May 28, 2005 – May 28, 2006
Heaven and Earth Unveiled: European Treasures from the Tanenbaum Collection
Curated by Louise d’Argencourt and Patrick Shaw Cable
Visitors to the newly renovated AGH will experience the first public
presentation of the gallery’s outstanding new collection of nineteenthcentury
European paintings and sculptures, officially donated by Canadian
art lovers and philanthropists Joey and Toby Tanenbaum in 2002.
Containing over 200 works by more than 100 artists, the Tanenbaum
Collection offers a range and quality manifesting the diversity of art from
an exciting period in European history. Assembled by the Tanenbaums
in the last several decades as one of the most important private collections
of the art of this period, this collection makes the AGH an essential centre
for the appreciation and study of the art of nineteenth-century Europe.
France led the arts during this period, and the Tanenbaum Collection
contains about twice as many French artists as those of other nationalities,
such as English, German, Russian, Italian and Danish. Similarly, the
collection includes about twice as many paintings as sculptures, all
of which manifest the collection’s special human focus—seen, for instance,
in numerous portraits—a range of statuettes and scenes of peasants and
workers—or in dramatic mythological and religious subjects.
The Tanenbaum Collection presents diverse themes, styles and techniques
of a particularly transformational period in art history. The great movements
of Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Realism and Symbolism find expression
in works ranging from the mythological
Ixion Plunged into Hades by Élie
Delaunay to the ruggedly naturalistic
Death of a Saint by Théodule Ribot
or easel paintings by the muralist Puvis de Chavannes, whose original,
simplified style influenced many avant-garde artists at the beginning
of the twentieth century. Among the sculpture component, works
like the bust of a
Chinese Man by Charles Cordier, who developed
new processes of multi-coloured sculpture and exotic subject matter,
complement the rich variety offered by the paintings.
Purchase the catalogue related to this exhibition.
May 28, 2005 - September 5, 2005
Lasting Impressions: Celebrated Works from the Art Gallery of Hamilton
Curated by Tobi Bruce
It is entirely fitting that as we inaugurate the new AGH in 2005, we present
Lasting Impressions: Celebrated Works from the Art Gallery of Hamilton. The
exhibition, comprising over eighty works from the Gallery’s collection, in part
tells the story of the building of this institution and its permanent collection.
Founded in 1914, the Gallery and its collections have grown in significant
and unique ways. The William Blair Bruce Memorial collection remains the
cornerstone of these holdings, which include some of the most important
and recognized images in Canadian art. The building of the AGH’s collection
of Canadian art is unquestionably a success story, and like all good stories,
this one has its heroes. In November of 1947, Thomas Reid (T.R.) MacDonald
(1908-1978), the astute, self-effacing and determined artist from Montreal,
became the Art Gallery of Hamilton’s first full-time director/curator. His
appointment, and subsequent quarter-century tenure, marked a turning
point in our collecting history. His creative vision and resolve transformed
the AGH into one of Canada’s most distinguished cultural institutions.
Bracketed by two icons of Canadian art – William Blair Bruce’s
Phantom
Hunter and Alex Colville’s
Horse and Train –
Lasting Impressions presents
the very best of our collection of Canadian historical art, as well as significant
works by British, American and French artists. Beginning in the late
nineteenth century, with work by those artists who travelled to Europe to
absorb the latest art movements, the exhibition traces the various stylistic
and ideological movements that shaped Canadian art over a half century.
Moving steadily from adaptations of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism,
to the rise of the Group of Seven and an attendant national school of
painting, through the development of regional forms of painting, this half
century provides us with some of the most
defining moments in Canadian art.
Accompanied by a major publication with contributions from over thirty writers,
Lasting
Impressions will travel to six venues across Canada following its presentation in
Hamilton, including the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax, the Musée nationale des
beaux-arts du Québec in Quebec City and the Mendel in Saskatoon.
Purchase the catalogue related to this exhibition.
