Exhibitions across Canada

Ottawa

Barbara Morgan: Martha Graham, Letter to the World, "Kick" (1940, printed c. 1945): Gelatin silver print, 38.6 x 48.2 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

Made in America 1900-1950. Photographs from the National Gallery of Canada
National Gallery of Canada
To April 1, 2012

Bringing together over 100 iconic photographs, this exhibition celebrates the exceptional contribution that American photographers made to the history of art in the last century. The first half of the 20^th Century was a fertile time for photography as the form evolved from social documentary to fine art. The exhibition includes stunning works by Edward Steichen, Clarence White, Paul Strand, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Berenice Abbott, Lisette Model, and the members of New York’s Photo League, a cooperative of amateur and professional photographers who came together around a range of common social and creative causes. Active from 1936 to 1951, the Photo League included many noted American photographers of the mid-20th Century, including Margaret Bourke-White, Helen Levitt, Richard Avedon and Weegee.

Also showing: Janet Cardiff: Forty-Part Motet  and Christian Marclay: The Clock, both to March 25.

Cambridge, Ontario

Brendan Tang: from the series Manga Ormolu (2009 - ongoing)

Brendan Tang: Gained in Translation
Rodman Hall Art Centre, Brock University
To April 29, 2012

Merging historical and contemporary forms, Brendan Tang’s ceramic and mixed media sculptures play subtle visual tricks on the viewer, evoking a host of dichotomies and probing questions about culture past and present. Inspired by anime and manga, Tang grafts brightly coloured robotic prosthetics onto an array of seemingly antique Chinese vessels in his ongoing Manga Ormolu series. Tang’s highly refined mashups juxtapose the fragility and preciousness of the slow and careful tradition of hand-painted and sculpted ceramics with durable but disposable, mass-produced synthetics of the current day, and consider the perpetual redrawing of national, cultural, and ethnic boundaries that accompanies accelerated globalization in contemporary society.

Also showing: Kent Monkman: The Four Continents (Miss America) and David Rokeby: Plot Against Time #2, both to March 11; Marinko Jareb: Sloop Loggy Log’s Underground Rave to September 2.

Winnipeg

Dave Dyment: Emerald City (Any Colour You Like), 2010.

Like-Minded
Plug-In ICA
To March 25, 2012

This group show is a companion piece to Michael Dumontier’s solo exhibition A Moon or a Button, which is showing concurrently. Toronto-based artist and curator Micah Lexier has brought together work by over 30 artists whose practices relate to Dumontier’s interests and sensibilities such as simplified forms, found imagery, stationary and trompe l’oeil. The artists themselves are a diverse group ranging from emerging artists to some of Canada’s more established artists. In addition to mounting works on the gallery walls, Lexier has chosen to place a number of the works inside a pair of vitrines in the centre of the gallery space, and will be presenting two video works in an adjacent space. Among the artists featured are: Laurel Woodcock, Joy Walker, Alison Rossiter, Hugh Scott-Douglas, Romas Astrauskas, Brian Groombridge, Euan Macdonald, Arnaud Maggs, Niall McClelland, Margaret Priest, Martin Creed and David Dyment.

Saskatoon

Jamelie Hassan: Manuscript page (2005): Colour photograph and neon light on panel. Collection: Museum London.

Jamelie Hassan: At the Far Edge of Words
Mendel Art Gallery
To March 18, 2012

Since the 1970s, London, Ontario-based Jamelie Hassan’s work has been influenced by cultural politics, social activism and her background as a Canadian born to immigrants from Lebanon. This exhibition is the first survey of the artist’s 40-year career. Featured are watercolours, photographs, ceramics, a billboard, and multi-media installations. The exhibition’s title honours Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, who died in 2008. One of his poems begins, “I come from there and I remember,” and concludes, “I learned and dismantled all the words to construct a single one: Home.” The works in this show, produced from 1978 to 2009, also indicate her abiding interest in issues of text, language, memory, and identity.