Curators from the National Gallery of Canada began scouring the globe a few years ago to find, in the words of one of them, “great” contemporary art.

Richard Bell Life on a Mission, 2009 Acrylic on canvas National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa Purchased 2011 © Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery Photo © NGC

The only other ingredient beyond “greatness,” according to the gallery’s chief aboriginal curator Greg Hill, was that the artists had to be “indigenous,” a term generally referring to the original people of a particular geographic area who, over the centuries, have been swamped by colonists to the point of becoming a minority.

In the Americas, indigenous refers generally to First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people. But there are indigenous minorities in Scandinavia, Taiwan, India, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, and other countries.

Once examples of “great” indigenous contemporary art were identified, Hill and his team selected the best of the best and created the newly opened exhibition Sakahan, the largest show ever staged by the National Gallery in its history. Sakahan fills the usual prime temporary exhibition space on the main floor, expands into rooms in the contemporary wing of the building and fills the second floor exhibition space normally displaying temporary shows of prints, photographs or drawings.

There is no overall theme to the show. That gave the curators the freedom to concentrate on the truly “great” and not feel restricted to selecting art that fit into a particular thematic box.

That tactic was wise. The show is indeed great. The “wow factor” is higher than anything the gallery has done since Diana Nemiroff stopped curating contemporary shows there many years ago.

Rebecca Belmore's Fringe is part of the new exhibit at the National Gallery of Canada. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Purchased 2011 Photo © NGC

Among the Canadian highlights is Rebecca Belmore’s photograph called Fringe. A nude aboriginal woman lies on a mat. On her back, a horrific looking scar travels from her left shoulder to her right hip. Blood-red lines (beaded strings, actually) drip from the scar.

In this one scene, Belmore has encapsulated the history of violence against aboriginal people, especially aboriginal women. The beadwork is a nod to traditional aboriginal handicraft but the medium – photography – is very much a contemporary, Western form of expression.

Similar themes related to violence and colonialism and marginalization do run through many of the artworks from around the world, from Australia to Lapland.

The wow factor is also high with the photographs by Maori artist Fiona Pardington from New Zealand. She has photographed the life-casts of the heads of some Maori and other South Pacific indigenous men that were created between 1837 and 1840 under the orders of French explorer Jules-Sebastien-Cesar Dumont d’Urville.

By chance, the artist discovered a trove of these heads — some of her own ancestors — at a Paris museum in 2007. The resulting photographs of these heads are simultaneously horrifying and hypnotic and definitely a reminder of the colonial era when indigenous peoples were treated more like wild animal specimens than humans.

Two Ottawa artists are in the exhibition. There is a Jeff Thomas photograph from a series he did spoofing the statue of Samuel de Champlain on Nepean Point. And there are two drawings by Ottawa-based Inuit artist Annie Pootoogook, one a self-portrait lying down and another unusually large one for her (about 3 metres by 1.5 metres) showing a scene in Cape Dorset of Inuit shoppers peering into a large freezer in a grocery store. That scene naturally makes one think of that old joke about a salesman who was so skilled he could sell “a refrigerator to an Eskimo.” These drawings are two of the most technically skilled I have seen Pootoogook do. She has had a rough patch the last few years, basically living on the street. Let’s hope she gets back to a stable life and lots of drawing.

Sakahan continues at the National Gallery until Sept. 2.

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So there I was at the Bytown Museum savouring local history. I was fascinated by the plaster cast made from the hand of the very dead Thomas D’Arcy McGee after his assassination on Sparks Street April 7, 1868. I marvelled at the brass clock hand, almost a metre in length, that graced the Victoria Tower of Parliament before the original buildings were destroyed by fire Feb. 3, 1916. And then there was the slide show of Mexican Day of the Dead festivities.

©MUSÉE BYTOWN MUSEUM. Photo: G. Iddon.

Now, why, you may wonder, was such a slide show doing at a museum dedicated to celebrating the history of Canada’s capital? Before answering, take note there were more, many more, inappropriate objects, all of them Mexican, mere steps away from displays on Col. John By, engineer of the Rideau Canal, and Joseph Montferrand, the legendary Ottawa River raftsman whose surname was once proposed by Quebec bureaucrats as the moniker for the amalgamated city of Aylmer-Hull-Gatineau.

