GALLERY LEVEL ONE Ticketed Admission applies to Level One exhibitions.
AGH Members receive Free Admission to all exhibitions.
Alex Colville: Horse and Train On view beginning May 19, 2012 Curated by Tobi Bruce
Alex Colville's Horse and Train occupies a unique place in both the Art Gallery of Hamilton's permanent collection and within the broader Canadian imagination. By far the most asked after work in our holdings, the painting will be installed semi-permanently in order to allow visitors the opportunity to view it on an ongoing basis. As part of the presentation, the iconic painting will be accompanied by select objects and documents to help set the work and its acquisition in context.
Three preparatory studies from the Art Gallery of Ontario, never before exhibited together with the painting, will be included to provide a greater understanding of Colville's working methods. An archival letter from the artist to then Director T.R. MacDonald, written upon learning of the work's purchase by the AGH, allows us to read firsthand how pleased Colville was to have the work acquired by a public institution, and Hamilton in particular. And finally, this intimate exhibition will explore how the work has become such an icon of Canadian art—in part through its repeated and varied reproduction and in part through the inherent strength of the image itself.
By Popular Demand On view May 19 to September 9, 2012 Curated by Tobi Bruce
As a lead-in to the installation of Alex Colville’s Horse and Train (by far the most requested work in the AGH collection), By Popular Demand presents not only paintings and sculpture that have become known and favored over time, but also artists whose names have captured a singular and recognizable place in mainstream popular culture.
Masterwork, icon, and treasure are all words repeatedly used to define the singular and the memorable in art. But what is it about certain works that enables them to break away from the crowd? How does an artist’s name move into the mainstream? Is it a question of perceived quality? Timing? Style? Impact? Familiarity? While works are created in the private realm of the studio, their subsequent public lives—in essence their legacies—are subject to circumstances and factors that define them in a both expected and unexpected ways. The exhibition will include works by Lawren Harris, Tom Thomson, Cornelius Krieghoff, Auguste Rodin, Joe Fafard, and Emily Carr, among many others.
Anselm Kiefer On view May 19 to September 9, 2012 Curated by Melissa Bennett
In 2012, the AGH is presenting solo exhibitions of acclaimed artists whose works represent a singular recognizable vision. On view are two of Anselm Kiefer’s large mixed media paintings, which are unparalleled in their powerful content, negotiating the cultural residue of WWII. Over three metres in length, Himmel Auf Erden / Heaven on Earth (1998) is composed of acrylic, oil, shellac and dried branches under a glass-fronted vitrine. The piece suggests a complex relationship between land, memory and spirituality. Karfunkelfee (2007), also a mixed media work, refers to a mythical fairy character while it incorporates ambiguous spiritual and geological symbols.
Born in 1945 in Germany, Kiefer studied art informally under Joseph Beuys at the Düsseldorf Academy in the early 1970s. His work has been exhibited in and is collected by major international museums. He lives and works in France.
This rare opportunity to see Kiefer’s works in Canada should not be missed.
Valérie Blass On view June 7 to September 23, 2012 Organized and circulated by the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. Curated by Lesley Johnstone, Conservatrice
Employing virtually every sculptural technique—from moulding, casting, carving and modelling to assemblage and bricolage—Valérie Blass explores the territories between animal, human and inanimate forms, creating strange, hybrid objects. The impact of Valérie Blass’s work resides in the anachronistic way she navigates between two sculptural traditions. She makes free-standing, vertical, handmade, human-scale autonomous pieces that locate her squarely within the classical tradition of figurative sculpture. But the diversity of her materials and the plethora of mass-produced, bought and found objects she uses, stemming from an enthusiastic engagement with the material culture of the twenty-first century, anchor her art in assemblage and bricolage. A major publication accompanies the exhibition.
Born in 1967, Valérie Blass lives in Montréal. She holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in visual and media arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal. In addition to participating in the first Quebec Triennial mounted by the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, she has had solo exhibitions at Parisian Laundry and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art. She has taken part in group exhibitions organized by the National Gallery of Canada, the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts and the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec. She is represented by Parisian Laundry.
ZIDANE, A 21st-Century Portrait Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno On view October 13, 2012 Organized by the National Gallery of Canada
Zinédine Zidane was a member of the French national soccer team that won both the 1998 FIFA World Cup and the Euro 2000 Championship. In Zidane, A 21st Century Portrait, internationally renowned artists Douglas Gordon (b. Glasgow, Scotland, 1966) and Philippe Parreno (b. Oran, Algeria, 1964) have deployed contemporary conventions of mass media both to “paint” a portrait of the soccer star, and to portray our cultural creation of, and fascination with, heroes and icons.
This contemporary portrait of Zinédine Zidane was filmed during a championship match between Real Madrid and Villarreal on 23 April 2005. The artists positioned seventeen cameras throughout Madrid’s Santiago Bernabéu stadium and directed a team of camera operators to remain fixed on the French soccer star throughout the entire match. This installation juxtaposes a film composed of footage from all seventeen cameras with the raw footage from camera number one. Zidane’s image is projected larger than life so that his every gesture and expression are emphasized. The soundtrack shuttles the viewer between the sounds of the game and an ethereal, introspective space, creating a radically different experience of both soccer and portraiture. Zidane is highly experimental as a portrait, as cinema and as soccer, fusing familiar mediums and genres to produce a radically different experience of spectatorship.
GALLERY LEVEL TWO Free admission courtesy of Orlick Industries.
Fresh Meet On view June 30, 2012 to January 27, 2013 Curated by Melissa Bennett and Tobi Bruce
The AGH is the fortunate recipient of many gifts of art. Special donations and grants also allow us to make important purchases. This exhibition highlights our recent acquisitions of historical and contemporary art, revealing the collecting mandate of the gallery, as well as the tastes of our local, regional and national donors. Collecting decisions are governed by the AGH Acquisitions Committee as well as curatorial staff, and together we are pleased to offer the public a first viewing of some of our most exciting and engaging new works.
Works by local, national and international artists, including Fiona Kinsella, David Milne, Joseph Hartman, John Hartman, Katherine MacDonald, Eldon Garnet, Anne Savage, Frederick Verner, Leon Kroll, Claude Tousignant, David Merritt, and Louis de Niverville make for a fascinating and varied presentation of art past and present, and serve to give an essence of how the permanent collection has been enriched in recent years.
The Jean and Ross Fischer Gallery Free admission courtesy of Orlick Industries.
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.
Celebrating the Artist: Earl Kitchener On view June 23 to July 22, 2012
In a new partnership, the AGH was thrilled to welcome eight classes from Earl Kitchener into the intensive school programme. Each student visited the Gallery on five different occasions throughout the school year, spending time with individual exhibitions and artworks to discover the stories hidden in the works, and the special techniques that each of the artists used to achieve their individual masterpieces. In the studio, students took inspiration from the art that they saw in the gallery and used it to create masterpieces of their own. This exhibition offers us the best of each young artist. All of the works on display were created at the AGH, and reveal the talents and passions the students.
Hamilton Port Authority: A Century in Pictures On view July 28 to October 14, 2012
The Hamilton Port Authority (HPA) is celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2012, marking a century of maritime commerce in the city. The HPA holds an extensive archive of photographs, collected since its early days. This anniversary milestone is an ideal opportunity to share the images and connect with the public’s experience of the harbour and port, which are so vital to Hamilton. Leading up to the exhibition, members of the public are invited to submit their own photographs taken around the harbour, to be included in the display. Visit www.hamiltonport.ca for more details on submitting your photographs. This exhibition of archival photographs will engage visitors in the many wondrous facets of port life as it has changed over the past century.
*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.
