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The Department of Prints and Drawings

Debra Kuzyk and Ray Mackie (formerly Lucky Rabbit)
Chinese-style Bowl, Red Flowers 2010
porcelain with underglaze decoration
34 cm diam; 15 cm high (side view)

How can a small university art gallery, itself a department, oversee a “Department of Prints and Drawings”? The provocative title of this exhibition is meant to prompt skepticism about the medium-based categories that still define large public collections, such as those at the National Gallery of Canada.

The exhibition is made up of contemporary works by more than 30 artists, selected from the MSVU Collection. Anna Torma’s appliquéed, embroidered and inkjet printed wall hanging incorporates drawings appropriated from members of her family. Reed Weir’s stoneware bather stands on a base with a pyrographic (wood-burned) design of Matisse-like nudes. Equally expressive and gestural is Deb Kuzyk’s underglaze floral decoration of a porcelain bowl thrown by her husband Ray Mackie. Among the works by artists with Halifax connections are lithographs by Dan O’Neill and Ericka Walker, and drawings by Lucie Chan, Anne Macmillan and Susan Wood.

Dan O’Neill and Ericka Walker
Artists’ Talks
Thursday, July 21 at 7pm

Artists Ericka Walker and Dan O’Neill will offer illustrated presentations about their respective practices. O'Neill's technically complex lithographs range from the subversive to the outrageous. He also maintains an experimental cross-disciplinary art practice that centers on drawing, painting, writing and collage. Walker’s hand-drawn lithographs reflect her interest in the visual rhetoric of historical American poster propaganda, presenting nightmarishly altered farm and war machines alongside counter-intuitive slogans.

Anne Macmillan and Susan Wood
Artists’ Talks
Thursday, August 11 at 7pm

Artists Susan Wood and Anne Macmillan will offer illustrated presentations about their respective practices. The subject matter of Wood’s drawings often emphasizes mortality, a theme reinforced by fragile, collaged passages and delicate lines and washes. The monumental Coastline drawing in the exhibition indicates Anne Macmillan’s early interest in rule-following versus chance as an element of process. Her later work incorporates fieldwork, video and animation.

Both events will take place in the Art Gallery and refreshments will be served.
The exhibition was organized by MSVU Art Gallery director Ingrid Jenkner.

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