Curating
Matt Bahen: Coming Down the Mountain
McIntosh Gallery, Western University
The paintings of Toronto-based artist Matt Bahen implement themes and devices found in literature and film. This extends to the esoteric titles of his paintings, which are often culled from selected lines in fictional works or character dialogue. Bahen is recognised for his singular aesthetic that uses thick, impastoed surfaces to forge enigmatic and unsettling environments. His careful use of metaphor and allegory contribute to the inherent tension of his paintings and allow for a plurality of readings.
In Coming Down the Mountain, Bahen speculates on the narrative device of Chekhov’s Gun. Conceptualised by Russian storyteller Anton Chekhov, it stipulates that if a gun is written into a story then it must be fired at some point in the plot. In other words, past activities hold significant meaning for future events. Applying this notion to the ten paintings displayed in the exhibition, pictures of cascading water serve as a potent metaphor for how (in)actions, left unchecked or ignored, can fester over time into catastrophe. For Bahen, the past has a way of catching up to us.
Jeanette Obbink: TBA
Glenhyrst Art Gallery (2024)
Born in Holland in 1960, Jeanette discovered the passion to paint after leaving high school while working as a Delft Blue Pottery painter. Working with paint, brushes, and colour felt natural. She obtained a BA in Fine Art and Textiles in 1983 and has since worked as a teacher, graphic designer and art director, but the passion to create her own work with paint and brush is as strong as ever. She left Holland for England in 1989 and then moved to Canada with her young family in 1997.
Arnold Jacobs: Power of the Feather
Glenhyrst Art Gallery (2024)
This survey exhibition of Onondaga (Turtle Clan) artist Arnold Jacobs’s paintings, prints, and sculpture spans over four decades of his creative practice. A former condoled confederacy chief, Jacobs’s artwork and service to his community are deeply intertwined. His artwork is recognised for incorporating clan emblems, traditional stories, and animal symbolism drawn from Haudenosaunee culture and oral history. Having worked as a commercial artist for over twenty years, Jacobs’s paintings combine the precision of commercial illustration with the boundless freedom of abstraction. Similarly, his prints of flora and fauna – ranging from white pines to bald eagles – are highly stylised, brightly coloured, and electrified with movement. The exhibition also features Jacobs’s first large-scale sculpture, a lifesize Sky Woman landing on the back of a turtle, which resonates with spiritual meaning. Through a variety of media, Jacobs’s extraordinary body of work presents Haudenosaunee culture in original and unexpected ways.
Amanda McCavour: The Blue Afar
Thames Art Gallery (2024)
Artist Amanda McCavour uses thread to create sublime installations of embroidered objects in space. Her fantastical, dreamlike environments consider the play of light on matter and the peculiarities of the natural world. In Far Away Blue Fields, McCavour permeates our visual field with a cloudburst of blooming flowers hung from the gallery’s ceiling by tiny thread. Affixed to the wall, The Horizon, the Ocean, the Sky features a gathering of leaves, weeds, birds, and bees that read like an immense biological archive. Both installations speculate on the colour blue. Not only is our physical environment composed of blue things like water, gemstones, minerals, and flora but blue is also associated with the textures of the human condition. In McCavour’s work, it is used to express the infinitesimal breadth of our emotions and shapes our relationship to the earth and sky above.
James Gardner: TBA
Glenhyrst Art Gallery (2024)
Raised in Brantford, Ontario, James Gardner currently lives in Montreal.. His recent solo exhibitions include Syzygy at McClure Gallery (Montreal 2018), Vessels and Broods at Concordia’s MFA Gallery (Montreal 2020), and To Climb A Tall Pine, Galerie Nicolas Robert (Montreal). In the past few years, Gardner was awarded the TFVA’s Artist Prize, the Tom Hopkins Memorial Graduate Award, the prestigious Joseph Armand Bombardier Canadian Master’s Scholarship (SSHRC), amongst multiple other awards. Most recently, Gardner was awarded the 2020 Nancy Petry Award and the William Blair Bruce European Travel Scholarship. Gardner’s work has been supported by multiple grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Toronto Arts Council and the Ontario Arts Council Emerging Artist Grants.
