Past Exhibitions: 2008

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11 January to 2 March 2008

Marlene MacCallum
The Architectural Uncanny

Opening Reception Thursday 10 January at 8 pm
Remarks by Mark Bovey, Assistant Professor of Printmaking, NSCAD University

Organized and circulated by the Sir Wilfred Grenfell College Art Gallery, Corner Brook, Newfoundland

This exhibition consists of three series of photogravure prints, eight book works and one photographic body of work. Underlying all of the projects is MacCallum’s interest in the uncanny potential of domestic spaces. Her prints and photographs depict architectural subject matter as visual theatre where objects and interior/exterior spaces function as props and stages that generate a sense of contradiction and paradox. By using letterpress text with her photogravure images, MacCallum further explores how text and image communicate in parallel modes. Her books are developed as both structural objects and conceptual space; by subverting traditional conventions of bookbinding and book construction MacCallum further engages the work’s content by challenging the viewer’s physical and temporal experience of ‘reading’ a book. This exhibition is curated by Gail Tuttle and supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.

and

David Morrish
Nature Morte
Works from the Permanent Collection

David Morrish has long been interested in Western culture’s representation of animals and the meaning that is constructed through the process. His narratives and photogravure print images of stuffed creatures that are seriously compromised by inept taxidermists, as well as haunting images of small, dead and dehydrated animals, invite us to look deeper into our relationship with living things. With a dark, gentle sense of humour he holds up a mirror to our cultural relationship with the natural world, one where death is always the corollary of life. This world view is balanced by Morrish’s images of trees tenaciously surviving in difficult conditions. His additional photogravures of scrubbed limestone barrens in Newfoundland and Ireland place human activity on the horizon of geological time where we are but specks of fleeting life in the ever-enduring natural world.
Curated by Peter Dykhuis, the work in this exhibition is selected from recent purchases as well as work generously donated by Morrish to the Permanent Collection.

Special Tour of Marlene MacCallum: The Architectural Uncanny and David Morrish: Nature Morte on Saturday 12 January at noon. The artists will be present to discuss their work, studio interests and conceptual motivations.

Marlene MacCallum
Do Not Enter, 1998
mixed media book work
expanded size: 18 x 23 x 81 cms
photo: David Morrish

David Morrish
Castor, 1998
photogravure, intaglio, letterpress and
23k gold leaf on paper, edition of 6
35.0 x 17.1 (image) 56.1 x 36.6 (paper) cms
from Bestiarum Excerptum
image courtesy of the artist

14 March to 27 April

Defiant Beauty
William Hind in the Labrador Peninsula

Opening Reception Thursday 13 March at 8 pm

An exhibition organized and toured by The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery with support from the Museums Assistance Program, Department of Canadian Heritage

In the summer of 1861, Canadian artist William Hind (1833-1889) accompanied his brother Henry on his first exploration of the interior of the Labrador Peninsula, a vast, defiant landscape of breathtaking beauty. Few Europeans had traveled into this inaccessible and near mythical land which, after more than ten thousand years, still remains the familiar home of many First Nation’s peoples. Hind’s expedition left Sept-Isles and journeyed up the Moisie River, today in Quebec, to assess its natural resources and its Aboriginal peoples, then along the North Shore to Anticosti Island, to evaluate the state of Canadian fisheries as they related to the Atlantic colonies of Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick. Curated by Gilbert Gignac and framed by his extensive new research, this exhibition presents for the first time over 150 of William Hind’s compelling ‘Labrador’ sketches, watercolours and paintings borrowed from 13 major Canadian galleries/institutions and 6 private collectors.

This exhibition and the film series Metropolis: The City In the Cinema represent the Dalhousie Art Gallery’s contribution to Creative Diversity: Artistic Perspectives on Immigration to Canada that will be held in conjunction with the 10th National Metropolis Conference taking place 3 – 6 April in Halifax http://www.metropolis2008.net.

and

Ursula Johnson
The Urban Aboriginal Guide to Halifax, NS

Curated by Peter Dykhuis

When looking through the catalogue for Defiant Beauty: William Hind in the Labrador Peninsula, Ursula Johnson, a Mi'kmaq artist from Eskasoni in Cape Breton, was fascinated with the depictions of the Innu guides on the Hind expedition. She empathized with them as path-finding guides who helped the Europeans to ‘discover’ the Innu’s ancestral land for their own colonizing purposes. Aware of what transpired for Aboriginal peoples after the Europeans arrived, Johnson none-the-less recognized the psychological circumstances facing the Hind expedition: they were strangers in a strange land, relying on the good will and skill sets of their Innu compatriots.

