sudan to spend a month I thought I would do video testimonial-type work. I was very “embedded” as an artist in the Canadian Forces Artist Program interested in protection in all of its understandings—What does (CFAP). The work that she created during that time was exhibited it mean to protect another? What does it mean to protect yourself as part of the Terms of Engagement exhibition at Halifax’s Mount while you protect another? I was very interested in trauma and the Saint Vincent University Gallery (January 18-March 9, 2014). While trauma stories that we hear coming back from various war sites. in town for the opening, feldman-kiss sat down with Veronica I was very curious to know what people who were traumatized— Simmonds to talk about her experience and the work she created people, I mean soldiers mostly—what they were seeing, what they from it. were experiencing, what they were feeling that was traumatizing Veronica Simmonds: How did you get involved with the CFAP them sometimes permanently. program? I was wondering what it would be like to live in a place where nichola feldman-kiss: I was driving in the car listening to the radio you required protection, how those people protect themselves, and one day—it must have been 2009—and CBC was interviewing a how they engage with the people who are charged with protecting painter who had travelled with the Canadian Forces Artist Program them. So there were a lot of questions ... I very soon came to the to Afghanistan. I remember she felt that the artist program was not realization that I could not imagine what was going on in conflict fully comprehensive because they didn’t have enough commitment places, and how people lived, and how the collective trauma of to the actual artwork. They didn’t organize an exhibition for you society affected people on an individual level. and they didn’t organize collections for the artworks that were VS: In looking at the history of war art, it’s interesting to note how produced. She described this as a failing of the program, and it it differs from war correspondence. How do you see your work as struck me that that would be the very reason why an artist like me different from photojournalism? could contribute. Because I felt like if I travelled with the military nfk: I had to struggle with that question ... You get an opportunity I would want to make sure that they had nothing to do with the like this and the first thing you do is go get the good camera—you artwork that I produced. know, “I’m going to have the experience of a lifetime, I need to make VS: What did you propose to work on while you were embedded? sure it’s well documented.” So there was a strong impulse towards
nichola feldman-kiss, after Africa\ Oh! How I hate to get up in the morning, 2011-2012. 63:27 min video (part of multi-channel HD video/audio projection). Video still courtesy of the artist
S u m m e r 2014 Visual Arts News 37 nichola feldman-kiss, until the story of the hunt is told by the lion/ facing horror and the possibility of shame (detail), 2011-2013. Digital photographs, sound, electro-luminescent back-lit media, durantrans, wood, electronics. Photo: Steve Farmer photojournalism. I realize now there were a lot of photos that I took viewers that atrocity photography has and the various theoretical that I found very fascinating, but at the end of the day they were positions of responsibility—to know, whether or not we allow pretty banal if you considered them in a military context. ourselves to be disturbed or whether or not it is unfair to the content By the time I finished the six week pre-deployment training, to shock the viewer with the content. I had already decided that my job over there was something I decided that this work needed to be shown, that this event completely different. The photography’s been taken ... so I would needed to be known. I really wanted to give people the equipment have to bring something different than that photojournalistic to imagine, and so between the death toll statistic, the nature impulse to the work. sounds and the images that I’ve gathered, the dryness of the VS: How do you want people to engage with work you have in this ground, the deep crevices of the desert—I wanted people to have exhibit? an understanding of how hot it is and how the desert works on the nfk: In until the story of the hunt is told by the lion/ facing horror body, and how horrible the aftermath of a contemporary battle can and the possibility of shame, I struggled a lot with the use of be. I really wanted to give people the tools to imagine how easy it is these photos [the piece contains photos depicting the massacre to succumb, to abandon one’s civility. n at Kaldak in South Sudan]. I had to do a lot of research and confidence building about using them, and I read a lot about Veronica Simmonds is an independent writer and radio producer atrocity photography and photographing the dead and the effect on based in Halifax.