Humble Folk: Barbara Clark-Fleming and Lucy Ogletree
Glenhyrst Art Gallery (2023)
In this exhibition, the paintings of Barbara Clark-Fleming and Lucy Ogletree speculate on the style and content of contemporary folk art, otherwise known as vernacular art. Vernacular art is often referred to as “outsider art,” “naive art,” or “untrained art,” though these labels fail to describe an approach to art making that is imbued with innovation and experimentation. As cultural institutions in Canada address how they sanction certain artists and artworks over others, the work of those who lack visibility in the institutional art system deserve closer attention. “Humble Folk” is a step forward in this direction.
Santhony Pottery: Into the Fire
Glenhyrst Art Gallery (2023)
Santhony Pottery is a family pottery studio based on Six Nations of the Grand River territory and managed by Cindy Henhawk and Judi Henhawk Sault. At present, Santhony Pottery is one of only a handful of Six Nations pottery studios that create Haudenosaunee pottery in the historical way. Their work resides in major public and private collections around in Canada and internationally, including the Royal Ontario Museum (CAN), the National Museum of the American Indian (US), The Iroquois Museum (US), and the Museum of Archeology in London (UK). This exhibition marks their first major gallery exhibition.
To Piece Together: Loraine Mohar, Jennifer Murphy, Monique Vettraino
Glenhyrst Art Gallery (2023)
To Piece Together is a speculation on the aesthetic possibilities of contemporary collage. Collage is a powerfully durational and meditative process that sees incongruent images harmonize together like a satisfying puzzle, creating layers of unexpected meaning. It’s one of the oldest and most popular art forms in history—its inception dates back to 12th century Japan, when poets and calligraphers tore verses from coloured paper then reassembled them on scrolls or screens. Composed of paper and photographs from found-books and other recycled material, the work of artists Loraine Mohar, Jennifer Murphy, and Monique Vettraino approach collage as a form of visual poetry, a dynamic interplay of emotion and imagination through multidimensional imagery.
Kelly Greene: In My Dreams
Glenhyrst Art Gallery (2022)
In this exhibition, artist Kelly Greene transforms a conventional 20th century classroom in Canada to one that conveys basic principles and teachings of the people of Six Nations. Greene’s interactive installation allows viewers to sit at wooden desks and practice writing lessons from the blackboard or elsewhere in “class”, including teachings offered by Onondaga Faithkeeper Oren Lyons and Sidney Hill, Traditional Leader of the Haudenosaunee. They explain basic Six Nations’ beliefs in the short film “We Are the Haudenosaunee,” which is positioned on the teacher’s desk. Greene dreams of a future in which bees will continue to exist and thrive, although they are vanishing due to humans’ activities. Consequently, Greene flips the prevailing iconography of the classroom—where once hung images of Kings, Prime Ministers, flags, and maps of the empire have been replaced with one that is entirely Six Nations centric.
Matt Bahen: There is Something Happening in the Valley
Glenhyrst Art Gallery (2022)
Toronto-based painter Matt Bahen's primary influence is literature. He strives to interpret the power of metaphor and allegory with paint. Bahen listens to audiobooks while working in his studio and is an avid reader of fiction, in particular the writings of Cormac McCarthy, T.S. Eliot and Joseph Conrad. His impastoed surfaces and stark compositions are at once unsettling and highly engaging. Using various motifs including water, fire and animals, Bahen constructs individual narratives that remain in a state of perpetual tension.
Megan Ellen MacDonald: Unnatural Order
Glenhyrst Art Gallery (2022)
MacDonald’s paintings challenge the pre-established aesthetic hierarchy by creating a visual language out of things considered both diminutive and feminine. Her still-life arrangements - first created using 3D software and "documented" as paintings - depict intimate and destructive relationships between objects as an exploration of what it means to embrace both femininity and power. MacDonald, who is currently based in Toronto, graduated from OCADU in 2013 and has exhibited work in Canada, Europe, the US.