Along with the slideshow, there was a cornucopia of Mexican trinkets: contemporary knock-offs of masks used in ancient dances, embroidery, textiles, photos of indigenous people and text panels boasting of the increased trade relationship between Canada and Mexico. These words and objects are all part of a new Bytown exhibition, lasting almost a year, called Mexico Fantastico! (The exclamation mark is courtesy of the Bytown, not me.)

Now, I have nothing against Mexico. In fact, I spend part of every year there. I love Mexican art and crafts. A large percentage of my time in Mexico is spent visiting the country’s many wonderful museums, including some specializing in folk art and quality handicrafts. Every visitor to Mexico City should stop at the Museo de Arte Popular. It is a real gem and elevates gaudily painted wooden monsters called alebrijes into fascinating cultural touchstones.

©MUSÉE BYTOWN MUSEUM. Photo: G. Iddon.

Simply put, Mexico Fantastico! is not fantastico. It resembles a low-end souvenir shop at the Mexico City airport or a display at a trade show designed to lure package tourists to Mexican beaches. All that is missing is a draw for a free bottle of tequila.

In a May 3 communique, the Bytown’s executive director, Robin Etherington, seemed to anticipate some head-scratching provoked by the Mexican exhibition: “Etherington explains the reason for this exhibition in a community museum is because the Mexican community is a vibrant part of the Ottawa community that is comprised of a number of significant groups from around the world. Also, Ottawa is the Capital of Canada and its diplomatic centre that brings together international cultures and ideas to enhance the City of Ottawa and enriches the learning opportunities of our young people and deepens our appreciation for Ottawa and Canada’s crucial place in the world.”  She adds that “the Bytown Museum’s mandate is the history of Ottawa and that entails the various ethnic groups and world cultures that make up Ottawa. It is the museum’s distinct honour to partner with the Embassy of Mexico and the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Gatineau to present to our community people and travelling visitors a fun exhibition to enjoy and learn about México and Ottawa.’”

How do you say “long-winded claptrap” in Spanish?

What’s next? An exhibition on ethical manufacturers in Bangladesh? The joys of surfing in Indonesia? How does that all fit with Lady Minto’s 1900-era elegant black gown tucked away in one corner of the museum?

The Bytown Museum, like most small museums, has little money to spend on exhibitions. Ordinarily, the museum does a magnificent job with a tiny budget.
Embassies, even when paying most or all costs, struggle to find venues to showcase exhibitions of art and artifacts from back home. Galerie Montcalm, Gatineau’s leading art gallery, occasionally does so-called “embassy” shows. The Canadian Museum of Civilization has developed close ties with state museums in other countries. But Ottawa’s galleries and museums are generally more reluctant to become part of the embassy circuit. Evidently, not the Bytown Museum.

The Mexican embassy deserves credit for many programs over the years introducing its country’s art, music and other cultural products to Canadians. In fact, the Mexicans are one of the more active embassies in this field. However, Mexico Fantastico! is not what we have come to expect.

Dear old Col. By must be spinning in his grave as he listens to the endless recorded mariachi music playing nearby.

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No one paints losers like Michael Harrington. They can be seen alone, or in pathetic groupings, mumbling and grumbling, stuck in some pseudo-macho past, out of synch with the present and definitely with no happy future in sight.

Raconteur by Michael Harrington

Harrington’s canvases tend to be small. So all these aging monosyllabic nerds are like tiny impressionistic figures seen hazily through a telescope.  We are voyeurs peering into their club houses, pool halls, bars and campgrounds. Their only female companionship: Playboy centrefolds pasted to the walls of their dreary abodes. Those centrefolds are as  close as these guys will ever get to beautiful women unless their favourite spit-on-the-floor beer parlour happens to hire a cute waitress.

A new show of Harrington’s haunting works has opened at Galerie St. Laurent + Hill in the Market and continues until May 15. Harrington’s work is addictive. His fans are many.

