Current Exhibitions
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GALLERY LEVEL ONE
Ticketed Admission applies to Level One exhibitions.
AGH Members receive Free Admission to all exhibitions.
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Nature and Spirit: Emily Carr's Coastal Landscapes
On view May 12 to October 28, 2012
Organized and circulated by the Vancouver Art Gallery
Curated by Ian Thom, Senior Curator, Historical, Vancouver Art Gallery
 
Before her death in 1945, Emily Carr’s sizeable reputation as an artist, writer and creative innovator was nationally recognized with solo exhibitions, award winning publications and the admiration of her peers. In recent years Carr has gained international renown for her paintings and has been increasingly celebrated as a singular figure in Canadian culture.
A significant touring exhibition of works by Emily Carr, Nature and Spirit traces her evolution as an artist and includes many of the painter’s recognized masterpieces. The works span Carr’s early experiments with European modernism, to her powerful first encounters with Canadian First Nations art and culture, through her mature landscapes, to a final series of works from the period 1940-1942 when she returned to First Nations subjects.
Highlights of the exhibition can be seen in Carr’s early translations of European ideas to a Canadian context in a superb series of paintings made in 1912, including Totem Poles, Kitseukla. The major works of her maturity such as Zunoqua of the Cat Village, Big Raven, and The Little Pine form the central section of the exhibition and are complemented by a series of oil on paper works from the 1930s. These remarkably free studies of the landscape were painted directly from life and illustrate a more expressive and fluid style than in her works on canvas.
Finally, the exhibition presents a series of paintings from 1940-1942 when the artist returned to First Nations subjects with a new confidence and strength. Carr’s paintings from this period celebrate nature and landscape as living entities and convey her profound identification with the land of her birth.
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Kristin Bjornerud: Safe Harbour
On view January 14 to May 21, 2012
Curated by Melissa Bennett
Kristin Bjornerud’s lyrical watercolours convey myths and legends, dreams and superstitions. This exhibition features recent works including several made during a residency on the island of Gotland, Sweden in 2010 as winner of the Brucebo Fine Art Foundation scholarship, which is juried in part by the Art Gallery of Hamilton. The Foundation was established by William Blair Bruce, a celebrated Hamilton painter of the turn of the 20th century, and his Swedish-born wife, artist Caroline Benedicks Bruce to support young, emerging artists.
During her summer residency, Bjornerud’s immersion in Gotland’s fabled history and mythological atmosphere had great influence on her works, and she incorporated her usual set of female characters drawn from life experiences. The paintings show scenes of women in tableaux, often in a mode of creation or peculiar activity–whether in Making the Land which shows a woman knitting a large textile piece that flows out like a landscape from her lap; or in A Long View, where a woman gazes out at sea, and her view is captured in a surrealistic manner. Bjornerud’s scenes are playful, laden with references to women as producers, and to fables intertwined with historic events.
The artist wishes to acknowledge the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.
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Mark Lewis: Rush Hour, Morning and Evening, Cheapside
On view January 14 to May 21, 2012
Organized and circulated by the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, as part of the MOMENTUM series
Rush Hour, Morning and Evening, Cheapside (2005), a film work from the Collection of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, captures the moving shadows of pedestrians in the slanting light of morning and end of day when the sun, low in the sky, stretches silhouettes magnificently along the ground. By simply inverting the image, Mark Lewis composes a never-ending rush hour, with early morning perambulations sweeping past in continuous movement, right to the "golden hour" that precedes sunset.
The MOMENTUM series touring project has been made possible with the support of the Department of Canadian Heritage through its Museums Assistance Program.
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Mark Lewis: Forte!
On view January 14 to May 21, 2012
Curated by Melissa Bennett
Forte! (2010) was filmed as the artist flew over the Italian Alps and a Napoleonic fort. This film will be shown in the Kate and Robert Steiner gallery, complementing Mark Lewis’s film on view in the Southam gallery.
Born in Hamilton, Ontario, Mark Lewis is now based in London, England. His work has been shown widely around the world to enthusiastic notices, particularly for his contribution to the 2009 Venice Biennale of Visual Art where he represented Canada. In 2007 he was the winner of the inaugural Gershon Iskowitz Prize.
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GALLERY LEVEL TWO
Free admission courtesy of Orlick Industries.