Shelley Niro: Thinking of You (co-curated with Peter Lebel)
Museum London (2021)
In this exhibition, photographs from artist Shelley Niro’s series’ Resting Place Of Our Ancestors and Final Moments Thinking Of You are paired with selected video works to examine the meaning of place, love, and the complex relationships between different communities. It is part of an experimental project developed to foster inclusion, shrink social distances (while retaining physical ones), and make meaningful connections. The exhibition has gathered new meaning after the remains of over one thousand children were located in mass and unmarked graves across Canada this year.
Ontario Society of Artists: Breath. Heart. Spirit.
Glenhyrst Art Gallery (2021)
The Ontario Society of Artists was established in 1872. Next year they will celebrate their 150th anniversary with a series of province-wide events. This current show at Glenhyrst Art Gallery is the first one in their year-long exhibition schedule. The OSA is a group of over 300 professional visual artists working in all media, living in every corner of Ontario. They represent the diverse backgrounds and cultures of this province. The earliest members of the OSA, aware of the need, played an important role in creating the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Ontario College of Art and several other smaller art societies. They are engaged in providing exhibitions for emerging artists and are able to reach out to the large provincial population through a vibrant social media presence.
Quinn Smallboy: String Theory
Glenhyrst Art Gallery (2021)
Quinn Smallboy was born in Moose Factory, Ontario and is a member of Moose Cree First Nation. He completed his MFA at Western University and in 2004 received a diploma in multimedia and production design from Fanshawe College. Currently his artistic practice investigates what it means to be a “contemporary Indigenous artist” – specifically, he questions how customary symbols and icons of Indigenous culture translate into painting, sculpture, and installation.
Doris Slater Titus: Retrospective, 1941 - 1964
Glenhyrst Art Gallery (2021)
Thames Art Gallery, Chatham (2022)
Born near Chatham, Ontario in 1917, Doris Titus is considered one of Canada’s most important women artists, yet remains an obscure figure in comparison to her contemporaries. This retrospective exhibition, the first ever of the artist’s work, charts her artistic production as a comic book artist, early abstract painter, arts educator, and single-parent mother.
Paul Kneale: Recycling
Glenhyrst Art Gallery (2020)
In this exhibition, Brantford artist Paul Kneale examines the physical dimensions of digital imagery. Influenced by the histories of scanography and xerography, Kneale uses inexpensive flatbed scanners to produce large scale scanner paintings. His approach simultaneously breaks from the canon of Modernist abstraction while leading contemporary painting in new directions. Kneale questions how the Information Age and cyberspace have undermined and dehumanized intimate and collective relationships.
Little Squares: The Pixel as Material and Metaphor
Glenhyrst Art Gallery (2020)
In this exhibition, artists Dave Kemp, Thelma Rosner, Mark Stebbins, and Shaheer Zazai examine how pixels are used as aesthetic material and metaphors for meaning. Working primarily in photography, painting, craft, and digital media, these artists approach pixels as visual devices to question our lived reality and experience of the world. They propose different methods of how images structure memory, time, and place, articulating the importance of what we look at and how we look at it in a society deeply consumed by pictures.
when i die i will have loved everything
Glenhyrst Art Gallery (2019)
In this exhibition, artists Angie Quick and Heather Verplanke examine how memory is preserved. Using a variety of media, including painting and miniatures, they approach memory as both a ruin and an object of salvation. On the one hand, Quick’s diaristic work expresses the ways that memory can perish with the passing of time; on the other hand, Verplanke’s model environments blend memory with fantasy as a means to prevent forgetting. Though they use the concept of memory differently, Quick and Verplanke are connected by their desire to negotiate past memories in the present moment before they fade again.
