The new exhibition Nicolas Party: L’heure mauve at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts by Swiss artist Nicolas Party is a sumptuous, surrealist experience. Party is not only the artists but also took on that role of curator and exhibition designer. The exhibition features new works by Party as well as 50 artworks and chairs selected from the Museum’s collection and large pastel murals by Party in several of the room. The exhibition is on until October 16, 2022 and is not to be missed.
The Ottawa Art Gallery has reopened after provincial pandemic restrictions have been loosened and the occupation that took hold of downtown Ottawa for almost a month has ended and you need to go to ASAP because Esmaa Mohamoud’s exhibition ends March 27th! This fantastic exhibition, To Play In The Face Of Certain Defeat draws on imagery from sports to explore the ways in which Black bodies appear and yet are rendered invisible within the spaces they exist. Using athletic equipments the installations and photography “illustrate pervasive, discriminatory behaviours and attitudes based on race, class, gender, and sexuality.”
Àbadakone|Continuous Fire|Feu continuel at the National Gallery of Canada had ended after an amazing (an extended run thanks to Covid). This amazing exhibition featuring the work of more than 70 international contemporary Indigenous artists from 16 countires is one of those exhibitions that makes the National Gallery of Canada a special institution. Even though this exhibition is over I wanted to share some images of it.
On our way home from a little weekend trip to northern Québec we decide to take a little detour to pass through Québec City to see the exhibition Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Mexican Modernism: The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec. I had hoped to write a little review of this exhibition but instead I’m going to share my experience of visiting a blockbuster exhibition in the time of Covid-19.
Last time I was down around Toronto I stopped into the Art Gallery of Ontario to see their new exhibition, Brian Jungen Friendship Centre (June 20 – August 25, 2019). Jungen is a Dane-Zaa / Swiss artist based in British Columbia. Although a lot of his artwork is related to his Indigenous heritage he also looks at issues of environmentalism and consumerism. Jungen is probably best know for his mask sculptures that use Nike Air Jordan sneakers to create Indigenous style masks. The new exhibition at the AGO is the largest exhibition of his work and is meant to be an in-depth exploration of his artwork.
The Ottawa Art Gallery‘s current exhibition Karim Rashid: Cultural Shaping presents “the first large-scale presentation of the iconic designer’s work in Canada to date.” It features over 200 of Rashid’s unique designs ranging from tables and chairs to shoes and Pepsi bottles. I was interested to see this exhibition since it’s rare that we see these kinds of design exhibits in Ottawa and I wanted to learn more about this designer who I only vaguely knew. However, after seeing the exhibit I feel like I really didn’t learn anything and instead visited a showroom, not a gallery.
A little while has past since I saw the Anthropocene exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario – AGO in Toronto, and it’s given me some time to reflect. Since then I’ve even gone back to the National Gallery of Canada to see their iteration of the exhibition again, read my review here! It’s hard not to compare and contrast the two approaches to the exhibition and its design since I studied curating in university so now going to exhibitions I find it really hard not to critic everything from wall colour, text panels and lighting to the overarching curatorial idea and artworks themselves. But it’s also rare that you get to see essentially the same exhibit done in two different ways.
Anthropocene is a new exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. It includes work by renowned Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky and Emmy award-winning documentary filmmakers Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier. The exhibition “explore the impact of human activity on Earth through photography, film installations and interactive technologies.” The exhibition runs until February 24th, 2019. Its companion exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto runs until January 6th, 2019, which will be part 2 of my review that you can read here!
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is presenting the first major Canadian retrospective of the work of Alexander Calder (1898 – 1976), the American 20th century artist known for putting art in motion with his mobiles. Alexander Calder: Radical Inventor is on now at the MMFA until February 24th, 2019.
Rachel Somewhere… 