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.
Tove Storch: Sculpture 25 Feb 2017 – 9 Apr 2017 The new work proposed by Storch engages with the gallery’s two-storey architecture, deploying a forest of narrow metal rods to span the distance between floor and ceiling with an effect similar to that of a drawing. It incorporates the formal paradox typical of Storch’s sculpture, wherein the physical concreteness of the elements belies the optical variability of their appearance.
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.
Weaving the existing. Giorgia Volpe 24 Mar 2016 – 29 May 2016 Born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Giorgia Volpe has since 1998 lived in Quebec City, where she has taught drawing, printmaking and photogram at Meduse. This first survey of the artist’s career encompasses performance, action art, drawing, sculpture, photography, installations and video
Kids these days 16 Jan 2016 – 13 Mar 2016 {I}Kids these days{/I} presents video, photography, and graphic works that draw from the fields of anthropology, psychology and sociology, to examine youth and youth cultures in the Canadian context. The artists document young people—their bodies, expressions, and movements—while investigating their tastes, thoughts, clothing styles, methods of communication, and leisure activities. The resulting artworks suggest an underlying desire on the part of the artists to capture the “essence” of youth or at least to affiliate themselves with the coveted values typically associated with this group: freedom, escape, authenticity, expressivity, creativity, and idealism. Artists: Jo-Anne Balcaen, Sarah Febbraro, Kerri Flannigan, Emmanuelle Léonard, Kyla Mallett, Helen Reed, Guillaume Simoneau, Althea Thauberger
Beautiful Illusions Melanie Colosimo & Charley Young 10 Jan 2015 – 8 Mar 2015 Beautiful Illusions presents works in graphic media by two young Nova Scotian artists. Colosimo’s principal practice is drawing; Young favours drawing and indexical techniques, such as casting and monoprinting.
Ron Shuebrook: Drawings 24 May 2014 – 10 Aug 2014 This exhibition acknowledges the centrality of drawing to Ron Shuebrook’s practice. Representing over 30 years of production by the artist
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.
Beyond the Terminating Vista (Rebuild) 20 Apr 2013 – 28 Jul 2013 By transposing his charcoal drawings into a wooden structure, Steve Higgins will create a temporary sculpture on an ambitious scale rarely seen in Halifax.
Activist Ink 12 Jan 2013 – 24 Feb 2013 Emily Davidson, Dan O'Neill and Ericka Walker are three Haligonian printmakers whose work revives the history of socially engaged printmaking.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
For Example (Hirsch, MacCallum, Macdonald) 31 Oct 2009 – 13 Dec 2009 For Example (Hirsch, MacCallum, Macdonald) is the fourth and final instalment in a series curated by Micah Lexier specially for the MSVU Art Gallery mezzanine space.
Somewhere along the line 10 Oct 2009 – 22 Nov 2009 Amplifying the emphasis on process-oriented execution, the drawings in this exhibition depict motifs in transition: dissolving, connecting, fusing and forming.
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.
The Disaster Series by Cindy Stelmackowich 14 Apr 2009 – 7 Jun 2009 In her digital collages the Ottawa-based artist Cindy Stelmackowich merges two genres of hand-drawn graphics; the lithographs illustrating 19th-century anatomical atlases and those that enlivened 19th-century journals such as the Canadian Illustrated News.
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.
Jason W.F. Fitzpatrick: Bite and Burn, encore 10 Jan 2009 – 8 Feb 2009 The Vancouver-based artist Jason W.F. Fitzpatrick fuses the gendered connotations of 1970s underground music and body modification with 1970s body art of the same era. A graduate of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Fitzpatrick has exhibited both nationally and internationally. The artist returns to Halifax in January with his new performance, Bite and Burn, encore.
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.
For Example (Andrews, Goldman, Koenig) 5 Jan 2008 – 23 Mar 2008 In the second instalment of the For Example series, single works by three artists reveal stages of their respective production processes. Inspired by the idea of “The Thing Before The Thing”, the exhibition consists of preliminary drawings, animation cells, and contact sheets.