Derek Boswell and Scott Waters: Sleepscapes
Glenhyrst Art Gallery (2019)
In this exhibition, Derek Boswell and Scott Waters explore the aesthetics of night. When darkness falls, these artists venture out into streets, woodlands, and neighbourhoods to observe how night invents new experiences, sensations, and ways of seeing the world. Boswell and Waters suggest that the night is also a captivating mystery that struggles to be put into words—the unfamiliar or unexpected hidden by the dark can produce extraordinary visions which compel us to take a different look at where we live and who we are. For both artists, looking into the night is an encounter with endless possibility.
Tracey-Mae Chambers: To the End
Glenhyrst Art Gallery (2019)
Gallery Stratford’s SITE ArtSpace (2019)
Tracey-Mae Chambers is a Métis visual artist and educator based in Simcoe, Ontario. In this exhibition, Chambers explores the theory of the Anthropocene, defined by geologists as a profound transformation in the climate and natural environment caused by human activities. Chambers’s encaustic sculptures are created using melted beeswax, which is made more resilient with the addition of damar resin (tree sap). These works represent a multi-dimensional experience that engages the senses—each appears fragile yet durable, mysterious yet invites touch, and emits the faint scent of beeswax.
Connections: Brant Visual Artists Guild 25th Anniversary Exhibition
Glenhyrst Art Gallery (2019)
In this exhibition, Glenhyrst Art Gallery of Brant celebrates the 25th anniversary of the Brant Visual Artists Guild (BVAG). Since its formation, the BVAG has been dedicated to sharing ideas, strengthening our art community, and gathering resources for classes, workshops, and exhibitions. The Guild is also active in helping local charities and fundraising events within our community. Guild members’s artwork is paired with works from the gallery’s permanent collection. The result is a conversation between the past and present, between subject matter, and between mediums as a way to forge compelling and unexpected connections.
Skawennati: From SkyWorld to Cyberspace
McIntosh Gallery, London (2019)
University of Waterloo Art Gallery, Waterloo (2019)
Judith & Norman Alix Art Gallery, Sarnia (2022)
Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Calgary (2024)
In From SkyWorld to Cyberspace, artist Skawennati (Mohawk, turtle clan) traces a line from our place of origin somewhere in the heavens to the virtual realm, one of the newest territories on Earth. Investigating concepts of time and self, Skawennati engages various mechanisms of gaming and play, interweaving traditional Mohawk stories and ritual objects with new technologies and processes through representations of avatars, most notably her online persona, which she has maintained for over a decade in the virtual world, Second Life. From SkyWorld to Cyberspace is a result of Skawennati’s continuing investigation of cultural construction, contemporary Indigenous self-representation in cyberspace, and of our relationships with the digital world.
Jeff Bierk: CURTAIN (2019)
Grimsby Public Art Gallery (2016)
Glenhyrst Art Gallery (2019)
In this exhibition, Toronto-based artist Jeff Bierk photographs friends and family to question how photographs of past events and experiences produce meaning. Bierk was first acquainted with hospital curtains when both his parents were hospitalized; soon after, his then-partner was regularly admitted to hospital due to serious illness. At this time, Bierk began shooting photographs of hospital curtains as a means of coping with the trauma he had long-associated with hospital spaces. By returning to these objects as only the living can, by seeing them as both photographs and lived experience, Bierk finds new possibilities for emotional exchange with the departed.
Andil Gosine: COOLIE COOLIE VIENS
Glenhyrst Art Gallery (2017)
McIntosh Gallery, Western University (2018)
The title for this exhibition is derived from a taunt that artist Andil Gosine heard while growing up in rural Trinidad during 1970s, soon before he and his family immigrated to Canada. In this exhibition, Gosine interrogates the meaning of the taunt through a series of objects and performances. The result is a deep consideration of his ancestor's relationship with indentureship and his contemporary experience as a migrant.
The Power of Her
Glenhyrst Art Gallery of Brant (2018)
The “Power of Her” highlights the important contributions of women artists—Linda Blakney, Aliki Muklich, Jeanette Obbink, Chelo Sebastian, and Heather Vollans—from Brantford and Brant Region. Though their artwork is varied in style and approach, these artists continue to shape and define how we approach contemporary art and visual culture. The exhibition also includes selected artworks by women artists and portraiture of women from Glenhyrst’s permanent collection.