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Size Matters
On view November 12, 2011 to June 17, 2012
Curated by Melissa Bennett and Tobi Bruce
Scale—both physical and perceived—plays an important part in how we experience an artwork. Whether we look at an ambitious twelve-foot canvas or a miniature artwork the size of a locket, the dimensions of any given object can both define and condition how we perceive and engage with it. Large paintings can be appreciated either by stepping back to make sense of the whole, or by moving closer to explore the details of the brushstrokes. Conversely, the delicate and diminutive scale of smaller works might offer an intimacy that feels conspiratorial, as we lean in, getting to know our subject.
This exhibition explores the AGH collection from this perspective, as we ask ourselves how scale defines an artwork and, in turn, how size shapes our interaction with objects. Size Matters is largely an exploration, posing questions about what the scale of an object can communicate.
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From Rude to Rodin
Ongoing in 2012
Curated by Dr. Patrick Shaw Cable
The largest and most important segment of the Art Gallery of Hamilton’s European sculpture collection is its rich selection of works by French artists of the nineteenth century, which we celebrate here within the context of our 2011 French Connection theme.
On view for most of the year in the AGH David Braley and Nancy Gordon Sculpture Atrium will be bronzes, terra cottas, and plasters by the masters of nineteenth-century French sculpting, such as François Rude and Antoine-Louis Barye; the mid-century giants Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux and Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse; and the later modernist pioneers Aristide Maillol and Auguste Rodin. Along the way visitors will discover the work of sculptors who are less well known today but achieved acclaim at the Paris Salons, including Henri Chapu, Paul Dubois, and Rodin’s contemporary Jules Dalou. In artworks whose subjects range from mythology to everyday life, viewers can appreciate the technical brilliance and dramatic panache of nineteenth-century French sculpture from Romanticism to modernism.
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The Tanenbaum African Collection
Ongoing in 2012
Curated by Dr. Patrick Shaw Cable
Due to the popular response garnered by the Summer exhibition Dance of Life, the Gallery will extend its presentation of striking artworks from the African collection of Joey and Toby Tanenbaum on Gallery Level Two. These dramatic examples represent only a fraction of the larger Tanenbaum Collection, which was promised earlier this year as a donation to the Art Gallery of Hamilton. Dating mostly from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century and concentrating on ethnographic art from West and Central Africa, the Tanenbaum works on display include a handful of Oceanic pieces produced by the indigenous inhabitants of the island chain of Melanesia in the South Pacific. Visitors will be able to appreciate and understand these works more fully in terms of their conceptual, expressive, and formal artistry, as well as by the intimate connections they hold with the life, customs, and beliefs of the different societies that created and produced them.
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Kim Adams' Bruegel-Bosch Bus
On permanent display
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 Volkswagen 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.
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The Jean and Ross Fischer Gallery
Free admission courtesy of Orlick Industries.
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SAGE: Follow Your Art VI
On view May 18 to June 17, 2012
Celebrating an on-going partnership between the SAGE programme at Strathcona School and the Art Gallery of Hamilton, this exhibition of student work is the result of an intensive programme of tours and hands-on studio activities that took place at the Gallery in through the school year of 2011-12. Over the course of 5 visits for students from senior kindergarten to grade 5, our young artists explored the beauty of quilts and photographs, the narrative message of William Kurelek and the wonder of Emily Carr’s landscape paintings. In this exhibition we see the results of the year’s journey. From the exuberance of the kindergarten and grade one classes that embrace every activity with joy and fun to the creative and imaginative vision of the two’s and three’s though to the growing talents of the four’s and five’s, the SAGE programme has once again offered a fantastic exhibition for us to enjoy.
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*Please note that as a multipurpose space, the Jean and Ross Fischer Gallery is an area where photography is allowed by patrons and members of the public in accordance with the AGH Photography Policy. Also, the Jean and Ross Fischer Gallery is a space that can be rented for private or corporate functions and therefore may be unavailable for viewing by the public. We apologize for any inconvenience. If you are interested in viewing this space specifically, please call ahead to ensure the exhibition installed is available at 905-527-6610.
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AGH Entrance Foyer
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Simon Frank
View (from the escarpment)
On view April 28 to September 3, 2012
Curated by Melissa Bennett
Simon Frank’s site-specific installation in the AGH foyer is a large monochromatic abstraction created by the physical destruction of the museum wall. By hammering into the drywall with a traditional log-marking tool, he symbolically investigates the history of industries such as logging, exploring their cultural and environmental impacts. Frank often incorporates the landscape in his works, frequently as the result of performative actions. In this way, he highlights the relationship between people, their labour and nature.
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