MSVUArt: Exhibitions

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Unpacking the Living Room 8 Sep 2018 – 10 Nov 2018 Living rooms are spaces we arrange and create around ourselves to support the comfort and wellbeing of family, to host friends and loved ones, to display precious and prized belongings, and for leisure and relaxation. But living rooms are private spaces packed with emotions and history, as well as social and political investments. The kind of living room we create can reveal our background, our values, our social position, and our aspirations. Even the privilege of having a living room speaks volumes when so many people live in precarious situations, are without shelter, or have been displaced from their homes and traditional lands.
Material Remains 26 May 2018 – 30 Sep 2018 Drawn from the MSVU Collection, these works of art incorporate household textiles such as bedding, a tea towel, table linens and discarded clothing. The domestic references are embedded in works whose imagery also engages with gender politics and world events.
Maria Hupfield: The One Who Keeps on Giving 17 Mar 2018 – 20 May 2018 The title of the exhibition is also the title of a new video installation named after the translation of Hupfield’s mother’s Anishinaabe name. The video documents a performance by the artist and her siblings in Parry Sound, an event re-enacted with a smaller cast at each tour venue.
Brenda Francis Pelkey: A Retrospective 22 Apr 2017 – 9 Jul 2017 The exhibition includes nine bodies of work by the nationally recognized photographic artist Brenda Francis Pelkey, dating from 1988 through 2015. Pelkey lives in Windsor and has made major photographic series in Ontario, Saskatchewan and rural Nova Scotia, where she has resided in the past.
How Do I Look? 11 Feb 2017 – 9 Apr 2017 This selection of artists’ self-portraits from the Mount Saint Vincent University Collection addresses both the experience of being looked at by others, and that of returning the gaze. As a corollary to their engagement with practices of looking and appearing, these self-portraits also tackle the frameworks of race, gender and sexuality.
The Department of Prints and Drawings 11 Jun 2016 – 19 Aug 2016 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.
An Intimate Distance 3 Jun 2015 – 16 Aug 2015 An Intimate Distance presents three multi-component works: Andrea Ward’s Hairstories, Glynis Humphrey’s Gorge and Suzanne Swannie’s Considering Two Small Forms, for Maja and Marta.
Here you may see the best portrait that, later, I was able to make of him. Passages to Abstraction. Geneviève Cadieux 21 Mar 2015 – 17 May 2015 This exhibition encompasses 27 years of production by Canadian artist Geneviève Cadieux, who works primarily with photography and its associated techniques.
Voices in Longitude and Latitude: video installation by Marnina & Noam Gonick 22 Mar 2014 – 11 May 2014
Suzy Lake: Political Poetics 25 Aug 2012 – 7 Oct 2012 Acknowledged by Cindy Sherman as a pioneer in feminist performance for the camera, Suzy Lake began to receive critical attention in the 1970s with works such as {I}Choreographed Puppets{/I} 1976.
Body Tracks 24 Mar 2012 – 13 May 2012 Body Tracks foregrounds the life and art of Ana Mendieta (1948-1985), who despite being a prolific performance and body artist from the 1970s is unknown to many artists under forty.
Ruth Cuthand: Back Talk (works 1983-2009) 14 Jan 2012 – 11 Mar 2012 The exhibition includes more than 30 drawings, paintings, beadworks and video by Saskatchewan Cree artist Ruth Cuthand.
Earth Skins: Three Decades of Drawing by Susan Wood 23 Aug 2011 – 2 Oct 2011 Atlantic Canadian audiences are probably most familiar with Wood’s recent, elegiac drawings of decaying flowers and dead birds. Her work of the past decade embodies the idea of finitude, reflecting on mortality.
Feed: A Video Installation by Tonia Di Risio 21 Aug 2011 – 2 Oct 2011 In 2006 the Haligonian artist DiRisio traveled to the Abruzzo, Italy. There she recorded her middle-aged female relatives preparing a variety of local dishes in their kitchens.
Beneath the Surface 23 Oct 2010 – 12 Dec 2010 The Nova Scotian artists Nancy Edell, Kim Morgan and Susan Wood share an interest in corporeal experience. In these works from the MSVU Collection, the artists present metaphors for the invisible, sometimes pathological processes at work within the body.
Using It: ArtStars, Lendrum, Valentina 14 Aug 2010 – 17 Oct 2010 The creation and presentation of self through assumed personae is as old as theatre. Today YouTube, Facebook and other social networking sites enable individuals to create myriad versions of themselves capable of interactions with an ever-expanding on-line audience.
Susan Bozic: The Dating Portfolio 18 Jul 2009 – 4 Oct 2009 Vancouver-based photographer Susan Bozic has a background in photography and cinema. Posing in elaborately staged photographs, she satirizes the fantasy of “true romance” by casting herself in the ingenue role and a store window mannequin as the leading man.
Alter Ego: Anatomical Studies of a Natal Male by R.S. Pennee 4 Jul 2009 – 18 Oct 2009 For centuries artists have made studies of body parts—hands, feet, faces—that were later incorporated into larger works. In a nod to the Old Masters, the video-derived prints in Alter Ego are processed to resemble drawings.
