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Melanie Authier: Contrarieties and Counterpoints 13 Jan 2018 – 4 Mar 2018 The paintings in this exhibition combine hard-edge with gestural abstraction, generating tensions between flatness and the illusion of spatial depth. As the artist describes it, “marks ...are discovered along the spectrum between abstraction and strategies of pictorial representation.”
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.
Big in Nova Scotia 23 Aug 2014 – 28 Sep 2014 MSVU Art Gallery was built in 1971. Its two-storey height was designed for the preeminent art of that era; expansive paintings on the scale of American “field” painting, and sculpture conceived in Minimalist terms as spatial theatre. Forty-three years later, Big in Nova Scotia responds to the moment of the Gallery’s beginning with a selection of large works from the MSVU collection.
The Art Bank in the 21st Century 17 Aug 2013 – 10 Nov 2013 Founded in 1972, the Canada Council Art Bank purchases contemporary art and rents it to federal government offices. Among the aims of the Art Bank are the support of Canadian artists through purchases, broadening the audience for contemporary art, and representing the national visual imagination.
Halifax Harbour in War Time by Arthur Lismer 23 May 2013 – 11 Aug 2013 The exhibition contains five paintings and four lithographs completed during Lismer’s tenure as Principal of the Victoria School of Art and Design (now Nova Scotia College of Art and Design) in the period 1916-1919.
Chromophilia 16 Mar 2013 – 21 May 2013 “Chromophilia” is a neologism meaning “love of colour.” The aesthetic priority given to colour is the quality shared by the recent acquisitions in this exhibition.
Sara Hartland-Rowe: Look to the Living 26 May 2012 – 12 Aug 2012 Sara Hartland-Rowe’s figure paintings probe the psychological relationship that exists between model and painter. The shared anxiety of the subjects and their observer is reflected to the viewer in their facial expressions.
Susanna Heller: Intensive Care 25 Feb 2012 – 29 Apr 2012 For decades, Susanna Heller (BFA, NSCAD, 1977) has distilled the peripheral landscapes of New York City in her wildly expressive, near-abstract drawings and paintings. Figures rarely appeared in Heller’s work before March 2010, when her husband was hospitalized with a devastating illness.
Rubbish, Rubbish 8 Oct 2011 – 20 Nov 2011 The exhibition’s title struck its curator when he observed stacked cardboard boxes on a curb, each labelled Rubbish. First finding it humorously coincidental, Hancherow then realized that the deliberate arrangement of the stacked boxes had given them significance proportional to the worthlessness of their contents. In a similar fashion, each artist in this exhibition transforms the viewers’ perception of cardboard boxes as merely utilitarian and disposable.
Traffic: Conceptual Art in Canada 1965-1980 19 Mar 2011 – 8 May 2011 Organized around urban and regional centres of art production, this exhibition captures the exuberant ‘traffic‘ between them during the inaugural phase of conceptual art, one of the most transformative art movements of the late 20th century.
François Lacasse: Outpourings 4 Jan 2011 – 6 Mar 2011 François Lacasse paints in series, concerning himself with the liquefaction of pigment and the latticing and interlocking of planes of colour. His experiments with form are retraced in this retrospective by the inclusion of twenty paintings dating from 1993 to 2008.
Susan Feindel: See Below 7 Mar 2009 – 17 May 2009 The Nova Scotian artist Susan Feindel is known for her adventurous, experimental approach to landscape painting and her espousal of environmental causes. This painting installation was inspired by her voyages on oceanographic research ships, during which the ocean floor is viewed from shipboard using sonar side-scan technology.
Elegies and Effigies (Material Remains) 23 Jun 2007 – 12 Aug 2007 This exhibition focuses on Nova Scotian artists who share a preoccupation with trace imagery, detritus and elegiac themes.
Prospect 11: Doug Taylor 15 Dec 2006 – 18 Feb 2007 Born in Sydney and now living in Halifax, CKDU broadcaster Doug Taylor attended the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design as a mature student, graduating in 1992. His source images are photographs of recreations such as country fairs, demolition derbies and Khyber Club performances
Connect the Dots 29 Nov 2006 – 10 Dec 2006 Connect the Dots brings together Mark’s mixed-media art with that of two other artists—Gerald Ferguson and Shaun Gough—whose careers intersect with hers
Pulse: Film & Painting After the Image 14 Oct 2006 – 26 Nov 2006 Pulse brings experimental film into dialogue with contemporary abstract painting by presenting the two art forms adjacent to one another in the same gallery space.
Roots & Shoots 15 Jul 2006 – 1 Oct 2006 This exhibition draws out tendencies that circulate among the artists of HRM and its environs, suggesting patterns of artistic affiliation as well as rifts.
Wall Painting by Stephen Fisher 17 May 2006 – 20 May 2006 In dialogue with landscape painting traditions and the current mediascape, Fisher appropriates place-related data, such as geological diagrams and weather maps, into vibrant, layered compositions.
Libby Hague and Yael Brotman Open Images, Open Text 13 May 2006 – 2 Jul 2006 A chandelier motif, layered colour and an affinity for Japanese graphics–such as woodblock prints, manga (comics) and anime–link the works of Toronto-based artists Yael Brotman and Libby Hague.
Paperworks 8 Apr 2006 – 30 Jul 2006 In 2004, Eye Level Gallery commissioned Paperwork30– a limited edition of 25 boxed sets, each containing one original work by each of 20 Halifax-affiliated artists—to celebrate its thirtieth anniversary. MSVU acquired one set for its permanent collection.