We are simultaneously repelled and attracted to these pictures of a certain underbelly of society — the aging bachelors, the funny uncles and the luckless unemployed we all have in our neighbourhoods and in our extended families.

Upon arriving early for the vernissage of Harrington’s show, about half or more of the works had already sold. Ottawa residents do buy some art, although gallery owners are usually complaining that this town is not kind to artists. Complaints like that are often from Guy Berube, owner of another Byward Market gallery, La Petite Mort. The night of the Harrington opening, Berube was in the midst of hanging a new exhibition by Andrew Salgado, a Canadian ex-pat living in London who is making waves internationally with his unusual portraits of handsome, virile young men – definitely not the men in Harrington’s paintings.

“Sold out,” Berube said. “That’s the first time that has ever happened.”

All the works in the Salgado exhibition were sold online before the show even opened. The purchasers tended to be foreign. Salgado, like many a Canadian artist, first found fame abroad.

Back at the Harrington show, talk turned to two recent deaths within the Ottawa art community. Potter Jim Thomson, lord of the Gatineau Hills retreat called Lolaland, died recently of cancer and will be missed by many. The other death was that of Margaret Lunt. That name may not be familiar. That is because Margaret, as everyone called her, was the mother of the artist Evergon. Margaret was very much his muse and his model for many of his elaborately staged photographs. (Remember Ramba Mama in the Ram Boys series? That was Margaret). A full-frontal nude photograph of 80-something Margaret almost made the front page of The Ottawa Citizen a decade ago. But that’s a story for another day.

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Back in the 1990s, there was a trio of young Hull artists, painters every one, who were all tagged for success: Jean-Francois Provost, Dominik Sokolowski, and Claude Marquis.

And all three did find success. Provost and Sokolowski started painting abstracts that became popular locally and beyond. Marquis headed in a different direction. He started out exhibiting his dark and dramatic portrait-like paintings, the artworld’s version of film noir, in such bars as Mercury Lounge, Market Station and Le Café 4 Jeudis. And then, in 2003, came his big show, a critical and popular success called Nature Boy, at the prestigious Galerie Montcalm in Hull.

An example from the Crusades series. By Claude Marquis.

But not long after, Marquis and his paintings disappeared. And then, suddenly in 2010, Marquis reappeared in a series of eye-popping publicity photos for his musical adventure called The PepTides. The publicity stills were artworks in themselves, courtesy of another rising star, photo-artist Jonathan Hobin.

The PepTides, initially, were not exactly a band, seeing as how the ensemble only contained Marquis, the effervescent Deedee Butters and largely computer-generated backup. But The PepTides, as much musical theatre as music, became a hometown success and blossomed into a crowded stage of nine singers and musicians performing at such venues as the Elmdale Tavern, Black Sheep, and Fourth Stage.

And now Marquis, the musician, wants to resume his painting career. But first, he wants to sell off his earlier canvases, most of them conveying a tragic tale. A one-night sale will be held May 4 from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. at Patrick Gordon Framing, 160 Elm St. The public is invited. The PepTides will be serenading.

Marquis’s paintings have explored various themes: religion in such series as the Crusades, Satan and the Saints; character study in A Streetcar Named Desire and Nature Boy; and fatherhood in The Teflon Father.

In the artist’s own words, Marquis “captures the foreboding beauty” of his subjects “by combining portraiture in atmospheric settings, revealing both the stoicism and the vulnerability of humanity.”

Expect to see troubled characters pointing guns, tortured looking saints and sinners and daddies extremely hard to love. Examples of Marquis’s art can be seen on his Facebook page.

The following is an email interview with Marquis:

By Claude Marquis

ARTFUL BLOGGER:  Why and when did you stop painting?

CLAUDE MARQUIS: I was sitting on a mini-goldmine. The songs I had written since I was a young lad numbered in the hundreds. So I sold my tiny house in Hull and played a gambit: I bought some home recording gear and founded a new music project called The PepTides (inspired by the documentary What The Bleep Do We Know?, which deals with the neuropeptides of addiction). To do it right, I simply wanted to put all my time and energy into music at the time. Now that The PepTides are firmly grounded with six albums recorded and a great band to boot, I can return to painting as planned.

