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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Great New Wave: Contemporary Art from Japan
On view from May 22 to September 7, 2008
Co-presented by the Art Gallery of Hamilton and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria
Curated by Sara Knelman and Lisa Baldissera
This groundbreaking Canadian presentation of Japanese art examines new and recent work by emerging and mid-career artists. After its economic collapse in the 1990s, Japan’s Superflat movement, epitomized by the work of Takashi Murikami and Yoshimoto Nara, catapulted these and like-minded artists onto the contemporary art world stage. Today, an exciting new wave of work follows in the wake of the Superflat aesthetic, defined by a new generation of Japanese artists. Their diverse works, on view in Canada for the first time, reflect an acute consciousness of cultural tradition, while simultaneously proposing visions of a globalized future.
The exhibition will include work in a variety of media including drawing, installation, photography, sculpture, textile and video. In addition to new and recent work by Manabu Ikeda, Kohei Nawa, Tabaimo and Miwa Yanagi, the exhibition will also showcase two site-specific works created in Hamilton: utilizing discarded consumer packing material gathered over many months from local residents, internationally-known artist Yoshiaki Kaihatsu will transform our waste into a contemporary take on the traditional Japanese teahouse, and textile artist
Sayaka Akiyama will spend four weeks in the community, ultimately translating her experiences of Hamilton’s environment, geography, history and sensibility into a large-scale signature mapping project.
| This exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue featuring curatorial essays and full colour illustrations. |
Material support from:  |
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TD Waterhouse Great Masters Series: Masters of the Ukiyo-e
On view from April 26 to September 28, 2008
Curated by Dr. Patrick Shaw Cable
A quintessential Japanese historical art form, ukiyo-e ("pictures of the floating world") are colour woodblock prints that represent subjects ranging from brothel scenes and legendary episodes to landscapes and urban views.
Masters of the Ukiyo-e features more than a dozen ukiyo-e prints from the AGH collection, including images of the geisha, the Kabuki actor, and the sumo wrestler; episodes along the Tokaido Road; and snow and river scenes. In addition to the work of 19th-century masters like Ando Hiroshige (1797–1858) and Utagawa Kunisada (1786–1864), the exhibition presents a few examples by talented artists who continued the ukiyo-e tradition into the next century, such as Hiroshi Yoshida (1876–1950) and Kiyoshi Saito (1907–1997).
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William Blair Bruce Memorial Donation
On permanent display
A salon-style hanging of the entire Bruce Memorial Donation of 1914 signals the beginning of the Art Gallery of Hamilton. Upon the premature death in 1906 of Hamilton-born William Blair Bruce, his widow, sculptor Caroline Benedicks-Bruce, his father William and his sister Bell Bruce-Walkden bequeathed twenty-nine of his paintings to the city, with the proviso that a properly equipped art gallery be established to house and present the collection. When the Gallery opened its doors for the first time in June of 1914, the Bruce Memorial Collection was the permanent collection. Presented here in its entirety, the Bruce Collection continues to be an appropriate touchstone. As an important nineteenth-century Hamiltonian who trained and worked abroad and exhibited both nationally and internationally, Bruce’s skill and activities reflect the scope and nature of Hamilton’s permanent collection: regional, national and international in scope, tracing the efforts and activities of artists who have exerted an impact on the visual arts past and present.
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Atelier: Tor Lukasik-Foss
The Monotheatrum
On view from May 22 to September 7, 2008
Curated by Sara Knelman
This summer, Tor Lukasik-Foss will build Hamilton’s newest performance venue inside an AGH gallery. The Monotheatrum, as it has been named by Lukasik-Foss, is like nothing you’ve seen before. Described by the artist as a "nomadic amphitheatre," the structure’s meticulous design references the architecture of opera houses, scaled down here to house only a single performer. The innovative twist is the stage itself: although physically present, the performance space remains concealed from view – the stage is not visible to the audience. This separation between performer and spectators riffs on the notion of obscurity as a viable creative path – perhaps even as the necessary ingredient in the mysterious recipe for success.
In the summer of 2008, The Monotheatrum will set up its stage for the very first time at the AGH. During the course of its exhibition, The Monotheatrum will begin to build-up a storied past through performances and audience encounters. As it moves on from here, its legend will continue to build, slowly generating the kind of psychic energy that defines the great performance venues of our time, like Massey or Carnegie Hall.
Stay tuned for notice of occasional live "performances" by Hamilton musicians, and visit the exhibition anytime to experience sonic documentation of past performances, and to contemplate the nature of such elusive entities as performance, fame and ambiance.
Tor Lukasik-Foss is a visual artist, musician and writer based in Hamilton.
 Follow along with Tor's blog as he documents progress on
The Monotheatrum.
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GALLERY LEVEL TWO
Free admission courtesy of Orlick Industries.
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In Motion: The photography of Eadweard Muybridge
On view from August 23, 2008 to March 29, 2009
Curated by Sara Knelman
Eadweard Muybridge pioneered the field of motion studies photography with his series Animal Locomotion: An Electro-Photographic Investigations of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movement. This exhibition presents a selection of ten collotypes, a small but poignant group from the artist’s overall collection of 781 collotype plates, first published in eleven volumes in 1887.
Commissioned to prove a bet that a horse has all four hooves off the ground while galloping, Muybridge eventually set out to document the gamut of human and animal locomotion. The resulting images are almost all in a grid-like format, depicting incremental stages of movement, similar to film stills.