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.
For Example (Moodie, Thib, Walker) 23 Jun 2007 – 16 Sep 2007 This is the first in a series of four themed micro exhibitions commissioned from the New York-based Canadian artist Micah Lexier. The For Example exhibitions each incorporate works by three artists, housed in identical, separate vitrines.
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.
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.
Legend Drawings by Leonard Paul 6 May 2005 – 21 Aug 2005 The Nova Scotian artist Leonard Paul is known for his meticulously realistic nature and wildlife paintings. Since 2003, however, he has been engaged in a new project, a series of ink drawings illustrating the legend of the Mi’kmaq.
Free Sample 12 Mar 2005 – 24 Apr 2005 So who doesn’t like free samples? And what’s that got to do with art? Kelly Mark’s new exhibition, Free Sample, can help you figure that out.
Godless at the Workbench 14 Oct 2004 – 21 Nov 2004 Canadian art historian Annie Gérin selected the Soviet journals, posters, photographs and film (1918-1939) from the holdings of the British collector David King. The exhibition offers a gripping study of tensions between religion and the modern state as played out in state-controlled mass media.
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.
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.
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.
Shui-Buo Wang Sunrise Over Tianamen Square 11 Jan 2003 – 2 Mar 2003 In June 1989, people around the world watched in horror as news footage showed Chinese government troops opening fire on demonstrators in Beijing's Tianamen Square. Shui-Bo Wang was 28 when he took part in those protests.
In Another Place, Part II Prospect 9: Lucie Chan 14 Sep 2002 – 27 Oct 2002 In the art of Lucie Chan, the implication of displacement and dispersal extends diasporic themes introduced in Lily Markiewicz’s installation. The freely suspended webs of imagery evoke a spatial metaphor on home as "elsewhere."
Visions & Other Phenomena 20 Jul 2002 – 8 Sep 2002 Visionary, scientific, and pseudo-documentary material offer disparate versions of truth in this selection of works from MSVU collection.
What is Church? Rural Churches of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island 3 Nov 2001 – 16 Dec 2001 The convergence of multi-channel video with music and the scanned and digitally manipulated images in this exhibition suggests the psychedelic equivalent of a Baroque church interior.
Charmaine 24 Jun 2001 – 22 Jul 2001 Charmaine Wheatley is known for teasingly erotic subject matter. The exhibition includes documentation of her Agricola Street storefront performance in 1997 (Halifax) and another Halifax-era piece, the bookwork Cambridge Suites.
Twisted 26 Apr 2000 – 25 Jun 2000 This exhibition included works by three Haligonians who deploy spirals from cosmological, mathematical and biological perspectives.
Jim Shirley Returns The Art of James R. Shirley 19 Feb 2000 – 16 Apr 2000 This retrospective, Shirley’s first major exhibition since his MSVU solo in 1977, includes approximately 50 monotypes and works in other media dating from the Nova Scotia years to the present.
Joyce Wieland: A Vignette 8 Jan 2000 – 12 Mar 2000 At the turn of the millennium, while the flag waves over a disgruntled and divided nation, Joyce Wieland’s anti-patriarchal, femino-patriotic art makes a surprisingly fresh statement.
Grid Works (Window Box) 9 Nov 1998 – 18 Dec 1998 This exhibition was conceived as a miniature, "satellite" pendant to two concurrent shows in the main gallery that used modularity as a common organizing principle.
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.
Three Hundred and Sixty-Five Pictures 10 Jan 1998 – 8 Mar 1998 This exhibition comprised hand-rendered images derived from photographs, whose cumulative effect of authenticity may be traced to the camera's legacy of truth-telling and the autographic mark associated with painting.
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.
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.
Alex Colville: Selected Drawings 15 Jul 1995 – 20 Aug 1995 The exhibition afforded insights into Alex Colville's process of planning his paintings, revealing uses of point-of-view and scenic blocking reminiscent of cinema.