AB: Many of your older paintings are very dark. People (even some children) are pointing guns. There are images of people who look like the newly dead. Why all the gloom?

CM: Guns, kids, death, religion, zombies. Perhaps I was prophesying current headlines. The trick is to not create shock art for shock’s sake but to capture an atmosphere of unease while still creating something of beauty.

AB: You were painting abstracts for awhile. Is that what you are doing now?

CM: I’m back to painting people. Portraits, but within themes. I’m currently working on an installation of sorts: 20 paintings, 10 of a dude and 10 of a chick in the same pose but with colour changes in the skin as the background evolves from dawn to dusk. If this were another prophecy, it might mean that we are running out of time.

AB: Is Claude Marquis the musician very different from Claude Marquis the painter?

CM: We are both very dedicated to our crafts. We both have to spend many hours alone to create. We both observe humans in fascination and dread.

AB: Tell us something absolutely wonderful or shocking about The PepTides these days.

CM: We are wonderfully and shockingly talented. There’s enough talent to forever create music and concepts for more albums and live shows. At first the band revolved around my songs, but now all nine of us, singers and instrumentalists, are composing music and writing lyrics. We all came together to create our last concept album, Revenge of the Vinyl Cafe, a collection of songs based on the short stories in CBC Radio host Stuart McLean’s recent book. That, and there may be a costume change at our future live shows involving leather and chaps.

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Some names are familiar, Eve being one. But others are less known and, centuries later, still influence the way women are viewed and treated in Christian countries.

Lot's Daughters (Clare, Emma). Photo by Olivia Johnston

Eve, Jael, Tamar, and Susannah are all women found in Old Testament Bible stories. Eve, of course, is the world’s original temptress, supposedly responsible for all men’s sins and for all the pain women must bear in childbirth. Not exactly a role model. The other women were raped, abused, maligned, and treated like chattel.

Ottawa photographer Olivia Johnston has created a body of work, titled Fallen, in which contemporary women pose as these various Biblical characters. The work will be exhibited at La Petite Mort Gallery from April 26 to May 2. The vernissage is April 26 from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.

I received, online, an advance peek at some of the portraits. They are haunting and powerful. But one can expect nothing less from Johnston, a Carleton University art history student who is fast becoming one of Ottawa’s more intriguing photo-artists. The following is a partial transcript of an email interview with Johnston:

ARTFUL BLOGGER: What was the inspiration for you to embark on this photo series?

OLIVIA JOHNSTON: I have always had an interest in women’s and gender issues, and my interest in this merged with thoughts of historical art and the Bible when I began seriously studying art history.I recall a moment when I was sitting in class, looking at a print depicting the Virgin Mary. I began to imagine a scenario where, on her deathbed, she had sudden doubts about the existence of a Christian God.

The women of the Bible are presented to us in the context of the men in the Bible, so their voices are effectively silenced. I began to imagine who these women of the Bible might have been. What kind of women would they have been? Who would they have loved? What were their everyday concerns? How did they deal with the harsh and unforgiving culture in which they lived?

Jephthah's Daughter (Nancy). Photo by Olivia Johnston.

AB: What kinds of instructions did you give to your models? Were they asked to assume a certain look or a certain pose?

OJ: I instruct my models, but gently; each sitter brings themselves to the shoot. For these images, my sitters knew that they were portraying characters, and had read the stories of their respective characters before the shoot.

Despite the fact that my models are depicting characters here, I brought as much of my models’ own physical presence into the image as possible. Consequently, these images are a curious blend between the stories in the Bible, my literal and visual interpretation of those stories, and all of the emotion, preconceived notions, personal interpretations, and everyday concerns that my sitter brings to the shoot.

AB: The photographs portray women that, to me, echo Old Masters paintings yet the women simultaneously look contemporary. Was this your intention?

OJ: I’ve always had a great deal of admiration for works by the Old Masters, and my studies in Art History have definitely influenced my aesthetic. The majority of Biblical artwork was not created in contemporary society, and so I think it is important to reference the history of these images when recreating them.