Kyla Mallett: Marginalia 8 Jun 2008 – 10 Aug 2008 Vancouver-based artist Kyla Mallett borrows from the systematized aesthetics of 1960s conceptual art and applies pseudo-sociological sampling and archiving to reveal networks of communication within various social milieus.
Chemistry 29 Mar 2008 – 25 May 2008 Local artists Dan O’Neill and George Steeves recently made substantial donations to the University Collection. To showcase the new acquisitions while exploring affinities between the respective bodies of work, Chemistry presents fine photographic prints by Steeves, hand-pulled lithographs by O’Neill, and figurative sculpture lent by the Newfoundland ceramicist Reed Weir.
Art Metropole: The Top 100 Organized by the National Gallery of Canada 12 Jan 2008 – 22 Mar 2008 Art Metropole began in the 1970s as an informal agency of Torontonian and NSCAD-affiliated artists. It evolved into a unique Toronto artist-run centre, collecting and distributing alternative artworks that bypassed the art market with accessibly-priced artists’ “multiples” such as audio recordings, videos, bookworks and postcards.
Glynis Humphrey: Breathing Under Water 21 Mar 2006 – 30 Apr 2006 Breathing Under Water is a multi-media installation by the Haligonian artist Glynis Humphrey. It provides an array of acoustic, tactile and visual stimuli, but contains no verbal components.
Alice Egan Hagen (1872-1972), Nova Scotian China Painter Window Box Series 15 Jan 2006 – 31 Jan 2006 This exhibition presents china wares painted by Alice Egan Hagen around the turn of the nineteenth century. Most of the items have been selected from the large collection she donated to the University in 1966
This Land is Mime Land: Shelley Niro 23 Oct 2005 – 11 Dec 2005 Shelley Niro is a member of the Turtle clan of the Mohawk Nation, and a media artist renowned for her provocative humour. Each work in this exhibition is composed of three photographs mounted in an overmat perforated in a pattern reminiscent of traditional beadwork.
Brisk Collages and Bricolages Artistic Audits of Mainstream Media in Recent Canadian Shorts 20 Jul 2005 – 27 Jul 2005 The collective La Femme 100 Têtes, in collaboration with Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery, presents Brisk Collages and Bricolages, Canadian found-footage films and videos that appropriate, audit and revise snippets of movies and TV shows.
Moral Fibre 29 Jun 2005 – 16 Nov 2005 Colette Whiten, Svava Juliusson, Nancy Edell, Frances Dorsey and Barbara Todd are linked by their use of textile-based media to express dissenting views.
Racing The Cultural Interface African Diasporic Identities in the Digital Age 15 Jan 2005 – 27 Feb 2005 The African diaspora, and specifically the “Black Atlantic,” encompasses the world created by the African slave trade and by other population displacements among people of African descent. For this reason the black diaspora is often described as a space of movement between cultures, nations, races, origins, destinations and journeys — a space in many ways similar to cyber space.
too small too big 29 May 2004 – 27 Jun 2004 This exhibition is composed of works on paper by Canadian artists who make strategic use of textured media such as makeup, paper collage, electrical tape, and human hair.
Elizabeth MacKenzie: Reunion 17 Jan 2004 – 21 Mar 2004 This work is an ongoing series of hundreds of powdered graphite drawings on translucent vellum.
Hair in Hand 30 Oct 2003 – 14 Dec 2003 The works in this exhibition frame women’s bodily experiences in the context of handwork and hair–where hair appears both as an artist’s material and as the physical trace of its owner.
Illuminations: Homemade 22 Oct 2003 – 30 Nov 2003 Haligonian Tonia Di Risio has been invited to contribute a Duratrans image derived from her existing series, Homemade.
Blind Stairs 15 Mar 2003 – 4 May 2003 Including works dating from the early 1980s to the present, each artist in this exhibition incorporates traces of other persons (who may or may not be artists) in her production, thereby avoiding the tendency of solo retrospectives to separate artistic authorship from historical context.
Like a Candle (Window Box) 8 Feb 2003 – 27 Apr 2003 This exhibition features an edition of wax figures (with wicks) of Princess Diana, fabricated by Halifax artist Catherine Jones.
Allyson Clay: Imaginary Standard Distance 20 Oct 2002 – 24 Nov 2002 Retaining her focus on the urban female subject, Allyson Clay combines photo-based imagery with video and painting to open this subject position to viewers.
Janice Wright Cheney: Disorderly Creatures 2 Jan 2002 – 3 Mar 2002 Fredericton artist Janice Wright Cheney embroiders life-like insects on handkerchiefs, books and clothing; her method of presentation alternates "the cultural" with "the natural."
Julie Duschenes: Stories That Own Me 3 Mar 2001 – 11 Apr 2001 This painting series portrays the artist and her partner in domestic situations reminiscent of paintings by the 17th-century Dutch master, Jan Vermeer.
