Catherine Bolduc’s new work creates a fantastical space that blends the figure of Christopher Columbus with the strange, rocky, moon-like terrain found on parts of the west coast of Newfoundland. This immersive contemporary art installation constructs a new reality through video, collage, and large-scale drawings in ink and watercolour. Bolduc uses the language of fiction, maps, archival documents, and travel journals to re-imagine an extraordinary place. This work draws on a six-week 2015 artist residency at Gros Morne National Park, offered in partnership by The Rooms and Parks Canada.

Catherine Bolduc, La Femme dans la lune / Her head in the clouds (detail), Mixed media, 2016. Image courtesy of the artist.

This exhibition deals with artifact and thought, and their shifting presence in contemporary society. Things we think of as permanent become transitive in this installation. Landscapes, objects, and ideas mix with other ephemera in Jennifer Morgan and Caroline Clarke’s prints and three-dimensional artifacts.

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Artist presentation: Wed 21 June, 12 Noon

Move in Place is a series of digital, photographic collages produced in collaboration with the Agnes Etherington Art Gallery, Queens University, Kingston, ON. Images and 3D scans of objects from the Seattle Art Museum African collection and The Justin and Elisabeth Lang Collection of African Art at the Agnes were unfolded, digitally cut, reassembled and juxtaposed with body parts of ballet dancers. The African art objects, which represent the accoutrements of West African masquerade, form new hybrids with the gestures of Classical French ballet. Combining these two languages against the backdrop of an ambiguous and archival digital space, Move in Place raises questions about the visual and discursive habits that shape understandings of African art within Western museums.

Bio:
Brendan Fernandes is a Canadian artist of Kenyan and Indian descent. He completed the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art (2007) and earned his MFA (2005) from the University of Western Ontario and his BFA (2002) from York University in Canada. He has exhibited internationally and nationally including exhibitions at the Soloman R. Guggenheim Museum, MoMA, the Museum of Art and Design New York, Art in General, the Musee d’art contemporary de Montreal, The National Gallery of Canada, the Brooklyn Museum, Mass MoCA, Deutsche Guggenheim and the Western New York Biennial through The Albright-Knox Art Gallery.

Fernandes was a finalist for the Sobey Art Award, Canada’s pre-eminent award for contemporary art in 2010, and was on the longlist for the award in 2013 and 2015. He was a 2014 recipient of a Robert Rauschenberg Residency and Fellowship. A national Canadian tour of his work recently concluded with the publication of an artist monograph, Brendan Fernandes: Still Move produced by Black Dog Press in London, which will be launched June 21st at 6pm at the Anna Leonowens’ Art Bar +Projects!

Friday, May 12, 2017 at 6:00pm. The artist will be present.

ADAC Gallery Hop in Conversation with the Artist: Saturday, May 13th, at 1pm

Artist Statement: Three separate but connected groups of paintings in this exhibition pay homage to the power of colour. In seven watercolours, I return to the traditional still-life genre, where each painting focuses on a spectrum colour. The rich colour of ripe fruit is enlivened by decorative motifs of dishes, glassware and tablecloths. Revisiting the captured light and colour of Impressionism, and reassessing the formal qualities of abstraction, I have integrated sculptural elements in large acrylic paintings to create shadows and tension on the painting’s surface.
Bridging representation in the watercolour paintings and the complexity of the abstract painting, are seven small relief structures, each one charged with a spectrum colour, varying in tone, intensity and hue. Playing with the energy of individual colour, light and shadow are introduced, highlighting the symbolic and emotional qualities of the spectrum. The experiences of a life lived are the source of my art while light and colour have been my inspiration. Events and emotions are recalled, ideas are revisited, reassessed, and transfigured into paint and the magic of spectra.

Nancy is an established painter in the prime of her career, with a wide range of significant exhibitions in both institutional and commercial galleries. She was born in Vancouver and received a well-rounded art education at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts under Arthur Lismer, at Mount Allison University under Alex Colville and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. Nancy works in variety of media, including acrylic, watercolour and collage. All these are represented in the current exhibition.

Eric Boutilier-Brown’s newest exhibition, áilleacht nádúrtha (Irish for Beauty Unadorned) presents photographs of the Nude set within the sublime ruins and rich landscapes of Ireland. The show’s images are all centered upon Ingrid, who’s worked with Boutilier-Brown since 1998, and who accompanied him to Ireland in 2016 to create a portfolio marking his 30th year of photography. The exhibition features images drawn from that project; 12 selected by the photographer, and 12 selected by the model, Ingrid. Both classical and contemporary, Boutilier-Brown’s photographs of the Nude celebrate the body as a sensual and universal element within a larger setting of natural beauty and ancient ruins, revisiting and refreshing this traditional artistic theme.

Eric Boutilier-Brown, Dryad’s Leap, digital photograph, 2016

Opening June 18, 1 – 3 pm

Amanda Rhodenizer’s painting practice engages with the narrative potential of homes and land in transition. These properties may be abandoned, vacant, under construction, or listed for sale or rent. Taking cues from Canadian real-estate and rental practices, she explores the tensions in our relationships with place – colonially, commercially, and emotionally.

Inspired by the advent of the “sharing economy” and the quest for a more authentic “stay experience” (i.e. trying to live like a local), the paintings in Parallel Play consider a balance between access and ownership. Based on a photo-shoot staged by the artist in a modern beachfront rental property, Rhodenizer also made visits to document land for sale on Nova Scotia’s South Shore.