Reimaginings: Selections from Glenhyrst’s Permanent Collection
Glenhyrst Art Gallery of Brant (2018)
Glenhyrst’s annual permanent collection exhibition highlights the special contributions made by local, regional, national, and Indigenous artists from Canada. This exhibition provides an opportunity to showcase some of the collection’s outstanding artworks. Over the past several years, Glenhyrst has made significant efforts to conserve important artworks in the permanent collection, as well as artworks that have not been shown in decades. It is with great pleasure that we present these newly conserved works alongside other selections to show and promote the strength of our collection.
Unseen Treasures: Rare Works from Glenhyrst’s Permanent Collection
Glenhyrst Art Gallery of Brant (2018)
This exhibition features artwork from Glenhyrst’s remarkable permanent collection that have not been on display in the gallery for several years or decades, in addition to those which have never been displayed at all. These works, selected by Glenhyrst’s Curator Matthew Ryan Smith and Chair of Collections David M. Leng, emphasize the special contributions made by local, regional, and national artists as well as artists from the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. Today, Glenhyrst’s impressive permanent collection includes over 600 artworks.
Kapwani Kiwanga: Clearing
Glenhyrst Gallery of Brant (2018)
Clearing features the work of Paris (FR) visual artist Kapwani Kiwanga. Born in Hamilton and raised in Brantford, Kiwanga attended Glenhyrst Art Gallery art camps from an early age. In this exhibition, she returns to the site of her earliest arts education to consider her experience with the gallery and the region’s unfolding relationship with Indigenous people and the land. Glenhyrst Art Gallery would like to thank the Ontario Arts Council for their generous support of this project.
The Look of Things: Murray Favro and Keith Shearsby
Glenhyrst Art Gallery of Brant (2018)
In “The Look of Things,” artists Murray Favro and Keith Shearsby engage with the idea of usefulness, of functionality, and of value. As such, they complicate the curious relationship between art objects and working instruments, between artistic expression and tools. In short, Favro and Shearsby seek to unhinge the fabrication of art in an age of mass-production, the logic of visual perception, and the dynamics of everyday items.
Jason McLean and Fiona Smyth: Say 'Hi' to the Sun
Glenhyrst Art Gallery of Brant (2018)
Jason McLean and Fiona Smyth are widely recognized as two of Canada’s leading illustrators. Since the 1990s, their work has come to define Canada’s underground art scene and contributed to its critical acceptance by writers, critics, and curators. This exhibition brings together the work of McLean and Smyth for the first time, and seeks to examine the differences and similarities in their fascinating art practice.
Stephen Livick: Midway
Woodstock Art Gallery (2017)
Stephen Livick’s photographs examine how the carnival, traditionally considered to be a site of pleasure and amusement, can double as a site of melancholy. The tension between the faces of the individuals and their entertaining surroundings, specifically in the coloured photographs, are precisely what makes these photographs so engaging. Behind the strained smiles, face paint and clown masks lies a profound dissatisfaction that contradicts the very character of the carnival itself.
The View from Here: Selections from Glenhyrst's Permanent Collection
Glenhyrst Art Gallery of Brant (2017)
The Glenhyrst’s permanent collection exhibition highlights the special contributions made by local, regional, national, and indigenous artists from Canada. With the formation of the gallery in 1956, a strong collection of historical, modern, and contemporary artworks were brought together and continue to grow. Today, the Glenhyrst’s impressive permanent collection includes over 600 artworks from Canadian, indigenous, and international artists.
