Exhibitions and Events
Justin Augustine: Within Boundaries
Artist's Statement: My paintings depict images of young black persons transfixed in an otherworldly space. The figures occupy the foreground against what, at first glance, appears to be an ambiguous background. However, they are not realistic portraits of actual individuals. Rather, they are composites, placed in scenes which frame and dominate my childhood memories of my homeland, the Caribbean island of Dominica. By placing the figures against warm, lightly coloured and sharply contrasted architecture, further memories of a tropical climate are invoked.
William Eakin: Have a Nice Day
Have a Nice Day is a selection of William Eakin's photographs that explores contemporary society's obsession with UFOs, aliens, and extraterrestrial phenomena. Produced over a ten-year period, the photo-installation contains 30 large-scale images, representing several distinct bodies of work. These include Eakin's UFO sighting pictures, alien portraits, alien tableaux, and cryptic photo-collages. Eakin's photographs are factitious-- a subtle mix of fact and fiction-- that deconstructs the alien myth in search of the socio-cultural meanings of our obsession.
Richard Mueller: The Material of Thought
This exhibition presented an examination of the complex work of Halifax-based artist Richard Mueller over the past 12 years. The selection covered some of his most engaging and challenging works, dating from the time he shifted focus from largely abstract painting to the compelling and poetic imagery of fire and light and the materials of industrial steel and glass that continue to occupy him today.
Doug Porter: Run into Peace
With a text adapted from the writings of the controversial early 14th-century mystic Meister Eckhart, Run into Peace presents a hypnotic yet contradictory stream of images and words. Juxtaposed in flowing layers of highway landscapes, blood maps, vacant rooms, human figures, streetlights, icons and circular staircases, the images and soundtrack combine to form a repetitive, deceptively soothing sequence, a verbal-visual field into which one can sink and which induces a contemplative condition.
Darlene Shiels: Graven Images
It is ten years since Darlene Shiels held her last solo exhibition in Halifax. Then, she exhibited highly charged gestural landscape paintings in acrylic on canvas. Now, she exhibits linear portraits of women, paired with simplified imges of objects, plants and animals, each work made by carefully incising plywood. What has changed in ten years? What remains the same?
Spirit Matters: Works Selected From the Permanent Collection
Drawn from the rich resources of the Dalhousie Art Gallery's permanent collection, Spirit Matters foregrounds the issue of spiritual content in visual art. Including historical and contemporary works that range across continents and cultures -- Australian aboriginal burial poles, Renaissance woodcuts, Inuit sculpture, Chinese porcelain Buddhist figures, and drawings, prints and mixed media works by artists from Atlantic Canada -- this exhibition offers an opportunity to revisit the role of visual art in expressing and informing the life of the spirit.
