1) Kim Adams

Repeatedly in his work, Canadian artist Kim Adams explores the patterns of a mobile society, creating works of art that are eccentric hybrids of the readymade. Blending humour, satire and seriousness, he builds "worlds" as a means of social critique. Adams' installations have existed comfortably in the space that divides life and art and the carnival aspect of Adams' work comes alive when experienced first-hand.

Bruegel-Bosch Bus is a magnificent work consisting of a 1960 Volkswagen van that has been transformed and appears to pull a post-industrial universe displaying a cornucopia of fantastic and seductive worlds that play with our senses. This futuristic diorama is a post-apocalyptic civilization on wheels - a model of the next whole world picture in which reality and unreality, logic and fantasy, banality and sublimation of existence form an inexplicable unity. This 'bus', a Kubrick-esque megalopolis made of icons symptomatic in present day life, drawing upon urban fantasies, phantasmagoric, post-apocalyptic landscapes, a plethora of different times and cultures with buildings from epochs aligned side by side, where space becomes an imaginary territory, where instead of causal organization, pastiche prevails. A work in progress that defies a linear perception of time, the Bruegel-Bosch Bus is a culture-scape that displays a mixed layering of time in which centuries collide - a dialectical vehicle leading into the future.

2) An Whitlock

For almost three decades An Whitlock has been creating sculpture and installations that are poetic, symbolic and personal. During the early 1970s, Whitlock became known as a process artist for her use of anti-monumental materials that would disintegrate over time. With an interest in industrial materials Whitlock focused on evidence of the domestication of these materials - such as boxes fabricated from felt, chamois, wire-mesh or punched metal. Means of Escape is an installation made of wire mesh that has been hand-stitched, not welded, together. The implement Whitlock uses is a copper hook taped to her index finger, hence the reference to the labour process commonly associated with women's work. The windows are modeled on those in her bedroom, the French doors in her studio. The ladder is self-evident as a means of escape - herein the idea of entrapment, a construct of women's place in traditional domestic architecture.

This work, perhaps more than any other work by An Whitlock, contains a powerful autobiographical quotient that adds resonance to its reading. It is the most significant in its overall scale as well as its content encompassing the idea of one's place as an artist and woman/or individual in society and one's place in architecture. She continues the process-element in her methodology, elevating it to the scale of architecture, stitching as opposed to the massive construction techniques often associated with architecture.

3) Irene Whittome

Irene F. Whittome is one of Canada's senior artists with a significant career spanning over thirty years. With our objective of collecting seminal works by contemporary Canadian artists, the AGH will feature this recent acquisition. Working from an archival photograph, Gymnasium is as close a replica as Irene Whittome could achieve of a 1920s gymnasium in Cologne, including the global lighting. The work encompasses many of Whittome's ongoing philosophical and personal investigations that reach as far back as 1970 in The White Museum. This installation builds on issues surrounding the topics of the body and museum in contemporary art.