Historical artwork plays such a fundamental role in our society’s understanding and interpretation of art. By referencing these works, I can tap into people’s subconscious knowledge, and contextualize my own images in historical art. However, it is also extremely important to contemporize these stories so their significance is not lost on modern audiences. In creating these images, I was very conscious of their historical references, but also of maintaining their relevance for modern audiences.

AB: Does the Bible still influence the way women are seen today in Western society?

OJ: In my opinion, yes; the Bible is still studied by an enormous number of people and its word is still taken as unquestionable truth by many. Consequently, this text cannot help but affect people’s views and beliefs, including their views and beliefs about women.

This series’ intention is to highlight the female characters who are present in the Bible, to re-contextualize their stories, and to push the viewer to question the presence and influence of these stories on society at large. More generally, it is important to acknowledge and understand the impact of any historical influence on a society that is striving for social progress.

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Big banks have taken a beating recently for importing foreign workers to steal the jobs of Canadians. So, for a change of pace, let me say something positive about one of those big banks: TD Bank Group.

The bank we once knew as Toronto-Dominion began acquiring artwork in the 1960s. In 1967, Canada’s Centennial, the bank started collecting Inuit art. Thankfully, the bank is still collecting and you can see some of its recent star acquisitions in the ground floor lobby of the National Arts Centre in an exhibition titled Inuit Ullumi: Inuit Today.

The exhibition is part of the NAC’s Northern Scene, which officially continues from April 25 to May 4, although many of the art shows associated with this multi-venue extravaganza are already running and will continue after the festival officially ends.

Face Transforming and Singing, by Annie Pootoogook

The TD show truly gives us Inuit art of “today.” There is a mixture of sculptures and drawings, but these are not your traditional scenes of hunters, mothers, and mythological creatures. Instead, we see a stone sculpture of a young man listening to his MP3 player and very realistic looking domestic scenes from the likes of Ottawa-based Annie Pootoogook and the very “in” Dorset-based artist Shuvinai Ashoona.

Many of the artists in the TD show are also part of the far larger and more spectacular exhibition called Dorset Seen at Carleton University Art Gallery. Participating artists include the aforementioned Pootoogook and Ashoona, plus such other Inuit art stars as Tim Pitsiulak and Ovilu Tunnillie.

Both of these exhibitions demonstrate how contemporary Inuit artists are increasingly daring to show, not just an idealized Arctic, but a land which like the rest of the world watches television, drives motorized vehicles and has social problems related to family violence, substance abuse, and other ills.

One Northern Scene exhibition in the Firestone Gallery at the Ottawa Art Gallery is called Takushurnaituk: Things Never Seen Before. This a sculpture exhibition built around one large stone work in the Firestone Collection called Ijitualik (One-eyed Figure) by Aisa Qumaaluk Sivuaraapik from Puvirnituq in northern Quebec. All the other works in the exhibition are borrowed from other collections and are unusual examples of sculptures from the same region.

Down the hall at the Ottawa Art Gallery is an art rental office, which also stages exhibitions and currently has a solo show by photographer Barry Pottle, an Inuit man originally from Labrador but now living in Ottawa. Pottle is one of the rising stars of the Inuit art world. His photographs juxtapose the old and the new, creating scenes, for example, of traditional Inuit ulu knives arranged in a still life motif with shiny silver tin cans from a supermarket.

Cape Dorset at Night, by Itee Pootoogook.

These are just some of the many art exhibitions around the city linked to Northern Scene. The shows offer the next best thing to an actual visit to the Arctic and, for that, we can thank companies like TD, who may offer ridiculously low rates on savings accounts but do spend some of the millions of dollars wrung from your hard-earned cash on some superb art we can all enjoy.

Visit Northern Scene for event information. Most of the art exhibitions are free except for those at the National Gallery of Canada and other national museums.

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Carnival III, Jacmel, 2011 © Benoit Aquin

The spectacular Haitian exhibition Vodou, which opened last year at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, will continue as the main show at the museum throughout the coming summer.

So, if you saw the show already and became intrigued with Haitian culture, then you might be interested in a new Haitian photo exhibition at the McCord Museum in Montreal.

