The Art Dealers Association of Canada Inc. (ADAC) is a national not-for-profit
organization founded in 1966. ADAC is the only National Association of art dealers representing artists throughout Canada. ADAC maintains
a high standard of connoisseurship and adherence to ethical practice within the profession. Dealers are selected for their knowledge and
scholarship in their respective fields of expertise.
The ADAC mandate includes stimulating the art market in Canada, and encouraging the awareness of the visual arts both nationally and
abroad.
Our second annual "Art and Value" exhibition explores the question of "what gives a work of art value?"
As the world focuses on “price” and “investment”, we prefer to concentrate on the reasons behind the price. We educate ourselves about each artist and analyze multiple factors: education, exhibition history, curatorial support, collections, commercial success, awards, critical acknowledgment, and most importantly artistic merit.
Therefore, with this exhibition, I have methodically chosen specific works of art by artists from our gallery who I feel embody these qualities. The main gallery features artwork by Greg Curnoe, Aganetha Dyck, Paterson Ewen, Gathie Falk, Murray Favro, Will Gorlitz, Wanda Koop, Ron Martin, Ron Moppett, David Urban and Ed Zelenak.
While choosing each artwork, I thought about the history of each artist and selected pieces that strongly represent each artist. As it turned out, each artist is in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada and many of the pieces that I selected are quite rare, early, unique works of art.
As a way to explore the idea of value further, I have hung in our middle gallery artwork that is priced under $5000. By using price as a restriction, I want to show the diversity of what can be collected within a smaller budget.
Artwork by emerging artists Ashleigh Bartlett, Erik Olson and James Kirkpatrick hang next to works by more established artists Jordan Broadworth, Roly Fenwick, John Scott, Michael Smith and David Sorensen. I also consciously chose under $5000 works of art by a few of the artists hanging in the front gallery: Aganetha Dyck, Gathie Falk, Wanda Koop and Ed Zelenak.
On Saturday, March 1st, Mira Godard Gallery is pleased to open an exhibition of selected drawings directly from the studio of ALEX COLVILLE.
ALEX COLVILLE has had a decades-long relationship and exhibition history with Mira Godard Gallery and this is our gallery’s first Colville show since his death on July 16, 2013. A number of the works, completed between 1947 and 2008, will be exhibited for the first time.
ALEX COLVILLE was born in Toronto in 1920 and moved to Nova Scotia in 1929. From 1938 to 1942, Colville attended Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. Immediately after completing university in 1942, Colville entered the Canadian army and was appointed an official war artist, travelling overseas in 1944.
Over his long career, Colville received several honorary degrees and awards including: Companion of the Order of Canada, 1982; Governor General’s Visual and Media Arts Award, 2003 and Member of the Order of Nova Scotia, 2003. Major travelling retrospectives of his work were held at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1983, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 1994, the National Gallery of Canada in 2000 and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in 2003.
ALEX COLVILLE’s paintings, drawings and serigraphs have been exhibited extensively across North America, Europe and Asia and his work is found in major museum, corporate and private collections around the world, including: Art Gallery of Hamilton; Art Gallery of Nova Scotia; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick; Canadian War Museum, Ottawa; Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Musée National D’Art Moderne, Paris; Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Owens Art Gallery, Sackville, New Brunswick and Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne, Germany.
In August 2014, the Art Gallery of Ontario will be exhibiting a major ALEX COLVILLE exhibition of 100 paintings, drawings and serigraphs. Curated by Andrew Hunter, the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Curator of Canadian Art, the exhibition will explore Colville's enduring influence and legacy.
Newzones is pleased to present "Perception" in conjunction with Exposure 2014: Calgary / Banff / Canmore Festival of Photography on Saturday, Feb 8.
"Perception" is an exciting presentation of Newzones' process-driven and photo-based artists, curated to showcase the methods that are employed in their creative process. Newzones will also be introducing Montreal based photographer Holly King.
With the photograph at the core, "Perception" will explore artwork that is manipulated in many fashions: by way of hand with a selection of media, where photography becomes mixed with wax, paint or plexiglas. Other artists use pinhole cameras or Polaroid film to achieve a specific effect, and some utilize digital means to create and alter the images, resulting in a different effect altogether. With all of these varying methods, it's up to the viewer to determine how the photos are created.
The exhibition will feature photographers Dianne Bos (Calgary), Franco DeFrancesca (Toronto) John Folsom (Atlanta, GA), Nancy Friedland (Toronto), James Holroyd (Calgary), Joshua Jensen-Nagle (Toronto), Virginia Mak (Toronto), Donald Sultan (New York City, NY) and introducing Holly King (Montreal).
"Saudade" - New Work From Iceland, China and Brazil 2007-2014
Saudade is the organizing theme for this work. It’s a unique Portuguese word that has no immediate translation in English. A taxi driver introduced me to this concept as I made the 4-hour journey between Jericoacoara and São Luís in northeast Brazil. Roughly stated, it refers to a longing, a melancholy, a desire for what was or what could be – a desire to be someplace anywhere but the present.
In this instance, I’m photographing the landscape as a sort of dream state where we float above and wander through with no prescribed destination. The figures and landscapes in these images are neither of this world or the other, but in between. Collected over a 6-year period in Iceland, China and Brazil the images chronicle a landscape that shifts from primitive and raw to one of escape and beauty.