Gather Beneath the Banner Political & Religious Banners of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union 1877-1932 3 Mar 2001 – 11 Apr 2001 The 21 embroidered and painted banners in this exhibition proclaim the conservative beliefs and radical activism of one of Canada's most successful women's organizations, the W.C.T.U.
Indian Princesses & Cowgirls Stereotypes from the Frontier 9 Sep 2000 – 15 Oct 2000 In this exhibition, popular images of specific female types from the "Wild West" reveal the structures of domination through which the West was won.
Adrian Piper: A Retrospective 1965-2000 8 Jul 2000 – 30 Aug 2000 This exhibition appeared at MSVU Art Gallery in connection with HX, a city-wide festival of international contemporary art organized by the Contemporary Art Projects Society (CAPS).
taboos, titillations & thrills 18 Mar 2000 – 25 Jun 2000 Together, by means of direct address and selective disclosure, these works reconfigured the gallery as a test site in the quest for intimacy.
Flaming Creatures: New Tendencies in Canadian Video 13 Aug 1999 – 3 Oct 1999 A program of 17 tapes by American and Canadian artists, the exhibition links contemporary critical poetics to Jack Smith's outrageous film Flaming Creatures, made in 1962.
Confrontations Unquiet Images from the University Collection 5 Jun 1999 – 18 Jul 1999 The exhibition in the mezzanine gallery includes two further works: Margaret Clarke's "Mother Ireland" portrait Mary and Brigid (1917), and Bruce Johnson's mural-sized photo-mosaic Oka (1992).
The Convent Series 13 Feb 1999 – 21 Mar 1999 Clara Gutsche's austerely beautiful photographs document an aspect of Québec society that is rapidly disappearing: its communities of religious women.
Aprons Away (and Comments Book) (Window Box) 2 Oct 1998 – 9 Nov 1998 As a feminist intervention in public space, Collyer's apron installation made jarring reference to the feminine mystique of years past.
Prospect 6: Painting by Sarra McNie 23 May 1998 – 2 Aug 1998 Like her predecessors in the Prospect series, Sarra McNie has constructed a version of herself — a persona — which then inhabits her work as subject matter.
Margins of Memory / Trames de mémoire 14 Mar 1998 – 26 Apr 1998 Although sculpture predominated this exhibition organized around themes of memory and corporeality, even the two-dimensional works projected an assertive, spatial presence.
In Absentia 7 Mar 1998 – 17 May 1998 Composed of loans and works from the MSVU collection, this exhibition surveyed feminist approaches to autobiographical narrative.
Image Rites 5 Apr 1997 – 11 May 1997 This exhibition was composed of works by artists whose ritualized production processes and presentation strategies intensify the terms of viewer engagement.
Kim Dawn: Legitimizing Pink (Window Box) 31 Jan 1997 – 6 Apr 1997 Kim Dawn's installation in the library vitrines combined soft sculpture and make-up to produce an effect described as "visceral ... unspeaking yet threatening."
My Friend Told Me That I Had Carried Too Many Stones 18 Jan 1997 – 16 Mar 1997 Suzy Lake's small constructions in plaster and photo-collage incorporated photographs of herself performing apparently mundane gestures.
Barbara Albert: Armour and Ornament (Window Box) 25 Oct 1996 – 15 Dec 1996 Dawn Jaya organized a thematic statement around and exquisite chain-mail jacket made by Halifax artist Barbara Albert.
Andrea Ward: Hairstories 18 Jul 1996 – 16 Sep 1996 Andrea Ward's 41-piece series gives voice to women's concerns about this one aspect of their appearance: their hair.
Prospect 4: Glynis Humphrey — Gorge 29 May 1996 – 7 Jul 1996 Including video and installation elements that implied the bodily presence of a monstrously large woman, Gorge filled the space with conflicting suggestions of guilty excess and sensual pleasure, connected with eating and sexual repression.
Ann Newdigate: Ciphers from the Muniments Room 29 Mar 1996 – 26 May 1996 Newdigate’s digitized printout of a tapestry-woven shorthand letter brings textile media even further into the realm of textual practices.
Meta Textiles: Sewing the Second Skin 29 Mar 1996 – 26 May 1996 The artists in htis exhibition engaged the notion of "second skin" from disparate perspectives, though a spare, minimal sensibility linked their approaches to textile media.
After Perestroika: Kitchenmaids or Stateswomen 11 Nov 1995 – 7 Jan 1996 This exhibition included more than 30 works completed since 1988 by leading "unofficial" Russian artists who, like their Western avant-garde counterparts, work in photographic, textile and performance-based media.
Contingent 19 Sep 1995 – 29 Oct 1995 This exhibition placed the work of two contemporary Canadian women in the context of American postminimal art making of the 1960s and ’70s.
Carolee Schneemann: Composition with Interior Scrolls 16 Sep 1995 – 29 Oct 1995 Scheduled on the 20th anniversary of International Women’s Year, the lecture by this legendary pioneer of "intermedia" drew a large crowd.