Exhibitions and Events
Early Views of British North America
Before photography, capturing images of the land was an important responsibility of artists. Early painters of the Canadian landscape ranged from independent professional artists, through topographers trained by the millitary, to interested amateurs. This exhibition includes over 40 works in watercolour, pastel, pencil and ink executed between 1804 and 1910 by professional and amateur artists active in "British North America", as it was then most often called.
Marine Images fron the Permanent Collection
From warships in Halifax Harbour to gondolas in Venice; from William Dashwood's racing yachts off the South coast of England to Arthur Lismer's minesweepers at work in the grey North Atlantic; from square-riggers elegantly engraved by the seventeenth-century master Claude Lorraine to a brave little dory almost swamped by unexpected wave in local artist John Neville's aquatint...this selection of paintings, prints and drawings presents a wide range of subjects and styles in marine imagery.
Melissa Day: Seascapes
In 1993, printmaker Melissa Day joined a scientific expedition to the Eastern Arctic to study the sea bed. Out of this experience came the sources for her multi-layered lithographs and etchings: sonar scans and ship's tracks, sole marks of icebergs, evidence of the slow accretion of sedimentary rocks under the sea. Sea comments "I am interested in the submerged seascape -- how it is shaped over time and how these processes relate to the processes within my own work."
Focus on Australia
The Gallery is pleased to present a special program on Australian art, with particular emphasis on Australian aboriginal works. Accompanying lectures are listed under Special Events, and details of the associated festival of film and television on Indigenous Australians, titles Cultural Focus, Cultural Futures, are listed overleaf.
(1) The Utopia Body Paint Collection
Marlene Creates: Landworks 1979 - 1991
This comprehensive survey begins with Creates' early landworks -- "brief interventions", in paper, stone and water, recorded in elegant photographs -- and proceeds through a selection of stone and wood installations and composite photographic works, to selections from her two major "memory map" works involving people in Labrador (1988) and Newfoundland (1989-91).
André Kertész: Selections from On Reading
Born in Hungary, the influential photographer André Kertész worked in Budapest and Paris until 1936, when he settled in the United States. Images of people reading, and of reading matter, fascinated him, and were ultimately gathered together for a publication titled On Reading (published in 1971). Toronto gallery owner Jane Corkin, who handles the Kertész estate, has selected an engaging group of original photographs from this series, dating from 1915 to 1970, for display at the Dalhousie Art Gallery (which is also arranging an Atlantic tour of this exhibition).
The 41st Annual Dalhousie Student, Staff, Faculty and Alumni Exhibition
This annual showcase of the artistic talent of the University community in paintings, graphic art, photographs, sculpture and crafts brings to a close the Gallery’s 40th anniversary celebrations. All members of the Dalhousie community are invited to enter. In view of the recent threat of closure and last-minute reprieve affecting all the fine arts programs on campus we suggest that contributors consider using the theme “survival” in their work. Artworks will be accepted at the Gallery from 7-18 November inclusive during regular gallery hours.
Religious Figures from China
In 1966, three exquisite China sculptures believed to be from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and Ch’ing Dynasty (1644-1911) were added to the Dalhousie Art Gallery’s permanent collection from the bequest of Mr. George T. MacKenzie. These elegant figures in blanc de chine and cream crackle glaze will be displayed in the front alcove gallery, accompanied by an informative brochure written and researched by Krista Bennett (NSCAD student of ceramics and craft history).
Nova Scotian Pictures: Art in Nova Scotia 1940-1966
Guest Curator Sandra Paikowsky took a close look at the period 1940-66 in Nova Scotia, focusing mainly on painting and on the activities of organizations, such as the Nova Scotia Society of Artists and the Nova Scotia Museum of Fine Arts. This exhibition presented works by over 40 artists, including Robert Annand, Marion Bond, Mabel Killam Day, Horst Deppe, Carol Fraser, Siegfried Haase, C. Anthony Law, D.C. Mackay, Aileen Meagher, Alex Tissington, Ruth Wainwright, and LeRoy and Marguerite Zwicker. It was accompanied by an illustrated bilingual catalogue containing Ms.
Susan McEachern: Questions of Nature
This four part installation explores questions of human nature in relation to the natural world. Using a variety of formal and photographic techniques (from lush gold-framed colour enlargements, through cyanotype and selenium-toned prints, to digitized photographs in light boxes) McEachern combines images and text in a personal narrative that both delights and disturbs. Guest curated by Susan Gibson Garvey and funded, in part, by The Canada Council Exhibition Assistance Program.