The exhibition is titled Haiti: Chaos and Daily Life and contains dozens of large-scale colour photographs, some terrifying and some moving, by internationally renowned Montreal photographer Benoit Aquin, whose work is found in several prestigious collections, including that of the National Gallery of Canada.

The backdrop for the photographs is the 7.3 magnitude earthquake on January 12, 2010, that killed 220,000 people, injured 300,000 others and left 1 million homeless. Much of the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince was left in ruins. Much rebuilding still needs to be done.

There are many images of destruction, bodies in the streets, ruined buildings, makeshift outdoor hospitals. The most poignant scene shows a pile of rubble covering a woman. All we can see of her is one hand sticking out of the mess. There is pink nail polish on her swollen fingers.

But there are also photographs showing Haitians’ lust for life, wearing outlandish costumes, dancing and generally partying in the annual pre-lenten carnivals that came just a few months after the quake. No quake could stop those parties.

Ceremony II, Souvenance, 2011 © Benoit Aquin

Some of those carnival scenes were shot in the seaside town of Jacmel, where I holidayed a few times in the 1970s and fell in love with this vibrant community of lively street bands, tasty Caribbean food, and French colonial buildings. Some of those buildings I recognized. It was like seeing photos of a friend after a car crash.

Some of the images show scenes of voodoo ceremonies. Many are of women caught up in a voodoo frenzy, their eyes rolled back in their heads, as they move jerkily like marionettes. In one scene, a group of white-clothed women perform some unnamed ceremony in a muddy, rushing river. They can barely keep their heads above the waterline – a metaphor for all of Haiti these days.

Alongside the photographs are poignant quotations from a book called The World is Moving Around Me: A Memoir of the Haiti Earthquake by Haitian-Canadian author, Dany Laferrière.

Haiti: Chaos and Daily Life continues at the McCord Museum, 690 Sherbrooke St. W. in downtown Montreal until May 12. McGill is the closest Metro stop. For information visit www.mccord-museum.qc.ca.

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Rosalie Favell, "I Awoke to Find My Spirit had Returned." See the photo of Xena on the wall?

Ottawa photo-artist Rosalie Favell has an alter-ego and it’s none other than the supernatural cult heroine, Xena, Princess Warrior.

Images of the kitschy Xena pop up all over the place in Favell’s new photo exhibition at Cube Gallery. Favell poses as Xena, or places a small image of the Princess Warrior in the most unlikeliest of places, including the bedroom wall of little Dorothy (Favell, actually) awakening after her magical experiences in the land of Oz.

Originally from Winnipeg, Favell is not the only Canadian celebrity to appropriate Xena. Mary Walsh’s over-the-top CBC television character of Marg Delahunty, Princess Warrior, has for many years been wielding a sword, “smiting” Canadian politicians from the prime minister on down. Let’s just say Favell’s Xena has more class than Walsh’s loud-mouthed version.

Favell’s work is familiar to visitors to the National Gallery of Canada and its offspring, the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, as well as Ottawa Art Gallery and Karsh-Masson Gallery. But Favell is not a regular at commercial art galleries in Ottawa, so this exhibition at Cube is a rare opportunity to purchase some of her work, which varies from mischievous to thought-provoking.

The exhibition contains work both old and new. My particular favourites are the tweaked images of Xena and a series of extreme close-ups of porcelain flowers used to decorate graves in France. The flowers have an otherworldly glow.

One photograph of a painting of the Virgin Mary looks very ordinary until you realize the face of the saint is actually the face of Favell’s mother. Nearby is a poster-sized image of Ganesha, the Hindu deity with an elephant’s head. But look closely: The body of Ganesha in this case is an image of Favell as child. That gal Rosalie/Xena really gets around

Many of the photo-works are a tribute to Favell’s late father Doug and his brother Gerry. As children, the two boys were inseparable. As adults, they died within a week of each other. Favell has paired old family snaps of the two boys with images of clouds, airplanes, and landscapes.

Favell won the 2012 Karsh Award, which is given every two years to an Ottawa photographer who has produced over the years an exceptional body of work. Favell certainly deserved that award.