Johnson vividly recalls her first few days in Halifax after moving to the city from her rural home in Cape Breton. Adjusting to urban life was truly akin to moving to a new country and learning alternative modes of survival and communication. Johnson’s interests in her Mi’kmaw heritage, urban migration, and the social dynamics between ethnicities have led her to take on the role of a pathfinder for other Aboriginal peoples like herself who have ventured to a strange new territory, much like the Hind brothers did in 1861. Guiding the ever-growing population of urban Aboriginal migrants and answering their questions became her priority. Where could they sleep over night? Where could they find fresh food? Where are the spiritual places to rest and reflect?

Fully sensitive of her recent transition to Euro-centric urban life, Johnson has produced a path-finding map of Halifax targeted for future First Nations visitors. The large wall map (5 feet by 9 feet), installed in the gallery space, will be accompanied by a limited edition book titled ‘The Urban Aboriginal Guide to Halifax, NS’. Visitors can view or purchase the book to comprehend the perspective of the city from Johnson’s culturally specialized point of view. Johnson’s pathfinding guide, though, is not merely a tourist convenience; it is fully intended to be a relevant resource for First Nations peoples who need highly specialized advice and tips for urban living.

William Hind
Head of the Grand Rapids, 1861
watercolour and graphite on paper
Dalhousie Art Gallery Collection

Ursula Johnson
map detail, 2008
image courtesy of the artist

9 May to 29 June

Ghosts in the Landscape:
Vietnam Revisited
photographs by Craig J. Barber

Curated by Alison Devine Nordström

Organized and toured by George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film, Rochester, NY.


Even amid the chaos of war Craig Barber, then an 18-year old combat Marine, appreciated the beauty of Vietnam. 1n 1995, some thirty years later and now a professional fine art photographer, Barber decided to return to Vietnam partly as a cathartic exercise for himself and partly to see whether time had healed a country and psyche once ravaged by war.

Over a four-year period Barber traversed many of his former military routes making images with an 8” x 10” pinhole camera. A superb platinum/palladium printer, Barber has created a series of diptych and triptych panorama images that capture the serene beauty of the country (and at times for him, its all-too memorable landscapes).

Still and slow as they are, Barber’s images suggest an imminent scream of fear or anger beneath their apparent tranquility. There is calm and resolution in these pictures, to be sure, but there is also both the residual horror and the acceptance of it that sometimes becomes wisdom.


and

Zhari-Panjwai:
Dispatches from Afghanistan 
New Work by Louie Palu

Curated by Peter Dykhuis

To complement Craig Barber’s work, award-winning Canadian photographer Louie Palu was invited by the Dalhousie Art Gallery to exhibit a suite of his photographic work produced in Afghanistan that profiles the activities of NATO-led Canadian military forces. Whereas Barber’s photographic project seeks redemption and reconciliation with a formative episode in American history, Palu’s images are a steely-eyed view of current Canadian engagements.

No longer standing between opposing factions in a peacekeeping capacity, armed Canadian soldiers are now participating in a military mission that includes patrolling Afghan villages, securing territory and conducting outreach to the local populations, but also engaging in battle skirmishes while training soldiers from the Afghan National Army (ANA) to fight the Taliban and insurgent forces. Within this context, Palu gathers subject matter from the midst of battle but also from beyond the frame of the gun sight. Indeed, he models his gaze after Frederick Varley, a Canadian war artist in the European battle theatre of World War I who later became a founding member of the Group of Seven.

Like Varley, Palu seeks to communicate the all-encompassing destructive effects of war on people -- both civilian and military – and their cultures and environments. As a backdrop, the Afghan landscape remains eternal -- aged architecture still stands in spite of decades of strife. In this milieu, animals mill about as part of banal daily life and a modest economy or, in some cases, the subject of sacrificial rites.

Although the debate about Canada’s combat role in Afghanistan rages on in political forums and media circulations, many photojournalistic images have short life spans in the public consciousness. Palu’s photography, however, transcends the mere gathering of documentary information. It is through the framing of charged subject matter, combined with a keen eye to formal, visual construction, that a psychological and emotional edge emerges in his work. Palu carefully selected this suite of work with the intent of searing images into viewers’ mind frames. These images are not intended for dismissal or dissipation by the turning of a page, the switching of a channel or the clicking of a mouse: these are the visual stories that must be told and remembered.

These exhibitions were organized in conjunction with the international symposium titled The Politics of Forgetting: Stories to Pass On that took place from the 22-24 May at the University of King's College and Dalhousie University.

