Upcoming Exhibitions 
|
GALLERY LEVEL ONE
Ticketed Admission applies to Level One exhibitions.
AGH Members receive Free Admission to all exhibitions.
|
Modernist Photographs from the National Gallery of Canada
Organized by the National Gallery of Canada
On view October 12, 2009 to January 3, 2010
|
|
Today, that photography is considered an art form is taken for granted. This wasn’t always the case. At the turn of the 20th century and well into its first decades, debates were waged concerning photography’s purpose and status in the art world. It was a fascinating and formative period for the medium, and one that is beautifully traced in Modernist Photographs from the National Gallery of Canada. The exhibition, which features over 100 groundbreaking images, chronicles the origins of modern photography and includes many of the movement’s most transformative and iconic images.
Photographers working during the first half of the 20th century — including Man Ray, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Lisette Model, Margaret Bourke-White, Alexander Rodchenko, and André Kertész, to name only a few included in this exhibition — thrived on experimentation. Creating their images within the context of such art movements as Cubism, Futurism, Surrealism, Expressionism, and Constructivism, the artists introduced a range of new techniques and subject matter while seeking to redefine the role of art in a world transformed by industrialization and war. As such, modern photography reflected an exciting change that was occurring generally in the art world; indeed, it was during this period that photography defined itself as an independent artistic form.
Tracing the evolution of photography from its documentary and pictorialist roots into an expressive and inventive art form, the exhibition presents urban, industrial, and city views translated into abstract forms as well as human subjects no longer represented as ideal standards of beauty, but rather as reflections of the photographer’s interest in formal and psychological expression. Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother, reproduced here, is one such evocative image.
Presenting the work of over 65 international artists — including Hamilton-born Margaret Watkins (1884–1969) — the exhibition offers a unique time capsule of the making of photography in the modern era.
| Media Partner: |
 |
| Exhibition Partner: |
 |
|
BACK TO TOP |
Jesse Boles: Crude Landscapes
On view September 26, 2009 to January 17, 2010
Curated by Sara Knelman
Jesse Boles graduated from Ryerson University in Photographic Studies in 2005 and has been gaining attention in the Toronto art scene and beyond for his decadnet images of 21st century industrial landscapes. His large-scale photographs approach industrial sites as contemporary landscape without judgement or agenda. His compositions consciously build upon the tradition of 19th-century landscape painting, and impress us with the sublime scale of modern industry. By photographing many of his scenes at night or dawn, when natural light is dwindling or gone, Boles also calls to mind cinematic scenes: his images often trace zones of industrial activity through the artificial light that illuminates the sites. The lengthy exposures needed to make the photographs in these conditions record the passage of time in the movement of light over the image, and evoke the experience of watching them over a duration.
Boles has been working in the Hamilton area to expand his Crude Landscapes series with new photographs shot through the Spring and Summer, 2009. The resulting new work will be shown for the first time at the AGH this fall. In light of the recent developments at the steel factories in Hamilton, this exhibition will offer a chance to reflect on the way that these landscapes contribute to the history and mythology of the city, and how their loss or diminishment will affect Hamilton’s rapidly changing identity.
|
BACK TO TOP |
Nature Observed: Dutch Painting at the Art Gallery of Hamilton
On view September 26, 2009 to January 17, 2010
Curated by Dr. Patrick Shaw Cable
Nature Observed spotlights the Gallery’s collection of Dutch paintings, which for many years have constituted a modestly sized yet excellent component of the institution’s European holdings. Several of the works came to the Gallery as offerings from historic AGH patrons, among them John Penman, Muriel Bostwick, Margaret Galbreaith, and Ruth McCuaig. Still others were purchases made respectively in the 1960s and ’80s through the generosity of the Gallery’s Women’s Committee and Volunteer Committee (the new name for the Women’s Committee in 1977).