May 28, 2005 – September 5, 2005
A Lasting Legacy: A.Y. Jackson, Collection Builder
Part of the province-wide Group of Seven 85th Anniversary Collaborative Project
Curated by Tobi Bruce
For A.Y. Jackson, painting the picture was just the beginning. As creator, exhibitor, advocate, and
ultimately patron, Jackson immersed himself in all matters of art. The role of patron was one that suited
him. Determined to consolidate the place of the Group of Seven in the nation’s consciousness and history
books, Jackson played an important role in placing his own artwork, as well as that of his fellow artists,
in public collections. During the AGH’s crucial collection-building decades of the 1950s and 1960s,
Jackson’s role was well-defined. Together with T.R. MacDonald, the two set out an informal strategy
whereby Jackson would donate, on an ongoing basis, a series of his sketches, with a view to building a
holding of which he ‘approved.’
This installation considers how Jackson, a senior Canadian artist in the 1950s, negotiated a means of carving a purposeful place for himself in Hamilton.
May 28, 2005 – September 25, 2005
An Whitlock: Means of Escape
Curated by Shirley Madill
For almost three decades, Canadian artist An Whitlock has created sculptures
and installations that are poetic, symbolic and personal. During the early
1970s, Whitlock became known for her use of anti-monumental materials
that would disintegrate over time. In sharp contrast to bronze, stone and
steel works often associated with the masculine, her works are constructions
and process works comprised of industrial materials such as nylon tire cord,
rubber latex, neoprene, polyethylene and even pins. With this interest in
industrial materials, Whitlock focuses on the domestication of the materials –
such as boxes fabricated from felt, wire-mesh or punched metal.
The material element in the work,
Means of Escape is wire mesh that has
been hand-stitched, not welded, together, using a copper hook taped
to her index finger thereby referencing the labour process commonly
associated with women’s work such as crocheting. Within the context
of the work lies the idea of entrapment - a construct of women’s place
in traditional domestic architecture.
This work, perhaps more than any other work by Whitlock during this time period, contains a
powerful biographical quotient that adds resonance to its reading. It is the most significant
in its overall scale and its context addressing her position as an artist and woman in society
and as well as her place in the architecture of her surroundings.
May 28, 2005 – September 25, 2005
Richard Serra: Managua
Curated by Shirley Madill
Managua reflects Serra’s experiments with space and architecture and is informed by his signature clarity,
stringency and rigor.When installed, a dramatic tension is built between the large drawing and the architecture
of the room, affecting our bodily awareness and our vision. Therein the drawing lays a compositional
reference to his spatial experiences. The installed work also slightly alters the proportions of the room and
our reading of it, testing perceptual and conceptual apprehension of the relation between the assumed
horizontal plane and the ground, and assumptions regarding the built environment and the spectator’s
relationship with it.
May 28, 2005 – September 25, 2005
John Massey: Untitled
Curated by Shirley Madill
A multi-disciplinary artist, Canadian John Massey is a sculptor, installation
artist, printmaker, photo-based artist, and a filmmaker; he is interested in
works that address our notions of perception in the real world.
Untitled is a key formative installation work by Massey, preceding two important
works titled
A Directed View: The First Room and
A Directed View: The Second
Room. At first glance,
Untitled appears to be a simple installation consisting
of two overhead spotlights and a V-shaped section comprised of plaster. It
is the first of Massey’s works that used plaster, emphasizing the substance’s
texture and mass. When exposed to light, the plaster takes on a new fluidity
and animation. Such a work, as with most of Massey’s installations, poses the
existence of the theatre. When the viewer approaches the installation, it is a
kin to anticipating a drama to unfold. The work is pure and contemplative:
light and texture intersect with one another and transform what the eye
but cannot confirm or describe.
May 28, 2005 – September 25, 2005
Arnaud Maggs: Joseph Beuys, 100 Profile Views
Curated by Shirley Madill
In 1976, after seven years of working as a graphic designer and fashion photographer, Canadian artist
Arnaud Maggs began a series of photographic portraits of close friends and acquaintances. Taking an analytical
approach to his subject, he stripped the traditional portrait photograph down to its barest essentials - the
head and shoulders and set the images sequentially in a grid on the wall. Working from a standardized format
of pairs of frontal and profile shots, he developed a self-imposed set of parameters providing a new order
and objective factuality for what he was seeing.