In the field of childhood development, the phrase “parallel play” describes toddlers’ tendency to play side by side without trying to influence one another’s behaviour. Likewise, Rhodenizer’s paintings give space to the adjacent experiences of guests and hosts, viewer and viewed. Among the wall-to-wall windows and sliding doors, tenants and proprietors frame the view of the landscape outside, while small, discrete studies of “vacant” land consistently punctuate the space in-between.

Born in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, Amanda Rhodenizer received her BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2006. Since receiving her MFA from the University of Waterloo in 2014 she has continued to live and work in Waterloo, Ontario. She was the Nova Scotia winner of the BMO 1st! Art Award (2006) and is the recent recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant and the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund (both 2016). Recently, her work has been presented in solo exhibitions at Rotunda Gallery, and Open Sesame (both in Kitchener), and in group exhibitions at Art Mûr (Montréal), the Orillia Museum of Art & History (Orillia), and in the survey exhibition “Terroir” at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (Halifax).  www.arhodenizer.com

Landon Mackenzie is a Vancouver-based artist known for her large-format abstract paintings. This exhibition features rarely seen works on paper from the past four decades produced in Berlin, Paris, Banff, Prince Edward Island, and Vancouver.

Built in 1976 by Solsearch Architects and the New Alchemy Institute as “an early exploration in weaving together the sun, wind, biology and architecture for the benefit of humanity,” the Ark bioshelter integrated ecological design features to provide autonomous life support for a family. Opening day mixed counterculture together with official culture: Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Premier Alex Campbell, Whole Earth Catalog compiler Stewart Brand, and hundreds from PEI’s counterculture settlements, and the neighboring traditional communities. Thousands more would visit the Ark over its short life. The exhibition explores the story of the Ark for PEI, and its architectural vision of life led in collaboration with nature.
Curated by Steven Mannell and produced by Confederation Centre Art Gallery with the assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts.

David Bergmark and Ole Hammarlund of Solsearch Architects at the southeast corner of the Ark for Prince Edward Island, n.d.

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A Round is a collaborative project that traces reciprocal inspiration and influence between artist friends.  Drawing names from a hat, each artist is selected to create an artwork inspired by the previously drawn artist’s work. None of the artists involved have seen the entire project: only the round they were given to work with. The results are a series of independent works that showcase how ideas evolve through different creative perspectives. The show contains works by ten artists in a variety of mediums including painting, jewelry, and poetry.

Other Histories is a solo exhibition by Pakistani-Canadian artist, Amin Rehman, in collaboration with international activist, writer and commentator, Tariq Ali. The exhibition comments on neo-colonialism and assertive globalisation through wall-based text works employing texts by Tariq Ali, Noam Chomsky and Edward Said. Rehman uses Perso-Arabic scripts (Kufi and Talib) to encompass his diasporic identity within a contemporary art practice.

Amin Rehman, For Globalization, Encaustic installation, 2015. photo credit: Amin Rehman

The next installation of Truth or Myth? draws on the permanent collection to explore the changing relationship between cultural identity and food in Newfoundland and Labrador, as portrayed by artists such as Grant Boland, Martin Lyons, Derrick Pottle, Mary Pratt, and Helen Parsons Shepherd.

Grant Boland, High Class Candies, oil on canvas, 2002. Photo credit: The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador Collection

Organized and Circulated by On Main Gallery, Vancouver
OPENING RECEPTION Thursday 4 May at 7 PM
TOUR with the artists, Bruce Barber, and Paul Wong at 7:30 PM

Since 1983, Toronto-based artists Lisa Steele and Kim Tomczak have shared an exclusively collaborative practice of performance, video, and photo/text work, investigating the subjectivity and experience of the self, and grounded in social, political engagement and critique. The title of this exhibition, The Long Time: 21st Century Art of Steele + Tomczak, reflects the artists’ long career together, the time-based nature of video, and the digital revolution of the medium.

Central to the exhibition is the long-awaited trilogy …before I wake, a 12-year project in the making. This multi-screen installation brings together the video pieces We’re Getting Younger All the Time (2001), Practicing Death (2003), and Entranced (2012, commissioned by On Main Gallery). Using themselves as subject matter, Steele and Tomczak fearlessly examine their identities as individuals—and in relationship to each other—but also explore subconscious anxieties about mortality, aging bodies, and the fear of pending ‘eternal sleep’.

Becoming…, a 4-channel video installation that observes the built environments of Berlin, Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto, also dwells on aging and change as subject matter. Within the static video frames, images of neighbourhoods are seen in transition as low-rise buildings and residential vernacular architectural culture are surrounded—consumed—by metal and glass developments.

Branching beyond video and further embracing digital production strategies, …bump in the night is part of a series of digital image-and-text portraits with high-school aged young people who express what haunts their nightmarish fears. The series was produced with students in Toronto, Vancouver, Barrie (Ontario), Caen (France), and Stuttgart (Germany), and two groups of students from Halifax during the artists’ residency at NSCAD in 2014. Most recently, the artists worked with homeless youth at the Windsor Youth Centre as well as Hispanic youth at the Detroit Hispanic Development Corporation.

Recipients of the Toronto Arts Award and the Bell Canada Prize for Excellence in Video Art in 1994, and the 2005 Governor General’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in Visual & Media Arts, Steele and Tomczak continue to be recognized for their significant contributions to contemporary life, art, and politics, both in Canada and abroad. They are co-founders of Vtape, an award-winning media arts centre established in 1983 in Toronto where Steele is Artistic Director and Tomczak is Director of Restoration and Collections Management. Both also teach at the University of Toronto in The John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design.