Media Souvenir
Travel & Tourism in Contemporary Art Video

Dogs and cats. Silly pet tricks versus animal intelligence. Domesticated animals, stuffed birds and talking parrots contrasted with Buddhist states of being, biogenetic engineering and tales of animals living in houses. Popular culture, advertising, fairy tales and current events are rife with examples of the ways in which we construct intricate and often complex relationships with animals. Exalted Beings explores these psychological, spiritual and emotional bonds, and investigates the shifting power dynamics between animals and people.

The subject matter of this exhibition is not the representation of the animal, per se, but the relationship between the animal and the human in a postmodern context that acknowledges the dualities of nature and culture. In all of the artwork, the human being is either depicted or implied along side that of the animal being. And most of the animals are knowable as pets, domestic and familiar creatures, or as icons within religious systems such as Buddhism. Inevitably, each artwork reflects the value systems of the artists who are exploring animal and human relationships in the contested zones between nature and culture.

Curated by Peter Dykhuis, the exhibition features works in a variety of media by Barbara Berry, Tonia Di Risio, Michael Fernandes, David Harper, Kelly Mark, Susan McEachern, Jan Peacock, Corinna Schnitt, William Wegman, and Mitchell Wiebe, and a work from the Gallery’s permanent collection by Jon Knowles.

This overview of the art practice of Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge features a selection of major photographic projects spanning their thirty-year career working with organised labour and issues emerging in the wake of rapid global economic changes.  The show begins with the drawing series titled It’s Still Privileged Art? from 1975 when the artists – under the influence of Art & Language and the nascent conceptual art movement – turned from formalist art-making to social engagement, and from solo expression to committed artistic collaboration with a focus on social aesthetics.  Over the decades, Condé and Beveridge’s formulation of leftist political discourses, combined with their innovations in artistic form, reflect their on-going commitment to their practice as a tool for social awareness and community formation.

Working Culture includes an award-winning short documentary video on the artists’ practice by filmmakers Roz Owen and Jim Miller.

In conjunction with the exhibition, the NSCAD Press, in association with the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, has published Condé and Beveridge: Class Works, the first comprehensive examination of their collaborative art practice. Edited by Bruce Barber, Class Works includes critical essays by Jan Allen, D’Arcy Martin, Declan McGonagle, Allan Sekula, and Dot Tuer; an extensive interview by Clive Robertson with Condé and Beveridge; a chronology of their extraordinary art practice; and 112 colour reproductions that illustrate their major photographic projects.


Organized and circulated by the Agnes Etherington Art Centre with the support of the Industrial Relations Centre, Queen's University; the Canada Council for the Arts; the Ontario Arts Council; and the Kingston Arts Council.

October - November 2008

Adriana Kuiper: Capsule

This past October, the Dalhousie Art Gallery launched an exciting new contemporary art project. Through a grant from the Nova Scotia Department of Tourism, Culture and Heritage, the Gallery commissioned artist Adriana Kuiper to produce a temporary sculptural work located on the Dalhousie University campus grounds between the Henry Hicks and the Life Sciences buildings.

Over the last several years, Kuiper has been exploring notions of protection and survival. Using outdated instruction manuals and other documents, she has constructed several provisional structures built out of everyday materials that reference Post-War fallout shelters. Her sculpture at Dalhousie, titled Capsule, included a semi-circular 12 foot long corrugated steel structure that resembled a culvert or Quonset hut. The ends of the structure were filled with short logs and a number of smaller tubular elements constructed out of blue-green PVC piping that mimic makeshift mailboxes. Some of the mailboxes had hinged openings that allowed viewers to open them while others had peepholes and elements that suggest one could peer into the structure.

In addition to the shelter, Kuiper installed freestanding mailboxes around the campus. These satellite mailboxes referred back to the larger shelter and had the potential to function as a kind of social networking system. Special edition postcards and maps indicating the other mailbox locations on campus were inserted into each mailbox. Viewers could take a copy of the map and navigate to the next location and use the postcards to leave messages for other people.

Kuiper states that “the concept for this work is informed by my investigation of both storm and fallout shelters. I have researched historical directions on how one might build their own shelter and these documents have provided me with sources to work from allowing me to construct modified versions of these units.”

5 to 21 December

55th Student, Staff, Faculty and Alumni exhibition 


Opening Reception Thursday 4 December at 8 pm

Our annual celebration of the creativity of students, staff, faculty and alumni of Dalhousie and King’s College, in painting, graphic art, photography, mixed media, video, sculpture and crafts.

Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge
Non haberá nada para ninguén: Abundance, 1994
image courtesy of the artists

Adriana Kuiper, Capsule, detail, 2008

Adriana Kuiper, Capsule, detail, 2008
one of seven mailboxes installed on the
Dalhousie University campus grounds

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