June 26, 2006
Media preview Tuesday, June 27, 2006, at 4:00 p.m.
OTTAWA Her Excellency the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean, Governor General of Canada, will officially open a new art exhibition entitled "DIALOGUES: the changing face of contemporary Canadian art" on Tuesday, June 27, 2006, at 5:00 p.m.
In partnership with the Canada Council Art Bank, Rideau Hall will showcase an exhibition of recent works acquired by the Art Bank, which provide a glimpse of the changing face of contemporary Canadian art.
The exhibition is comprised of 18 works of art by Canadian artists. The exhibition is intended to enhance the dialogue of inclusivity. Victoria Henry, Director of the Canada Council Art Bank, selected works that explore the themes of home, environment and identity.
Visitors to Rideau Hall will have the chance to view this temporary exhibition as part of the regular residence tours and art tours. A complete list of the summer visitor program is listed in Annex 1.
The exhibition is on loan from the Canada Council Art Bank until October 9, 2006. The Art Bank was created in 1972 to support the efforts of Canadian visual artists and to lease artwork to government and corporate offices. It now has the largest collection of contemporary Canadian art in the world.
Media Preview begins at 4 p.m.
Media are invited to view the art works and tour the exhibit with the curator, Ms. Victoria Henry, Director of the Canada Council Art Bank. The following artists will be available to speak about their work.
Shary Boyle, Toronto, OntarioJérôme Fortin, Montreal, QuébecPedro Isztin, Ottawa, OntarioManuel Lau, Montreal, Québec
Official opening of the exhibition at 5:00 p.m.
Remarks are open to the media.
Members of the media are asked to arrive at Rideau Hall through the Princess Avenue gate.
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Media information
Cynthia Jolly Information and Media ServicesRideau Hall (613) 990-2997E-mail: cjolly@gg.ca www.gg.ca
Donna Balkan, Senior Communications ManagerCanada Council for the Arts613 566-4414, ext. 4134E-mail: dbalkan@sympatico.ca
ANNEX 1
Schedule for public tours of Rideau Hall:
Rideau Hall has a long tradition of showcasing Canadian art, both historic and contemporary portraiture, landscape and sculpture, as well as antique furniture. Hundreds of Canadian works are on view in the historic State rooms of the residence.
Residence Tours:
May 6 to June 30: Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
July 4 to September 4: Daily, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (guided tours).
September 9 to October 29: Saturdays and Sundays from 12 noon to 4 p.m.Tours are offered on statutory holidays from May to October.
Art Tours:
From July 1 to September 4: Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, at 3:30 p.m. (English) and 1:30 p.m. (French)
Artists' biographies
Kristin Bjornerud
Kristin Bjornerud lives and works in Saskatoon. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Lethbridge and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Saskatchewan. "Encounter with the Bear" is part of a larger series of paintings based on dreams that I have had involving animals. These paintings frolic through the whimsical and often illogical world of superstitions, auguries, myths and fables. Working with the unconscious symbolism and imagery enables me to challenge and expand upon my research into autobiography and portraiture.
Shary Boyle
Shary Boyle is a Toronto-based artist whose practice includes drawing, painting, sculpture, and live "projected light" performance. Her work often evokes fantasy and the surreal, with drawings and paintings suggestive of fairy-tale realms and narratives.
Keesic Douglas
Keesic Douglas is an Ojibwa (Loon clan) from the Mnjikaning First Nation. He recently won an Equity Through Education scholarship to continue his studies in photography at the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto. As an Aboriginal person living in contemporary Canadian society, I am always aware of the representation of First Nations People. I am always amazed at the continual romanticizing of the mythical "Indian".
Marcel Dzama
Marcel Dzama is best known for his pen and ink drawings, which use large amounts of white space, a reduced colour palette and bizarre, ambiguous, and frequently unconnected subject matter. Dzama won the "viewer's choice" 2004 Sobey Art Award and was recently the subject of a feature article in the Sunday New York Times Magazine. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Manitoba and lives in his home town, Winnipeg.
Neil Farber
Neil Farber received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Manitoba and has had many solo and group exhibitions throughout Canada, the United States and Europe. Using a simple but expressive line drawing style that is reminiscent of children's book illustrations, Farber's work blurs the boundary between childhood fear and grown-up fantasy. He lives in Winnipeg.
Jérôme Fortin
Montreal artist Jérôme Fortin is best known for his sculpture-installations using such everyday objects as matches, bottle lids, hair pins and tin cans, often exhibited in showcases as if they were precious archeological finds. He won the Prix Pierre-Ayot in 2004 and received an Honourable Mention at the Ernst and Young 10th Great Canadian Printmaking Competition. His work has been selected for such prestigious exhibitions as the Biennale de Montréal (1998), Growth and Risk Québec in New York (2001) and Officina America in Bologna, Italy (2002).
Greg Girard
Born in Vancouver and based in Shanghai, photographer Greg Girard has recorded the changes taking place in China and across Asia for such major publications as Time and Newsweek. He published the book City of Darkness, a document of the final years of the Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong and launched the photo agency documentCHINA, an online archive specializing in contemporary photography from China. "Huashan Lu House # 1" captures the transition that Shanghai is undergoing with the demolition in the foreground, a house on its last legs in the middle ground and the new angular cityscape in the background.