This method echoes ideas practiced in Minimal and Conceptual Art of the 1960s and 70s globally. Artists
often used the grid format as a way to subvert traditional composition and present information in
a straightforward manner. The nature of the work may easily be traced to the nineteenth century and the
photographic archive, a major period of cataloguing, documenting and archiving. Maggs introduced this
simple system of repetition to his serial photographic works of which this installation, Joseph Beuys, 100 Profile Views is a part.
This method echoes ideas practiced in Minimal and Conceptual Art of the 1960s and 70s globally. Artists often used the grid format as a way to subvert traditional composition and present information in a straightforward manner. Maggs introduced this simple system of repetition to his serial photographic works of which this installation,
Joseph Beuys, 100 Profile Views is a part.
May 28, 2005 - September 5, 2005
GREAT MASTERS SERIES
James Tissot Croquet
Curated by Patrick Shaw Cable
The reopening of the renovated Gallery will include the three-month
exhibition of one of the most beloved European paintings at
the AGH, James Tissot’s
Croquet, together with eight prints by the
artist, three of them new additions included in the Joey and Toby
Tanenbaum donation.
Born in France one year before Queen Victoria ascended the throne
in England, and dying one year after her, James Tissot is best known
today for his representations of fashionable women in London and
Paris during the late Victorian era, particularly in the 1870s and 1880s.
One of Tissot’s most engaging paintings,
Croquet shows three girls
resting languidly from a croquet game played on a beautifully
landscaped lawn. The setting, which reappears in several other works
by the artist, is the garden of his London residence. Following his
typical manner of treating the female figure, Tissot arranged the
scene in a highly decorative fashion. His study of decorative
Japanese prints is apparent in the vertical format of the composition,
the framing at top and right by the tree, and the deep tilted
perspective of three main registers of space—the grass shaded in the
foreground, the lawn bleached yellow by sunlight in the middle
ground, and the fountained enclosure of the garden in the
background.
On permanent display beginning May 28, 2005
Kim Adams: Bruegel-Bosch Bus
Repeatedly in his work, Canadian artist Kim Adams has explored 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 exist comfortably in the space that divides life and art. His works have been presented in two very different social worlds: in a densely social environment such as a park or street and in a museum setting like the Art Gallery of Hamilton. Neither setting is privileged.
A magnificent visual masterpiece,
Bruegel-Bosch Bus consists of a 1960 Volkswagon that appears to pull a post-industrial universe displaying a cornucopia of fantastic and seductive worlds that play with our senses. It was produced over a 7-year span. This futuristic diorama is a permanent fixture in the AGH Sculpture Atrium overlooking the Irving Zucker Sculpture Garden, past Hamilton City Hall and the Niagara Escarpment. Reminiscent of a previous installation by Adams titled Earth Wagons that presented a micro-model North American society fixed on leisure and entertainment, the
Breugel-Bosch Bus encapsulates the next whole world picture, a world in which reality and unreality, logic and fantasy, banality and sublimation of existence, form an inexplicable unity. This ‘bus’ is a Kubrickesque megalopolis made of icons symptomatic in present society and draws upon urban fantasies, phantasmagoric, post-apocalyptic landscapes, and a plethora of different times and cultures. Buildings from different epochs are aligned side by side and space becomes an imaginary territory where chaos prevails.
May 28, 2005 – September 5, 2005
The Company We Keep: Exploring Kinship in William Kurelek’s The Polish Canadians
Curated by Larissa Ciupka
William Kurelek, one of Canada’s most widely recognized and admired
Ukrainian-Canadian artists, created a pictorial history of Polish settlement
in Canada shortly before he died.
The Company We Keep presents the
viewer with images that highlight the Polish-Canadian immigrant experience.
Kurelek depicts individuals who cope with isolation in a new land by
finding strength and solace in family, religion and community. Kurelek
tells the stories of these new Canadians with his paintbrush, exploring the ties
that bind in his deceptively simple yet powerful works.
