Exhibitions and Events
A Gentler Time: English and Canadian watercolour landscapes and other works on paper from the Dorthy Ward Bequest
This exhibition of over 70 watercolour landscapes and prints selected from the Ward Bequest (part of the gallery’s permanent collection) provides a unique window on the relationship between the English and Nova Scotian art scenes in the late 19th century and in the early decades of this century. Its slightly ironic title refers to the fact that the works reflect no hint of the darker aspects of the period – as if the golden scenes of haymaking or of tan-sailed luggers drifting off the coast would continue unchanged forever.
Landscape in Question: Contemporary works selected from recent acquisitions to the Permanent Collection
Selected from recent Permanent Collection acquisitions, these contemporary works by Nova Scotian artists provide a quizzical perspective on the conventions of landscape painting. Gerald Ferguson’s lushly painted views of Nova Scotia are, in fact derived from tourist postcards and turn out to have been painted by another artist altogether, who followed Ferguson’s minimal instructions. Susan McEachern’s intricate mixed-media panels present a narrative of maps, text and photographs layered into rough-hewn wood and plexiglass frames.
Theatrum Mundi: The 1997 Marion McCain Atlantic Art Exhibition
Paintings, prints, sculpture, bookworks, video and mixed-media installations by twenty-five contemporary artists from all four Atlantic Provinces were selected for this biennial touring exhibition. Curator Susan Gibson Garvey uses the metaphor of a sixteenth-century “cabinet of wonder” to present a thought-provoking perspective on regional art production. Organized and circulated by the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, this exhibition is funded by the McCain Family in memory of the late Marion McCain.
In Passing/ En passant
This exhibition brings together works that deal with ephemeral aspects of existence in a poetic, non-didactic manner. In contrast to the more analytical approach often taken when presenting contemporary art, the motive behind this show is to suggest feelings, memories and visions that gather around the notion of temporality, and encourage a contemplative response.
Herzl Kashetsky: A Prayer for the Dead
For more than 20 years, Saint John artist Herzl Kashetsky has been working on this series of paintings and drawings which represent a personal attempt to come to terms with the events and meaning of the Holocaust.
The 44th Annual Student, Staff, Faculty and Alumni Exhibition and works from the Faculty of Architecture
Our annual celebration of the Dalhousie community's creativity, in painting, graphic art, photography, mixed media, sculpture, and crafts, makes no distinction between amateurs and professionals. The exhibition is open to students, staff, faculty and alumni of Dalhousie, Daltech, and of the University of King's College. Entries of work (ready to install, please) will be accepted during Gallery hours, from 4 November to 21 November. Entry forms will be available at the Gallery's front desk by mid-October.
Work, Workers, Works: Rearranging the Land
This exhibition presents the works of six contemporary Canadian photographers - Robert Bean, Edward Burtynsky, Blake Fitzpatrick, Geoffrey James, Mark Ruwedel and James Williams - who document and interpret certain kinds of intervention in the landscape of North America. Specific forces (social, industrial, ideological, aesthetic) are implicated as agents of rearrangement.
Hymn to the Sun: Jack Bush Early Work 1929-1956
This exhibition examines the formative period of the career of Jack Bush (1909-1977), arguably one of Canada’s most important abstract painters, from his early years as a commercial artist, through a critical period of self-examination to his breakthrough in the mid-fifties. Based on recently unsealed diaries from the Art Gallery of Ontario and letters from Bush to Clement Greenberg in the Smithsonian Institute, curator Michael Burtch’s catalogue essay traces the immense inner struggle of this artist, psychologically, spiritually and aesthetically.
Cliff Eyland: Abstract Paintings
Cliff Eyland’s small file-card sized paintings employ an encyclopedic range of media and subject matter divided into related “sets”. A selection from his set of abstract paintings will be displayed in the front alcove gallery. These works are not intended to satirize or even make reference to other abstract works; rather they should be read as a species of conceptual art. Nevertheless, through juxtaposition with the Bush works, comparisons in terms of scale, originality and ambition are interesting and inevitable.
London Life Young Contemporaries ‘96
Works by contemporary artists under 35 years old from across Canada were selected by curator James Patten from a national for submissions that elicited over 400 entries for this, the most recent in the recurring series of Young Contemporary exhibitions that have been organized by the London Regional Art and Historical Museums since 1950.