Exhibitions and Events
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.
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.
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.
Nova Scotian Women Artists in the Collection of Tony Saulnier
Nova Scotian women artists have been active producers, teachers and promoters of art throughout the history of this province. Haligonian Tony Saulnier has gathered a remarkable collection of better-known and lesser-known women artists, many of whom were most active in Nova Scotia during the first half of this century, including Marion Bond, Lucy Jarvis, Mabel Killam Day, Edith Smith, Margaret Semple, Ruth Wainwright, Helen Weld, Marguerite Zwicker, and others.
Tradition and Desire: Recent Video by Buseje Bailey and Donna James
The sixth in our Front Alcove series presents recent video works by Buseje Bailey and Donna James, produced at the Centre for Art Tapes in Halifax and also at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Alberta, where both artists attended this past summer's workshop titled Race and the Body Politic. These four compelling videos explore the black female experience of tradition, beauty and desire, challenging the normative forces of white culture. Program time: 40 minutes.
Nova Scotian Women Artists in the Collection of Tony Saulnier
Nova Scotian women artists have been active producers, teachers, exhibitors and promoters of art throughout the history of the province. Haligonian Tony Saulnier has gathered a remarkable collection of both better-known and lesser-known women artists, focusing on those who were most active in Nova Scotia in the early and middle decades of this century, including, to name a few, Marion Bond, Lucy Jarvis, Mabel Killam Day, Edith Smith, Margaret Semple, Ruth Wainwright, Helen Weld and Marguerite Zwicker. An informative essay by historian Scott Robson accompanied the exhibition.
Robert Harris: Figure Work
Charlottetown artist Robert Harris' historic painting The Fathers of Confederation earned him fame throughout Canada and a huge number of portrait commissions during his lifetime (1847-1919). This prolific artist also painted genre scenes and produced hundreds of sketches, prints, and watercolours of daily life in the provinces.