September 24, 2005 – December 31, 2005
The Feast: Food in Art
Curated by Shirley Madill, Tobi Bruce and Patrick Shaw Cable
The Feast: Food in Art, the Art Gallery of Hamilton’s lead exhibition for the Fall 2005
season, explores the subject of food in art and includes historical and contemporary
art not only from the Gallery’s extensive permanent collection but also from
museums and galleries in Canada and the United States. The portrayal of food has
continued to evolve from the time that eating shifted from becoming merely a
means of sustenance to a pleasurable endeavour.
Culinary historians tell us that the “art” of presenting food is as old as the feasts
of Ancient Greece and Rome and that the transformation of eating into dining
featured well-known chefs who created flamboyant food displays meant not for
consumption, but rather to awe and entertain guests. Beyond simply showing off
their acquired culinary skills, these chefs sought to establish a sensual experience
and an emotional link with food. Even more interesting is the intensity with which
humans regard food and the ways we have made eating behaviour an inseparable
part of social customs and relations. Cultural traits, social institutions and national
histories cannot be fully understood without some anthropological understanding
of the interplay between eating behaviour and customs.
Embracing photography, painting, sculpture, installations, prints, drawings, and
video,
The Feast takes a renewed interest in the symbolic value of food and eating
as well as the rituals of preparation and consumption. Food in all its manifestations
is explored - its social value, its power to transform our culture, its aesthetic power,
its impact on cultural and personal identity, and the simple pleasure of eating. Over
70 works by major artists such as Mary Pratt, Claes Oldenburg, David Hockney,
Naomi London, Georges Braque, William Eakin, Iwona Majdan, Millie Chen, Maria
Marshall, Marie Jose Burki, John Hall, David Milne, Carl Schaefer, Antoine Plamondon,
Ozias Leduc, Sandy Skoglund among many others are included. An intensive
programme of supplementary activities is planned in conjunction with the
exhibition that will whet the appetites of all ages; these activities include films
screenings, access to resource materials and literature, music performances, and
unique presentations and workshops on different aspects of the culinary arts.
October 8, 2005 – January 22, 2006
CONTEMPORARY ART PROJECT SERIES
Aganetha Dyck: Walking Closet
Curated by Shirley Madill
Internationally recognized Canadian artist Aganetha Dyck’s recent
interests lie in art and science collaborations, particularly interspecies
communication through her collaboration with honeybees. Since 1991
Dyck has concentrated exclusively on placing ordinary objects in an apiary,
allowing bees to create wax and honeycomb encrusted sculptures under
her guidance and that of an apiarist. While scientists have learned that
bees actually communicate through a kind of dance, in Dyck’s sculpture
the honeycomb depicts a visual form of their language. Dyck doesn’t
direct the bees literally but rather responds to their response to her
work. The resulting hive sculptures seem to belong neither in the
human world nor in the bee world.
Walking Closet is a unique installation consisting of over 700 clothes
hangers that have been worked on and transformed by bees. The
components of an “ordinary” closet are transformed. The hangers
composed of beeswax and honey reveal embedded images and text.
Dyck’s work provokes thought about what sculpture can be and how
the concept of sculpting can be extended to the “invisible”materials
used by everyone.
October 8, 2005 – January 22, 2006
ATELIER SERIES
Jane Adeney
Curated by Shirley Madill
The Atelier Series investigates work by artists who live in or are from Hamilton. This exhibition
focuses on seminal works by one of Hamilton’s most accomplished artists. Known for her
installations and works of art made from clay, through her work Jane Adeney deliberately
through her work reaches into the depths of our inner selves, touching internal worlds of desires,
dreams and possibly fears. In
Secrets and Desires, a collection of boxes encapsulate such enigmatic
contents as ceramic eggs, larvae and insects in various stages of metamorphosis. This exhibition
features a collaborative venture between Jane Adeney and her son, Chris Adeney, as well as other
new works that serve to delve deep into a topic of such magnitude as human existence and
transformation.
