Paris and Toronto host AGA Partnership Projects

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The award-winning exhibition TRAFFIC: Conceptual Art in Canada 1965-1980, co-organized by the Art Gallery of Alberta (AGA), opens today at the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris, France under the new title Get Hold of This Space: A Geography of Conceptual Art in Canada. This is the first major exhibition to explore the development of conceptual art in Canada in the period from 1965-1980.

Over 50 artists and collectives are featured, including Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge, General Idea, Raymond Gervais, Rodney Graham, Image Bank (Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov), Garry Neill Kennedy, N.E. Thing Co., Rober Racine, Michael Snow, Françoise Sullivan, Ian Wallace and Joyce Wieland to name just a few. This exhibition examines how conceptual art in Canada developed within certain local and geographic areas and how it came to represent the interests of the individual artists, collectives and art communities. The exhibition will be presented in two parts. The first, opening today and is on view until April 25, 2014, focuses on the criticism of institutions and the development of networks—particularly those through magazines and artist-run centres. The second part runs from May 19-September 5, 2014 and explores the political, cultural and social dimensions of the vast geographic distances that exist in Canada.

The original exhibition, TRAFFIC: Conceptual Art in Canada 1965-1980, was co-curated by AGA Executive Director / Chief Curator, Catherine Crowston, in partnership with a team of other Canadian curators: Grant Arnold, Barbara Fischer, Michèle Thériault, Vincent Bonin and Jayne Wark and organized by the AGA, the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, Hart House, University of Toronto and the Vancouver Art Gallery, with the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University; Halifax INK and the support of the University of Toronto Art Centre; Blackwood Gallery and the Doris McCarthy Gallery. The exhibition toured across Canada in 2010 and 2011, and in 2013, was awarded the Award of Outstanding Achievement in Exhibitions from the Canadian Museums Association. The exhibition and accompanying publication were produced with the assistance of the Museums Assistance Program of the Department of Canadian Heritage.

The AGA is also pleased to announce that Misled by Nature: Contemporary Art and the Baroque, an exhibition organized by the AGA in partnership with the National Gallery of Canada, will open at Toronto’s Museum of Canadian Contemporary Art (MOCCA) on Saturday, February 8 and is on view until April 6, 2014. This exhibition showcases artworks by six international contemporary artists who have drawn upon aspects of the historical Baroque: David Altmejd; Mark Bradford; Lee Bul; Bharti Kher; Tricia Middleton and Yinka Shonibare, MBE. It is co-curated by AGA Executive Director / Chief Curator Catherine Crowston; Josée Drouin-Brisebois, Curator of Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Canada; and Jonathan Shaughnessy, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Canada. The exhibition debuted at the AGA in Edmonton in the fall of 2012.

Report courtesy of Art Gallery of Alberta