Magazine

Séamus Gallagher’s Candy-Coated Universe

“What I find inspiring is looking at my many different interests and finding ways of linking them together and creating, like, a mapping of my interests, and threading disparate sources of inspiration, and then creating projects out of those inspirations,” Gallagher says. 

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REBECCA FISK: THERE IS NO ONE STORY OF BLACK GIRLHOOD

There Is No One Story of Black Girlhood is a powerful and unyielding exhibition of Rebecca Fisk’s series of self-portrait paintings. As an African Nova Scotian artist based in Mahone Bay, Fisk’s acrylic paintings reveal what may lurk beneath the dominant culture of Nova Scotia’s mask of politeness. Her work alludes to the sinister insincerity...

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‘L’NU/ BEAUTIFUL’: JERRY EVANS’S RETROSPECTIVE WELJESI 

Since October 2022, The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery has consecutively presented solo exhibitions in their gallery spaces by Mi’kmaq artists from Ktaqmkuk, specifically highlighting the artistic practices of Kelsey Street, Nelson White, and Alex Antle. Weljesi, the most recent exhibition to unfold in the fourth level art gallery, celebrates Mi’kmaw and settler artist Jerry Evans...

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ALANNA BAIRD’S UNFAMILIAR SEAS

Alanna Baird’s artwork infiltrates the New Brunswick vernacular, while also sparking important conversations around marine ecology in this time of climate crisis. As a longtime inhabitant of the small coastal community of St. Andrews, NB, Baird has closely observed the changing shoreline beyond her home. She maintains a dedicated ritual of engagement with the liminal,...

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Alex Antle’s Njikam (My Younger Brother)

Embedded within a matrix of dark stone on the second-floor landing gallery at The Rooms is the vivid and materially diverse exhibition Njikam (My Younger Brother) by emerging L’nu artist Alex Antle. Originally from Qapskuk (Grand Falls-Windsor), Antle is currently based in Elmastukwek (Bay of Islands) where her maternal Mi’kmaw ancestors are from, and where...

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Ji Hyang Ryu’s Culture Bridge

Ji Hyang Ryu has a warm and excitable personality that is reflected in her studio space in Riverview, New Brunswick. She welcomes me into a room resplendent with plants, books, and used canvases. She makes us coffee and begins sharing her story of what brought her from South Korea to Canada. Ryu has been interested...

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Tropical Gothic

Tropical Gothic is an exhibition curated by Excel Garay and Liuba González de Armas at the Khyber Center for the Arts (January 31 – February 11, 2023), which features the works of Cinthia Arias Auz, Kayza DeGraff-Ford, Carmel Farahbakhsh, Shaya Ishaq, Pamela Juarez, Marissa Sean Cruz, and Excel Garay. The group exhibition draws inspiration from...

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Heavy Momentum

Arts Atlantic Symposium Japanese artist Tomo Ingalls stands at the centre of the Tompkins Studio Hall within the Saint John Arts Centre. It is pitch black except for a soft spotlight hitting the performance area. A 220lb circle of recycled clay is surrounding her, with a larger circle of participants sitting in front of hanging...

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History, Heritage, and Home in the Quilt-making of Alfreda Smith

My grandmother, Rev. Alfreda Evangeline Smith (née Simmonds), was born October 23, 1939, in North Preston, Nova Scotia. She learned quilting from her mother, Annie Simmonds, who made quilts to help her family survive brutally cold winters in an uninsulated home. My grandmother was a proud descendant of Black refugees who evaded American slavery and...

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Emily Lawrence’s Food Dreams

Dartmouth Halifax-based artist Emily Lawrence posted Aquarius Dessert on her Instagram (@emilylawrenceca) on February 1, 2021. An elegant, salted crème brûlée dessert is pictured like a dancer in a white fluted bowl situated slightly off centre on a white ground. Golden candied hazelnuts rest like fallen stars on the flame-crusted sugar surface of the brûlée,...

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Beyond the Gallery

Beyond the Gallery is an anthology published by Laberinto Press (Edmonton, Alberta), as part of their Beyond series. The editorial team is made up of Luciana Erregue-Sacchi, Ana Ruiz Aguirre, and Liuba González de Armas. This publication of essays, according to the editors, seeks to “showcase the talent of some of the best literary professionals...

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Glitter and Magic

An incomplete history of queer art in Atlantic Canada

Queerness is fluid—it lives, breathes, and acts through fluidity. Like the ocean that surrounds Canada’s Atlantic region, and the tides that are pulled in to shore and recede again by the moon’s gravity, to be Queer, to live in Queerness, and to create as a Queer is to navigate a rigid world from a place...

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