The Dutch collection at the AGH splits into a broad balance between paintings from the two most celebrated periods and schools of Dutch art — the great Golden Age of the 17th century, and the later 19th century dominated by the Hague school. Both eras of Dutch art exhibit a distinctive naturalist sensibility and attention to everyday subject matter. In the Dutch Golden Age, commercial wealth and pride in the newly emerging Protestant nation inspired artists to study and reflect the life around them with fresh eyes. Merchants replaced Church and nobility as artistic patrons, shifting the market toward genre (scenes of common life), landscape, and portraiture, and away from the history painting dominating the rest of Europe. Later, artists of the Hague school rediscovered inspiration from the naturalistic heights reached by their 17th-century forebears, combining this with the Realist influence of their own contemporaries in France, the Barbizon school. Nature Observed features several important artists of Holland’s Golden Age, such as Jan Verspronck, one of 17th-century Haarlem’s leading portraitists, and Jacob Willemsz. de Wet and Arent de Gelder, two of Rembrandt’s close followers. Among the Hague school artists are Anton Mauve (cousin-in-law and early teacher of Vincent van Gogh), Albert Neuhuys, and Willem Roelofs. Supplementing the paintings in the exhibition is a small group of etchings, including works by Rembrandt, one of the master printmakers of all time, and Adriaen van Ostade, the major Dutch etcher of his day next to Rembrandt.
|
BACK TO TOP |
Photography into Painting
On view October 10, 2009 to January 3, 2010
Curated by Dr. Patrick Shaw Cable
Bouncing off the modernist photography exhibition on tour from the National Gallery, Photography into Painting provides a colourful and fun look at a later period, when artists of the 1970s and 80s were inspired to mimic on a large scale in painting or other media the exact overall detail offered by the photograph. Variously called Photorealism, Super Realism, or Hyper Realism, this intensely and unabashedly photographic approach originated in the United States in the 1960s yet continues to drive otherwise diverse artists — among them, two in the exhibition — Newfoundland painter Mary Pratt, known for her personal domestic subjects; and Spanish-born Canadian Cesar Santander, continually enamoured by the airbrushed, over-life-sized rendering of little tin toys and circus figurines.
Highlighting the start of Photorealism, Photography into Painting includes large graphics by major heroes of Pop art (Hamilton, Lichtenstein, Rosenquist, and Warhol), the larger movement from which Photorealism sprung as an offshoot. Original Photorealists shared Pop’s embrace of commercial photographic imagery and techniques, and its detached replication of mass-produced objects and of contemporary urban or suburban structures and life. Four works in the exhibition are the creations of Edmonton-born painter John Hall now resident in British Columbia. Hall’s flashy acrylic Cover and its accompanying three-dimensional model illustrate a departure from Photorealism’s typical replication of a photograph. Instead, Hall prepared early paintings like Cover by imaginatively selecting common objects and carefully arranging them in a glass-covered box, which then served him as maquette for his painted duplication on the two-dimensional surface of his canvas.
|
BACK TO TOP |
New Acquisition
|
Pascal Grandmaison: New Acquisitions
On view in the AGH Entrance Foyer, Fall 2009
The AGH strives to maintain the highest integrity for the collection through acquisition of pivotal works by contemporary artists, regional and national, that continue to exert a profound impact on Canada’s cultural landscape. It is with great pleasure that we present two recent acquisitions by Pascal Grandmaison: Verre 8 and Verre 9, both from 2004.
For his Verre series, the Montreal-based Grandmaison asked individuals – mainly friends and acquaintances – to pose in his studio while holding a sheet of glass, like a diplodged window pane, in front of them. The models generally look down, away from the viewer. Their averted gazes and the barrier created by the glass create a sense of containment within the picture plane, and an exciting tension between the viewer and the image. The images from this series first brought international acclaim to Grandmaison, and are a foundation for the artist’s ongoing investigations of the barrier between frame and subject.
Grandmaison has consistently demonstrated a rigorous approach to his art-making, a commitment to innovation in photographic and film media, and an unyielding sense of direction as he expands his practice. The AGH is delighted to have the opportunity to collect three key works from two distinct periods of his production: Verre 8 and Verre 9, on view on the main entrance wall, as well as Increasingly Empty Forms: 1928-1999, 2008. All three works were on view in a recent exhibition at the AGH, Pascal Grandmaison: Double Take (September 27, 2008 to January 5, 2009). A full colour catalogue with curatorial essays, created in collaboration with the Carleton University Art Gallery, is now available.
|
BACK TO TOP |
|
 |
 |
|
Free admission to
GALLERY
LEVEL TWO
exhibitions
courtesy of:
Attracted to exhibition inspired or unique merchandise?
Interested in renting
or purchasing art
displayed in the Café
or Front Lobby?
Click here for
Shop at AGH.
Teachers!
Interested in bringing
your class for a
guided exhibition tour
and/or a studio workshop?
Click here for
School Tour information.
Have a group of 10 or
more adults and interested
in a guided tour of
GALLERY LEVEL ONE exhibitions?
Click here for
Group Tour rates.
|
|
