Exhibitions and Events
FLUXUS: a Conceptual Country
The visual artists, writers and composers whose activities are known collectively as Fluxus, came together 30 years ago, staging art events, performances and happenings in major cities across Europe and the U.S. Fluxus contributed the term “intermedia” and popularized time-based performance, video, installation and multiple art forms. Marcel Duchamp was an influential precursor of Fluxus, and John Cage and Josef Beuys were closely associated with the group.
Uses of the Vernacular in Contemporary Nova Scotian Art
What are the relationships between folk art and forms of contemporary art which adopt folk idioms? Co-curators Cliff Eyland and Susan Gibson Garvey tackle this question in a vibrant exhibition of paintings, assemblages, prints, sculptures, and fibre works by contemporary Nova Scotian artists Nancy Edell, Gerald Ferguson, Kyle Jackson, Janice Leonard, Charlie Murphy, John Neville, Leslie Sampson and Eric Walker.
The 40th Dalhousie Student, Staff, Faculty and Alumni Exhibition
An unbroken tradition for 40 years! This time, the Gallery’s annual celebration of the artistic talent of the university community will kick off the Gallery’s year-long 40th Anniversary celebrations. The exhibition will include paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture and crafts by Dalhousie students, staff, faculty and alumni. If you are a member of this community take this opportunity to participate!
INDIGENA Contemporary Native Perspective
This major touring exhibition of paintings, sculpture, videos and installations by eighteen contemporary Canadian Native artists presents a challenging, sometimes exquisitely beautiful, sometimes profoundly disturbing experience. Curated by Gerald MacMaster and Lee-Ann Martin to coincide with the 500th Anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in North America, the objective of the project was to “address such issues as discovery, colonization, cultural critique, and tenacity” from the Native perspective.
Thorn-Apple Tree: Illustrations by Franklin Carmichael
Franklin Carmichael (1890-1945), a founding member of the Group of Seven, created the exquisite wood-engravings in this exhibition to illustrate Grace Campbell’s novel about rural life in southeastern Ontario, titled Thorn-Apple Tree (1942). Some of the working tools and blocks used by Charmichael to make these delightful prints will also be on display. Organized by the Art Gallery of Windsor.
Good Stories Well Told: Video Art for Young Audiences
Created especially for viewing by children and youth, this unique exhibition includes 38 tapes produced by media artists, often in collaboration with young people, arranged into three groups for differing ages levels. The stories in these videos take place all over the world, from Brooklyn to Beijing, and in the imaginary places of dreams and fantasies. Some are presented in familiar forms lives narrative and comedy, educational film, rap music video, documentary and animation. Others employ more inventive, hybrid forms.
Book Illustrations by Nova Scotian Artists
Rarely seen book illustrations and dust jackets created between 1900 and 1960 by such artists as Will R. Bird, Robert Chambers, Mabel Killam Day, Winifred Fox, William de Garthe, Jack Gray, Donald C. MacKay and Charles Payzant. Guest curated for the Art Gallery by John Townsend with loans from Schooner Books and the Public Archives of Nova Scotia.
Illustrations to Kipling’s Jungle Book
Not the Disney version, but sixteen beautiful turn-of-the century colour proofs by Maurice and Edward Detmold (1903) of subjects from Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book. All of the favourite characters are here: Bagheera, Baloo, Shere Khan and Mowgli himself, in wonderfully dignified images selected from the Kipling Collection, Dalhousie University Libraries.
John Greer: Civilization
Civilization consists of 13 giant fragments of human bones sculpted in marble by Halifax artist John Greer. These monumental vanitas emblems include six pieces reminiscent of bone chips and seven specific forms: part of a skull-cap (suggesting mentality), the top of a femur (upright mobility), a floating rib (breath or spirit), part of a jaw (verbal communication) and three sections of thumb (dexterity or industry).
Nothing Outside Itself: Abstract Works from the Permanent Collection
A major tenet of modernist abstraction -- that a painting should refer to nothing outside itself -- is underscored in this collection of paintings and prints in which visual experience is represented for its own sake. Works by Albers, Bush, Motherwell, Riopelle, and many others, have been selected from the Dalhousie Art Gallery's Permanent Collection.
