How do we experience the"thingness" of sculpture, or discuss its"object-ness" in a postmodern critical climate? Co-curators Robin Metcalfe and Susan Gibson Garvey selected some elegant and provocative works by six contemporary Canadian sculptors whose practices may be described as"object-based" and whose works often revisit sculptural issues from the earlier 20th century - but with a contemporary twist.  Quirky, mysterious, solemn, or amusing, these sculptures are experienced first as physical phenomena (as formal and sensuous objects) before specific contents may be ascribed to them.

With a text adapted from the writings of the controversial 14th-century mystic Meister Eckhart, Doug Porter's digitally manipulated videotape titled Run Into Peace (1998) presented a hypnotic yet contradictory stream of images and words.  Juxtaposed in flowing layers of highway landscapes, blood maps, vacant  rooms, figures, streetlights, icons and circular staircases, the images and soundtrack combined to form a repetitive, deceptively soothing sequence, a verbal-visual field into which one can sink, and which induces a contemplative condition.

The Age of Sail returned, just in time to whet the appetite for the millennial visit of the Tall Ships to Halifax! This elegant exhibition of portraits of sailing vessels from the late 18th to the early 20th centuries were selected from public and private collections in Nova Scotia by Dr. Charles Amour, former University Archivist at Dalhousie University and an authority on shipbuilding in the Maritime Provinces.  Major maritime artists from Canada, the United States, Great Britain, Central Europe and other countries were represented in the exhibition.

The Dalhousie Art Gallery's Permanent Collection is particularly strong in the area of works on paper, and of drawing in particular.  This exhibition included over 100 examples of drawing by Canadian artists from every period this century, beginning with classic sketches by Lawren Harris and Arthur Lismer, proceeding through works by artists such as Bertram Brooker, Lionel LeMoine Fitzgerald, and Christiane Pflug, to more contemporary works by Michael Snow, Joyce Wieland, Bill Boyle, Greg Curnoe, Tim Whiten, John Clark, Robert Fones, and Frank Nulf (to name a few).

This collaborative venture between the Dalhousie Art Gallery and the Confederation Centre Art Gallery, Charlottetown, surveyed the multidisciplinary work of prominent Acadian artist Herménégilde Chiasson.  In mid-career, his work was ripe for critical attention, not only within the Acadian context but also in the specific arenas of Francophone film and literature, and the wider world of contemporary visual art in general. Exhibition curator Charlotte Townsend-Gault selected from Chiasson's works in printmaking, painting, graphic design, mixed media installation, film, and poetry.

Halifax artist Cheralyn Ryan employs a variety of painting techniques - staining, layering, calligraphic brushwork, stencils - to achieve canvasses with rich, colour-saturated surfaces.  Hung vertically, they recall the visions of paradisal gardens typical in many oriental rug designs, yet they remain quite abstract, echoing the artist's sense of underlying patterns and mathematical structures in nature.  This exhibition was our fifteenth in our Front Alcove Series, intended to provide the opportunity for local (often emerging) artists to exhibit smaller, more recent bodies of work.

This exhibition of over 70 watercolour landscapes and prints selected from the Ward Bequest (part of the gallery's permanent collection) provided a unique window on the relationship between the English and Nova Scotian art scenes in the late 19th century and in the early decades of this century.  Its slightly ironic title referred to the fact that the works reflected no hint of the darker aspect of the period - as if the golden scenes of haymaking or of tan-sailed luggers drifting off the coast would continue unchanged for ever.

Cliff Eyland's small file-card sized paintings employ an encyclopedic range of media and subject matter divided into related"sets".  A selection from his set of abstract paintings was displayed in the front alcove gallery.  These works are not intended to satirize or even make reference to other abstract works; rather they should be read as a species of conceptual art.  Nevertheless, through juxtaposition with the Bush works, comparisons in terms of scale, originality and ambition are interesting and inevitable.

This exhibition of solid stone carvings by Halifax sculptor Thierry Delva combined his training as a stone mason with his ongoing interest in the relationship between the"container" and the"contained".  The carved limestone and sandstone objects referred to specific cardboard boxes, as they exist in the world, and were true to the dimensions and physical detailing of their referents.  A list of labels on the wall declared the contents of the boxes, suggesting the possibility of finding the actual carved object within the box.