The images shown in this exhibition all depict the human figure, with five showing male figures, and five which take women as their subject. They are without doubt an early, revelatory investigation of motion–yet they also offer an eye-opening historical view of 19th century social attitudes toward gender roles. While male models are most often depicted playing sports or lifting heavy objects, female models are more likely seen carrying out household chores with dainty composure and adorned with typically feminine props.
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Home Again: Our Canadian Treasures Return
On view from April 26 to October 12, 2009
Curated by Tobi Bruce
After two long years spent crossing the country, the AGH’s most prized Canadian treasures are home again. Following the presentation of Lasting Impressions: Celebrated Works from the Art Gallery of Hamilton in 2005, which coincided with the reopening of the newly renovated AGH, the exhibition began its two-year, six-city tour across Canada. Concluding in January at the Musée nationale des beaux-arts du Québec, we are very proud to say that our collection was enjoyed by tens of thousands of visitors nationwide.
Arriving home safely in early 2008, the works have been uncrated and a selection is on view to our public again. Drawing on the strengths of our landscape and portrait holdings, this modest installation comprises many favorites from the Canadian collection including William Blair Bruce’s Phantom Hunter, Maurice Cullen’s Cape Diamond, Lawren Harris’s Hurdy Gurdy and Emily Carr’s Yan Q.C.I.
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Story Time: Narrative in Contemporary Art
On view March 1, 2008 to November 30, 2008
Curated by Sara Knelman
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The human instinct for storytelling began, before verbal or written language, with images. As we see in this exhibition, that drive to relate stories – real or make-believe – is still at the heart of art-making. While abstract, minimalist and conceptual art have arguably dominated the contemporary art world in recent decades, many artists have continuously returned to narrative as both a source and form for new expression.
Narrative can be defined, in the most basic terms, as a sequence of events. The central plot might describe the development of character, the weight of an experience, or the general passage of time. In this room artists illuminate subjects drawn from mythology, the old testament and fairy tales, and articulate histories, cultural contexts, and shifting ideas to convey previously untold stories. Some works maintain a traditional sequential structure, while others collapse the narrative line into a single image or a circuitous confusion of episodes. The architecture of narrative, like the Tower of Babel in Vessna Perunovich’s The Day We Stopped Talking to Each Other, is precarious. And like the evolution of new languages, the unending possibilities of narrative construction continue to unfold.
Although their subjects are wide-ranging, the works gathered here all do more than tell a story. Through creative invention they make space for new understandings, and like children’s picture books and movies, they activate our imaginations.
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The Word Made Flesh: Images of Devotion
On view December 15, 2007 to September 21, 2008
Curated by Patrick Shaw Cable
For centuries the Church was a chief patron of art, supporting some of the most famous artworks in history, such as Michelangelo’s David and Leonardo’s Last Supper. The Word Made Flesh features religious art from the AGH European collection, depicting Christian saints, Biblical and historic narratives, and artists’ personal imaginings of religious themes. On view is an assortment of paintings and sculptures dating from the Middle Ages to the early years of the 20th century. Including altarpieces, oil paintings of dramatic narratives, and carved and painted sculptures of saints, the show discloses stories and heroes that are both familiar and unknown, as well as the passion and beauty of Christian art through the ages. A portion of the exhibition, on view until mid-April, presents a corridor of prints from the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Many of the handsome pieces in The Word Made Flesh are generous long-term loans-for example, the sole Canadian work in the exhibition, Christ by 19th-century Québécois sculptor Louis Jobin, is on loan to the Gallery from Mrs. Wynn and Dr. Bill Bensen.
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Carnival: Scenes from a Spectacle
On view from June 30, 2007 to Fall 2008
Curated by Tobi Bruce, Patrick Shaw Cable and Sara Knelman
Drawn from the gallery’s permanent collection, this installation brings together major works by Canadian and international artists that incorporate elements of the playful, the fantastical, the satirical, even the macabre.
Carnivals traditionally involve public celebrations and parades including elements of the circus or masquerade. But there is often something disturbing, even sinister, that functions as a counterpoint to the festive aspect of the carnival. At first glance, each work displayed here is carnivalesque in spirit. Indeed, Karel Appel’s works are exactly what they appear to be: brightly painted sculptures of happy clowns and circus animals. Similarly, Fernando Botero’s rotund Doll exhibits the amusingly inflated forms characteristic of this artist’s style. But upon further consideration, works such as Dorothy Cameron’s haunting Carousel, or Badanna Zack’s witty Trio of Great Canadians, show us the extraordinary and the satirical. And in contrast to the clowns of Appel, Stephen Livick’s Untitled, Clown,n. 81361 suggests isolation and prompts a certain sense of unease.
Playing upon themes of the extraordinary, fantasy, masquerade, or performance, the works assembled here are intended to provoke, amuse, beguile, and enchant... much like the carnival itself.
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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 Volkswagon 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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"Purely Pastel": PastelArtists.ca 17th Open Juried Exhibition
On view from August 9 to September 21, 2008
The AGH is delighted to host Pastel Artists Canada’s 17th Open Juried Exhibition in the Jean and Ross Fischer Gallery. PAC started out small in southern Ontario in 1989, and now boasts a wide membership across Canada. PAC members revel in working with the vibrancy and subtlety of dry pastel. Each year selected entries in the Juried Show stand as wonderful demonstrations of the versatility of the medium and the imagination and skill of the artists.
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*Please note that from time to time, the Jean and Ross Fischer Gallery is 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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