Soheila Esfahani: Artist's Project
Glenhyrst Art Gallery of Brant (2017)
This artist’s project features wooden pallets, sometimes known as wooden skids, from her recent series Cultured Pallets. Esfahani laser-etches arabesque patterns sourced from mosaic designs in the interior dome of the Imam Mosque in Isfahan, Iran. Isfahan is the ancestral city of the artist’s family, however when she returned to Isfahan, she felt dis / connected to the city. In this regard, the Cultured Pallets series functions as a metaphor for migration and what the artist calls “in-betweeness.”
Amanda Urquhart & Aidan Urquhart: Living Rooms
Glenhyrst Art Gallery of Brant (2017)
The works included in this exhibition speak directly to the assembly of space as being one of opposites, of dichotomies: public / private, interior / exterior, outside / inside. The result is a meaningful, idiosyncratic, and often humorous play on the spaces that we inhabit everyday. Moreover, it draws critical attention to the vernacular, to the spaces we may take for granted, and allows up to see them in a new light.
Pillow Talk
General Hardware Contemporary (2016)
This exhibition emerges from a desire to articulate a field of relations between partners and their painting practice. The works of Nicole Collins and Michael Davidson, Gina Rorai and David Urban, and DaveandJenn (David John Foy and Jennifer Saleik) offer a breadth of readings both in the works themselves and in the very real connections that lie beyond their objecthood.
Cane Portraiture (Fields of Dreams)
Art Gallery of Ontario (2016)
Andil Gosine’s Cane Portraiture series emerges from a set of conditions that aestheticizes the social history of indentured labourers, of “coolies,” in the Caribbean through a participant-driven durational performance. The careful selection of a digital photograph featuring sugar cane for the backdrop of his performance functions as an indexical referent that stimulates cultural memory of the Caribbean diaspora and emphasizes sugar’s problematic relationship to indenture.
Proper Names
Good Sport Project Space (2016)
This exhibition questions the ways that contemporary artists engage with their proper name as a signifier of cultural identity, personal expression, and sense of self. The artists approach the act of naming as an embodiment of individuality and representation, investigating themes of language, sexuality, and anonymity. Here they engage how their proper name complicate matters of identity.
Gyan Chauper
Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, Toronto (2014)
Gyan Chauper is an ancient game of chance invented in India, however the Western game Snakes and Ladders is strongly based on its basic structure and player dynamics. In effect, it is thought that an individual’s karma can affect their journey within the game through their luck with the dice. Thus, on the outside our proposed game is intended to be an engaging experience, but it also carries spiritual consequences.
Bronze, Silver, and Gold
Bookcase Micro-Museum, Western University (2014)
My mother was in the process of moving and mailed me a box of my belongings that included a stack of figure skating medals, skates signed by world champion Kurt Browning, and several figure skating-themed Beanie Babies. This small collection reads as a micro-simulacrum of the larger world of competitive figure skating; something that, as far I can tell, has never been pursued critically in visual culture or museology.
Some Things Last A Long Time
McIntosh Gallery, Western University (2012)
Many artists draw on the personal experiences that shaped their lives to address social and political issues or to create new kinds of relationships between people. In this sense, autobiographical art can operate both as a way of conveying lived experience and as an apparatus for experiential, relational viewing. In this practice of relational viewing, an artist’s work can function as a powerful catalyst whereby viewers draw upon their own life stories to connect with the work.
(Co-Curated) 42° 59' 81° 14' Mapping London's International Legacy
Concourse Gallery, Western University (2012)
London’s latitude and longitude coordinates represent a node on global grid, a marking of a place that is at once generic and specific. Using a series of maps and archival documents, this exhibit traces the creative influence the city of London had in the careers of several renowned artists who, though they were in London only briefly, were deeply affected by their time here.
(Re)verse Ekphrasis: Works from the McIntosh Collection
University College, Western University (2010)
This exhibition flips traditional notions of ekphrasis, defined as the description of a work of art, in an effort to open a range of artistic expressions to further interpretation. What is more, in a spirit of “conversation” the works presented in the exhibition demonstrate an invested critical engagement with texts: biblical accounts, works of fiction, and of poetry. The works thus speak to such texts to reconstitute, and to re-articulate, in a variety of forms of the visual.