38 Visual Arts News S u m m e r 2 0 1 4 StFX Art Gallery
DETAIL: “Thelxiope”,” 23” x 96”, Acylic on panel, by Jaye Oulette April/May Rare Reflections by Hilary Rice June/July Selections from the StFX University Permanent Collection July/Sept Capture 2014: Nova Scotian Realism September Fine Arts Faculty Show October Water, Wood and Wind by Jaye Ouellette
Spring & Summer 2014: Mon to Fri, noon to 5pm (closed holidays & weekends) Winter 2014-15 hours: Tue to Fri 12-6pm • Sat & Sun 1-4pm (closed Mon & holidays) StFX University • 1st floor Bloomfield • 902-867-2303 • [email protected] • www.stfx.ca
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THIS ANNE PLACE: ANNE OF GREEN GABLES AS IDEA, BOOK, AND MUSICAL MAY 17-SEPTEMBER 7 A 50th anniversary exhibition that celebrates the generative genius of L.M. Montgomery, her novel, and the golden 50th season of the Confederation Centre’s beloved Anne of Green Gables–The Musical™. GUEST CURATED BY DR. ELIZABETH R. EPPERLY Gracie Finley as Anne, 1984 PHOTO: Gord Johnston
FIVE DECADES: A CANADIAN ART COLLECTION MAY 24–JANUARY 4 An overview of the Collection featuring significant works of art by some of Canada’s finest contemporary, modern, and historic artists, including selections from our extensive holdings on Robert Harris (1849-1919). Acquired since the Art Gallery opened in 1964, these works are touchstones of our history and culture. CO-CURATED BY KEVIN RICE AND PAN WENDT
MICAH LEXIER, Book Sculptures: Three Generations (Female), 1993, photographs, cardboard, wood, paper, 175.2 x 182.8 x 30.4 cm. Collection of the Confederation Centre Art Gallery, CAG 93.7.
SUMMER HOURS: DAILY, 9 am-5 pm/JULY-AUGUST: Mon-Sat, 9 am-8 pm, Sunday, 9 am-5 pm 145 Richmond Street, Charlottetown, P.E.I. www.confederationcentre.com/artgallery
S u m m e r 2014 Visual Arts News 39 ATLANTIC NOTEBOOK
EVERYDAY racism Tamara Huxtable on coming clean Megan Leslie Community Art Gallery, Halifax
rtists have endlessly exploited the handkerchief for its symbolism cloth: the headaches, the long hours. Aand physical entanglement in our messy human lives. The Huxtable explained how this work is a way for her to allow hankie is loaded with emotive power, indexical trace and nostalgia others to get something off their chest, to self-identify and recognize for a pre-disposable culture, which make it an all too simple means their own racism as a first step. We discussed how simply admitting of feigning depth within a body of work. these things doesn’t absolve you of guilt. She explains that sharing And yet, Tamara Huxtable’s exhibition, Come Clean tore a these confessions isn’t about normalizing racist behavior, but about hole through my gut. I wanted to dislike art made of hankies. From making a space where it’s okay to talk about racism. That if we afar, it looked kitsch, reminded me of the folksy cross-stitch that become comfortable talking about it, we create an environment hangs above the door in my grandma’s kitchen. But the similarity where it's easier for those who are marginalized to speak about ends there. One hankie reads, “I didn’t want to admit that I liked things without feeling like they’re just too sensitive. hip hop because I thought it made me seem too black.” Some of We talked about the process of becoming a better person, the meticulously embroidered confessions were all too familiar: and how that begins with acknowledging our faults—not simply reminded me of friends, myself, of cheap laughs at the expense accepting them as part of who we are, but recognizing, talking of others, and of those awful but somehow socially justifiable about it and working on it every day. behaviours that we really have no excuse for but still go unnoticed. This exhibition is part of an ongoing body of work. Most of Everyday racism. the confessions come from Huxtable’s friends, and some of them I took a step back from the wall on which the work hung, not are her own. You are invited to contribute your own confession: sure how to proceed. [email protected]. n Later, I met with Huxtable. We had coffee and talked about the work. We talked about racism. We talked about the metaphors Daniel Higham grew up on the South Shore of Nova Scotia, and present in the work, and about how the handkerchief refers to completed a BFA at NSCAD University in 2011. He has been involved moments of self-reflection. We talked about the time she spends with artist-run centres in various capacities, and currently works in a with a magnifying glass tediously stitching these confessions into butcher shop.
Installation details of Tamara Huxtable’s exhibition Come Clean, Megan Leslie Community Art Gallery, Halifax, NS, Jan. 24-March 31, 2014. Photos: Harleen Randhawa
40 Visual Arts News S u m m e r 2 0 1 4 - -
S u m m e r 2014 Visual Arts News 41 MAY 10 – SEPTEMBER 7 PAM HALL: HOUSEWORK(S) Guest curated by Dr. Melinda Pinfold
Pam Hall’s creative and social engagement with community is a long-standing and significant part of her artistic practice. She invites members of the public to be creative collaborators – among these, a medical school, a fish processing plant and a small rural parish hall. The house – with all of its physical, emotional, cultural, social and gendered connotations – is the broad theme of this exhibition. The works, both displayed and performed, represent the union of Hall’s solitary and collaborative practices.
Pam Hall, from 32 Days Towards a House of Prayer, 2007. Linen, permanent markers, wood, twine, 11” x 11” x 16”
to bring people and art together This is our gallery, a showcase for our soul, with works by some of the most innovative artists we know… from home and around the world.
www.therooms.ca | 709.757.8000 | 9 Bonaventure Ave. | St. John’s, NL 42 Visual Arts News S u m m e r 2 0 1 4