Sky Glabush
Sky Glabush is a contemporary painter who is fascinated with modernist history. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts and English from the University of Saskatchewan. Born in Alert Bay, BC, he now lives in Edmonton. Consultation is an eccentric and contemporary combination of his wide‑ranging interests. Anthony Caro's sculpture shows up as a lawn ornament amid an assortment of 1950s characters.
Pedro Isztin
Pedro Isztin's photography is a testament to the limitless enrichment of the human spirit that is gained when borders are crossed and experiences shared. Born to a Colombian mother and Hungarian father, he travels regularly between Latin America, the United States and Canada, where he was born and raised. In the words of one Italian critic: "If analysis with a camera lens is also an analysis of the human spirit, Pedro Isztin has succeeded in drawing, with technique and originality, the profile of his subjects' souls". When he's not travelling, he lives in Ottawa.
Richard Hines
Richard Hines holds a Master of Fine Arts from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (now NSCAD University) in Halifax where he works as an instructor. He has been critically acclaimed as a "rising star", "a star of tomorrow" and "one of Canada's top new photo-based artists". His work has been exhibited at the Chicago International Art Fair and was featured in the exhibition Supernovas at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. "Sliced apple" is concerned with the in-between moments in family life. Its reality is not based solely on the truths or fictions it tells about us but a reality that falls somewhere outside the photograph.
Manuel Lau
Born in Peru, Manuel Lau studied printmaking at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes in Lima and was Artist in Residence at Capilano College's Art Institute in 1997-98. Now living and working in Montreal, he is a member of Atelier Circulaire, an artist-run centre specializing in printmaking. He has exhibited across Canada and has participated in numerous printmaking biennials in Peru, Poland, South Korea, Japan, and the United States. His work can be found in a variety of public and private collections, including the Hyundai Arts Centre Gallery in South Korea, the Kanagawa Prefectural Gallery in Yokohama, Japan, and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
Shawna McLeod
Born in Winnipeg, Shawna McLeod received her Bachelor of Fine Art from the University of Manitoba and is working on her Master of Fine Arts from Concordia University in Montreal, where she now lives. Her work has been exhibited in the Supernovas exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery and can be seen on the Murals of Winnipeg web site. [This work] is part of a series based on the concept of the adolescent doodle: incorporating cryptic text, "low act" tattoo parlour imagery and decorative elements with self-portraiture.
Mick Morrison
Mick Morrison is a Haida artist who has been practicing many different forms of traditional Haida art, including carvings, blanket designs, drums and painting, for 25 years. He is a member of the Stastas eagle clan, and a descendent of the late Haida chiefs Harry Edenshaw, Alberta Edward Edenshaw and Simon Gunanoot. His sculpture in argillite, inlaid with abalone shell, continues a century-old tradition of carving in this material, found only on Slate mountain in Haida Gwaii, the Queen Charlotte Islands of British Columbia. In Haida tradition, woman originated from the mussel shell, and Morrison's work, Raven Enticing Woman from the Mussel Shell is inspired by this story. He lives and works in Masset, B.C.
Annie Pootoogook
Annie Pootoogook comes from an artistic family in Cape Dorset, Nunavut. Pootoogook's drawings reflect her experience as a contemporary woman artist living and working in the changing milieu of Canada's far north. Although rooted to the specifics of time and place, her work transcends cultural boundaries and present the details of her everyday life in an engaging way. I'm trying to portray how Inuit live today and
showcase that to the audience.
Joseph Reyes
Born in the Philippines, Joseph Reyes now lives in Winnipeg. This work is part of a series I did for Supernovas at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. It is my attempt to move away from works that resemble illustrations of internal organs to ones that are more open to interpretation. It's also a move from the internal to the external; the series is inspired by sphincters and folds in the human body.
Amanda Schoppel
Sculptor Amanda Schoppel received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (now NSCAD University) and is currently finishing her Master in Fine Arts in California. My work is constructed using everyday materials. These materials often lack an archival quality, meaning that most of the work will degrade with the passing of time. By creating sculpture, drawing or installation art, I hope to offer the viewer a new, if not quirky way of looking at materials or subjects.
Paul Robles
Paul Robles' work includes photography, sculptures, installations and origami-paper cuts. Robles was born in the Philippines and now lives in Winnipeg. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from the University of Winnipeg and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of Art at the University of Manitoba. His large-scale paper-cut works were recently featured in The World is My Oyster at Winnipeg's Plug In ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art). My work conveys an uneasy mixture of cultural tradition and stereotypical fictions that engage the viewer in an unsettling dialogue about the nature of racism and sexism in our culture. Possibly an anachronism, it plays a double game: it might be frail and delicate, materially lightweight, yet it is full of powerful images of oppression and delinquency.
Adrian Williams
Adrian Williams holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Manitoba and is a founding member of the internationally celebrated art collective, The Royal Art Lodge. He has been working as an artist and musician in Montreal since 1997. Williams has participated in many group exhibitions, most recently Supernovas at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. [This was] a breakthrough piece for me: it is autobiographical. [I was] listening' to new signals around myself regarding environment (and therefore process in particular, using found objects as bases from which to work).