“The famous saudade of the Portuguese is a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present, a turning towards the past or towards the future; not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming wistfulness. ~ In Portugal of 1912, A. F. G. Bel”
Opening Night: May 22nd with Artist in attendance
Opening Saturday, March 8, 12-4 PM
Born in London, England, Brooks came to Toronto with his parents at an early age. For a year, he took evening classes at the Toronto Central Technical School (c. 1928) and at the Ontario College of Art for six months under Frank Johnston. He then traveled and painted in England, France, Spain, and in the United States in Woodstock, New York. On his return to Canada, he settled in Toronto and in 1935 married Reva Silverman. He taught drawing, painting and graphic arts at the Northern Vocational School, was active in art circles and participated in most of the major exhibitions in Canada and the U.S. He joined the Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve in May 1943. During his posting as a war artist (August 1944 - May 1946), he painted the movements of an aircraft carrier in the waters of Scotland and the activities of mine sweepers and motor torpedo boats in the English Channel off Normandy.
Following his discharge, he went to Mexico on a grant to study and decided to take up residence there with his wife Reva. There he developed an abstract style using collage, acrylic, watercolor, oil and casein that is used in his work from the 60's and 70's.
His work is represented in the Art Gallery of Ontario, National Gallery of Canada and the Mexico City Museum of Modern Art.
Newzones is pleased to open "Interjections", a solo show by Sarah Nind in conjunction with Exposure 2014: Calgary/Banff/Canmore Festival of Photography.
By interjecting pattern into her visual language, Nind's current work is addressing ideas of pattern and the decorative arts, and its juxtaposition/collision with the "high" art image. Undoubtedly, we are living in a world that is increasingly visual, with multi-leveled systems of language becoming the norm. This juxtaposition questions language and our understanding of seemingly disparate systems. Is pattern a language with which we structure a world that is chaotic and undefined?
Recently named as one of Whitehot Magazine's Critic Picks top artists of 2013, Sarah Nind attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris in 1979. In 1994, she obtained a Master's Degree in Fine Arts from York University in Toronto and has since completed her Doctorate at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee Switzerland. Most recently, Nind has completed a three year residency in Beijing, China. Nind has exhibited extensively through Canada, the United States and abroad, including China, Switzerland and Israel. She has shown and been collected by the National Gallery of Canada and is in the permanent collections of the Tom Thompson Memorial Gallery, the Prague House of Photography in Czechoslovakia, and the Elvehjem Museum of Art in Wisconsin among others. As an Associate Professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Nind has also been named to the National Gallery of Canada's artist advisory committee on the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography in Ottawa.
We are pleased to announce our fourth solo exhibition of work by Sarah Anne Johnson, which addresses the psychology and physicality of intimacy.
In “Wonderlust,” Johnson intends these photographs to “explore the internal world of sexual intimacy. To show what it looks and feels like. Some of these images represent desires for romance, ecstasy and emotional connection, while others depict boredom, self doubt and personal disappointment.” The impetus of this project was Johnson’s desire to tackle a new and challenging subject. Although intimacy was not commonly a topic of discussion in her own life, Johnson broached the theme with friends; some of whom became early subjects. They, and others, introduced her to people they knew who might consider posing. She travelled to several cities to photograph her subjects in their homes during the day. Johnson followed the lead of her subjects, initially photographing them in the nude, while some couples chose to engage in sexual activity, which she documented with their consent. She then worked with the resulting prints in her studio.
Early into her practice Johnson was disappointed with how her photographs only conveyed part of the story. In her previous series “Tree Planting” and “The Galapagos Project,” in an effort to tell a larger truth, she constructed models and made elaborate sets that she would stage to represent something she was unable to otherwise photograph. Showing the documentary photographs alongside the fabricated photographs achieved her ambitions. As in her previous series, “Arctic Wonderland,” she uses the photograph as a base for manipulation to fabricate the image. Adding materials such as paints, re-touching inks and glitter, as well as incorporating burning, scratching and gouging, each photograph is a unique attempt to make visual what is felt physically and emotionally while in the warmth of intimacy or the throws of ecstasy.
The interplay between the authenticity of the couples seen in their domestic surroundings and her manipulations of the photograph’s surface are sometimes raw, tender or ecstatic. These additions convey the wide range of physical and emotional experiences of intimacy and sex. They also serve to obscure the identities of her subjects and retain the privacy of these intimate moments; whether escapist, tantric, ridiculous, aggressive or lonely - each piece exposes a deeply personal moment. Johnson explores, critiques and celebrates lovemaking and sexuality as a whole. As an onlooker, we feel the tension between voyeurism, bashfulness and sentimentality.
In characteristic form, Johnson has conceived of this as a self contained project, as in “Tree Planting,” “The Galapagos Project,” “House on Fire” and most recently “Arctic Wonderland.” Johnson received her MFA from Yale University and a BFA from University of Manitoba. Her work is featured in numerous public collections including the Guggenheim Museum, NY; The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC; The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, and The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, each of which has extensive holdings of her work. She was prominently featured in the “Oh, Canada” show at Mass MOCA and she has recently received commissions from Louis Vuitton, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, and the Bank of Montreal.
Bev Rodin is an internationally collected Canadian artist known for her accomplished, contemporary and distinctive paintings of light and atmosphere interpreted on large-scale canvases. Her acrylic paintings on canvas explore unusual lighting, transparency, abstraction, universality, movement, colour and connections between them. She is also interested in the universal human responses and relationships to natural landscapes, water and the beauty of natural geometries.
Artist reception Saturday, May 3, 2014, 1- 3 pm
Exhibition continues until May 14
