From Brazil to Canada: The Hungry Mist
Guest curated by Brazilian-Canadian artist Rodrigo d’Alcântara, The Hungry Mist (A Névoa Faminta) features the work of Bento Leite, Dyó Potyguara, Simon(e) Pateau at Oxygen Art Centre in Nelson, B.C., now through Feb. 3, 2024. D’Alcântara came up with the idea for the exhibition during the COVID-19 pandemic while seeing the “acute uncertainties of life caused by the current neo-colonial system,” according to the gallery. Drawing on the pandemic’s spiritual implications, the exhibition title refers to an Indigenous Brazilian metaphysical concept about the universe that predicted an invisible smoke coming to take people’s lives. The show includes both experimental video and two-dimensional artworks that seek to explore “tensions between spiritual, urban, natural and territorial spheres.” D’Alcântara is currently a PhD candidate in the inter-university doctoral art history program at Concordia University in Montreal.
Michael Lonechild, “Coming from the Pump,” no date, acrylic on canvas, 16" x 20" (courtesy of Assiniboia Gallery)
Life on Saskatchewan’s White Bear First Nation
The dry prairie grass and gnarled poplar trees of southeast Saskatchewan near Carlyle are in the DNA of Michael Lonechild. The artist was born in 1955 on the nearby White Bear First Nation and has spent much of his life absorbing the natural rhythms of the area. An exhibition of 12 of Lonechild’s realistic acrylic paintings of the land he knows so well is at Assiniboia Gallery in Regina from Dec. 15 to Jan. 12. Lonechild’s paintings explore both summer and winter life on the reserve. We see people cleaning ducks, harnessing horses, setting beaver traps and engaged in other day to day activities. Lonechild’s work is reminiscent of that of the late Allen Sapp, an Indigenous artist who explored the rural life around North Battleford, Sask. and received a Governor General’s Visual Arts Award for his popular paintings.
Thomas Reid MacDonald, “Untitled,” 1937, oil on canvas, 22" x 18" (courtesy of Art Gallery of Greater Victoria)
The Nude in Art, Past and Present
The beauty of the human body is the subject of a new group exhibition on now at The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. The gallery presents In the Flesh: The Nude in Art, Past and Present, on now through March 31, 2024. The show features more than 100 artworks from the gallery's collection, including pieces by renowned historical artists Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Auguste Rodin, Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore, alongside works by contemporary Indigenous and Canadian artists, including Pat Martin Bates, Evergon, Michael Morris, Susan Point and Carole Sabiston, as well as new work by Andrew Moncrief. “At varying times beautiful, sensual, intimate and provocative, the works presented here trace our captivation with the human form from the Renaissance to today,” says Steven McNeil, exhibition curator and AGGV Chief Curator & Director of Collections and Exhibitions. “Visitors will experience a visual journey through time, ranging from the classical and literary subjects of the past to the body and gender politics of the present.”
Dempsey Bob, "Eagle Sculpture," (collection of the Audian Museum, Whistler; photo by Graeme Joseph)
Tahltan Tlingit Carver Dempsey Bob's Masks in Kelowna
The art of one of Canada’s leading carvers is the subject of a touring exhibition currently on view at Kelowna Art Gallery in British Columbia. Wolves: The Art of Dempsey Bob, curated by Curtis Collins and Sarah Milroy, is on now through Feb. 19, 2024. The show features many of the artist’s carved masks, as well as photos and stories of his life.
A Tahltan Tlingit artist from British Columbia’s West Coast, Dempsey Bob began carving in the late 1960s-early 1970s. He is an officer of the Order of Canada and a winner of the 2021 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts, and his work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Royal B.C. Museum and the Smithsonian.
The touring exhibition premiered in April 2022 at the Audain Art Museum in Whistler and has had stops at Glenbow in Calgary, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. It is co-organized by the McMichael Canadian Art Collection and the Audain Art Museum.
Françoise Sullivan, “Annunciator of the Moons,” 2002, acrylic on canvas, 84" x 60" (courtesy of The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts)
The Life and Art of Françoise Sullivan
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is marking the extraordinary creative life and career of Françoise Sullivan, a multidisciplinary Canadian creator whose work includes painting, sculpture, photography and dance. Françoise Sullivan, I let rhythms flow, is on view at the MMFA now through Feb. 18, 2024. The exhibition is a selection of recent paintings from a body of work she began in 2022 and is a continuation of the monochromatic paintings that she was producing at the turn of the 21st century. The show also showcases Sullivan’s nearly 50 artworks that are part of the museum's collection.
Sullivan, who turned 100 years old in 2023, has been making art for close to 80 years. A member of the Automatistes collective, she signed the Refus global manifesto alongside Paul-Émile Borduas and Jean Paul Riopelle in 1948. Her work has been in group and solo exhibitions across North America and Europe, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Tate Modern. She has also been awarded a Governor General’s Award in Visual Arts and is an Officer of the Order of Canada. ■
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