Sarindar Dhaliwal: Record Keeping 14 Jan 2006 – 4 Mar 2006 Born in the Punjab and raised in England, Sarindar Dhaliwal now lives in Toronto. In Record Keeping, a jewel-hued archive of paintings and installations embedded with journal entries, folk tales, gossip and news, the artist draws upon a personal history of movement from her birthplace in India, to Britain and then to Canada.
Tracking: Bombings, Wars & Genocide a Six Months Journey from New York to China, Vietnam, Cambodia & Indonesia–by Denyse Thomasos 28 Aug 2004 – 3 Oct 2004 After the 9-11 bombing, artist Denyse Thomasos travelled to photograph jails and burial sites in Asian countries. Those photographs are the source images for this spectacular floor-to-ceiling composition painted directly on the gallery walls.
Peter Walker: Last Supper Dance 12 Jun 2004 – 27 Jun 2004 Nova Scotian artist Peter Walker is known for his mastery of trompe-l’oeil (fool-the-eye) illusionism and his skill with airbrush and stencil.
Work Work Work 27 Mar 2004 – 23 May 2004 Taken from the university collection, these works, which use materials such as plywood, acoustic tile, a tea towel and pantry equipment, invite comparison with hobby craft, housework, and puttering.
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.
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.
Queer Commodity 7 Mar 2002 – 28 Apr 2002 Hijacking and inverting the codes of "gay window advertising," this exhibition was composed of amusing counter-commodities and style-saturated posturings, installed as a slightly tawdry boutique.
Cape Breton Modern: June Leaf 1 Sep 2001 – 28 Oct 2001 The exhibition includes recent small sculpture, paintings and a drawing clustered around the suspended metal Figure on a Hoist.
Cape Breton Modern: Terrence Syverson 1 Sep 2001 – 14 Oct 2001 The monumental shaped paintings of the 1980s and ’90s are luminous, monochromatic fields, often pierced in the centre and bounded by built-up edges resembling torn flesh.
Portraits: Unsettled Subjects 24 Jun 2001 – 22 Jul 2001 Realized in painting, photography, sculpture, print media and video, these mostly contemporary works, drawn from the MSVU collection and loans from various Canadian sources, deploy individual likenesses in the service of social critique.
Flagmen of the Apocalypse New Sculpture by Peter Walker 24 Apr 2001 – 17 Jun 2001 The Flagmen, a series of freestanding welded and assembled sculptures (1998-2000), are Peter Walker's millennium project.
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.
Prospect 8: Rebecca Roberts Paintings 22 Oct 2000 – 17 Dec 2000 Working from photographs, Roberts makes small, lusciously executed paintings in which the nude female figure fills the pictorial field.
Susan Feindel: Figura 22 Oct 2000 – 9 Nov 2000 This show includes paintings and drawings produced since 1983, which re-enact nature's creativity rather than mimicking natural appearances.
Imagining [an]Other Canada Reconsidering images of nationalism in the Canadian landscape 8 Jan 2000 – 13 Feb 2000 This exhibition offers a contemporary critique of the proprietary nationalisms supported by 19th-century and Group of Seven landscape painting.
From the Background to the Foreground The Photo Backdrop & Cultural Expression 16 Oct 1999 – 21 Nov 1999 Besides generating discussion around photographic portraiture, the vast exhibition, which was co-hosted by Dalhousie Art Gallery, explored relationships among the fields of art, photography, ethnography and vernacular representations.
Skinjobs 13 Aug 1999 – 3 Oct 1999 Skinjobs included works in various media by Canadian artists who confront societal norms by means of grotesque, uncanny and monstrous distortions.
Lunch Money 31 Mar 1999 – 2 May 1999 To demonstrate how artmaking counteracts the effects of privation, the Toronto-based curators Kim Fullerton and Cheryl Sourkes made an exhibition of works by young artists from Vancouver, Saskatoon, Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax.
1,000,000 Grapes 24 Oct 1998 – 22 Nov 1998 Ferguson's work is composed of 100 square, stretched canvases stencilled in black with an irregular, dot-like motif (or 10,000 "grapes"), installed in a closely spaced grid.
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.
Animal Magnetism 2 May 1998 – 7 Jun 1998 Animal Magnetism united the artist's interests as a draughtsman and producer of experimental audio and video to create this panoramic installation of 100 black and white television sets with over painted screens.
The Painted Sounds of Romare Bearden 30 Aug 1997 – 28 Sep 1997 The art of African-American artist Romare Bearden affirms black cultural heritage and its place in North American culture.
Prospect 5: Proximities 14 Jun 1997 – 27 Jul 1997 Halifax painter Alisa Snyder’s suite of paintings depicts marginal landscapes: the scrubby growth at the edges of woods and residential plots.
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.
The Osaka Exchange Nova Scotia & Osaka Schools 15 Feb 1997 – 23 Mar 1997 An overwhelmingly popular show featuring paintings and drawings by Nova Scotian and Japanese students.
Paintings by Peter Walker 15 Nov 1996 – 5 Jan 1997 Provoking a decidedly mixed response, this exhibition surveyed three bodies of work completed by Peter Walker since 1993.
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.
Prospect 1: Knit Like a Sweater Paintings by Cheralyn Ryan 25 Mar 1995 – 7 May 1995 Cheralyn Ryan's paintings, which combine shallow pictorial space, intertwined imagery and uniformly textured surfaces, indicate how she is interested in the complexity of ecological relationships.
Marsden Hartley and Nova Scotia 23 Oct 1987 – 22 Nov 1987 This exhibition brought together for the first time the drawings and paintings which Hartley did in Nova Scotia, as well as the significant drawings and paintings he did about this province after he returned to the United States.