Betty Goodwin: Darkness and Memory

OPENING RECEPTION Thursday 13 January at 8 pm A constant presence on the Montréal art scene since the late 1960s, Betty Goodwin (Montréal, 1923-2008) is recognized as one of the leading figures of contemporary Canadian art. In 2003 the Dalhousie Art Gallery presented The Prints of Betty Goodwin, organized by the National Gallery of Canada, which featured a rich selection of iconic prints by the artist. We are now pleased to host the travelling exhibition Betty Goodwin: Darkness and Memory which features more than thirty works by Goodwin drawn from the permanent collection of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. The Musée was an early patron of the artist, acquiring Goodwin’s now iconic “vest” prints in 1973 and organizing her first major exhibition in 1976 – a survey of an already wide-ranging fifteen-year period of production. In assembling this selection of prints, drawings, sculptures and monumental tarp pieces from its collection, the Musée draws attention once again to the originality and scope of Goodwin’s multidisciplinary and deeply humanist practice by presenting the principal milestones within her unique trajectory. In the accompanying exhibition catalogue, Josée Bélisle, Curator of the Permanent Collection for the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, writes: Produced over a period of five decades, Goodwin’s oeuvre developed in cycles of work, linked but distinct, that were executed either concurrently or in alternation but were always compelled by a singular and powerful thread: that of the traces and signs of the presence (or absence) of the other and, by extension, the self. Goodwin persistently re-examined the objects that shape our time and our passage through the uncertain territories of human existence. A sense of timelessness, almost of an eternity vanquished, infuses the entire body of work of one of Canada’s most exceptional artists. The national tour of the exhibition Betty Goodwin: Darkness and Memory has been made possible with the support of the Department of Canadian Heritage through its Museums Assistance Program.