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. 

Suzanne Gauthier, Focussing 1987 photo and encaustic on wood (three panels) 168.0 x 287.0 x 10.0 Purchased with funds donated by Mr. John Scrymgeour, Bermuda, 1992

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.

Surveillance and Subjectivity: From Vertov to Verité

Presented in conjunction with the University of King's College Contemporary Studies Program Cyclops: Vision and Visuality into the 21st Century, this series consists of films that challenge the viewer's remoteness from the subject viewed. The films assume a position of focused subjectivity provoked by the idea that the mechanical camera is more truthful than the human eye. Often, engagement defeats detachment, and the Brechtian 'alienation' or 'distancing' effect is neutralized. 

Screenings are every Wednesday  at 12:30 pm & 8:00 pm in the Gallery.

Anna Líndal, Borders 2000 installation, 5 videotapes (on 4 monitors + one projection), TV shelving, family photos, houseplants, embroidered doilies, small figurines, chairs; dimensions vary

Bedrock: Six Contemporary Artists from Iceland

 In this introduction I am delighted to be able to identify a number of "firsts". Bedrock: Six Contemporary Artists from Iceland marks the first occasion that a group exhibition of works by prominent contemporary Icelandic artists will be shown in a public art gallery in Nova Scotia. While individual artists from Iceland, or with Icelandic connections, have occasionally exhibited their art here, such a gathering of recent works by major Icelandic artists (all currently living in Reykjavík) has rarely occurred anywhere in Canada, let alone in Halifax.