The exhibition of Favell’s work at Cube Gallery continues until May 5. The vernissage takes place this Sunday, April 7, from 2-4 p.m. Cube is located as 1285 Wellington St. W.

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Reid McLachlan, "Northward." Oil on canvas, 71 x 61 cm, 2012.

Ontario artists can only be envious. Every two years, or sometimes three, Loto-Québec sponsors an exhibition at Galerie Montcalm in Hull for artists living in the Outaouais. It’s a competition of sorts, with the winners – and there are often several winners – having their work purchased and then incorporated into the vast Loto-Québec art collection for display in public buildings around the province.

In Ontario, most large cities, including Ottawa, have an art purchasing program, but the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. does not have a program similar to Quebec’s to benefit the province’s artists.

The current Loto-Québec show at Galerie Montcalm is called Reperage Collection Loto-Quebec. The word “reperage” is a muscular one with many meanings. In this instance, the exhibition title can mean “tracking” art for the Loto-Québec collection.

In each of the Loto-Québec competitions, Outaouais artists are invited to make submissions to be included in the exhibition at Galerie Montcalm. About 80 works were submitted this year. A jury picked 37 of them to be exhibited and it is from this group of 37 that Loto-Québec will decide which ones to purchase.

Now, one would think that Loto-Québec would send its art-buyers to Hull to view the exhibition and pick the best works. Alas, bureaucracies do not work this way. Instead, all 37 works will be shipped to Montreal. The ones purchased will remain there and the rest returned to Hull.

One can only hope that Paula Murray’s exquisite, meditative, but very fragile looking porcelain and wood arrangement called “Sanctuary,” can survive one, possibly two, trips down the Trans-Canada. Murray, being a pro, has probably taken all that into account.

Rebecca Mason, "Poplar Stand." Watercolour on Japanese paper. 58 x 31 cm, 2012.

The Canadian Conservation Institute, a federal agency researching the best ways to preserve and repair artworks, actually does crash tests to determine how big a bump ceramic items can take before cracking. Perhaps the institute has a handy guide made available to Murray.

Now, if I had been asked by Loto-Québec what works to buy, my first choice would have been Murray’s installation. I also fell for Johanne Lafreniere’s brilliant photo, “Je m’imagine, je m’imagine,” of a woman, the image having been captured from a video and projected unto a pitted steel plate and given a smooth plexi-glass finish. And who could not fall in love with Andree Prefontaine’s 28-second video “O Divine” showing an organic object, possibly a halved strawberry, moving like some man-eating plant looking for prey?

Of course, I dare not recommend the purchase of paintings in the show by such artists as Jean-Francois Provost, Reid McLachlan and Becky Mason. I own paintings by these three very different artists. Someone would surely say I was in a conflict of interest if I suggested their three works should be purchased, possibly boosting the artists’ overall standing and market value. Anyway, do take a look at these three paintings. Just don’t say I sent you.

Reparage Collection Loto-Québec continues at Galerie Montcalm, 25 rue Laurier in Hull, until April 21.

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One of the images from Kenneth Emig's exhibit "Equinox."

Sculptor Kenneth Emig is really a magician. Savouring his handiwork is like watching a truly professional magic act in which you are constantly torn between simply being thrilled with the experience and obsessively trying to figure out how it all works.

Emig’s art is all light and mirrors bundled up in what he calls “architectural light boxes.” Think of when you were last at a clothing shop, tried on a new outfit, admired yourself in a mirrored alcove, and suddenly saw your reflection again and again, right into infinity. Now, reduce that kind of experience to a large box, suitable for hanging on a wall, and you have Emig’s magic art. You could even call it kinetic art because what you see hanging on the wall contains “fictional space” that becomes “elastic space” that stretches into infinity and shape-shifts depending upon the angle you are at and the intensity of the light in the room.

Back in the 1960s, there was movement called “op art.” Those works were usually paintings of mind-bending geometric shapes that seemed to dance before your eyes. Emig’s work is like that but in 3D, a sensory experience that stretches the conventional definitions of art.

An exhibition of Emig’s unusual work titled Equinox runs from March 21 to April 9 at Galerie St. Laurent + Hill in the ByWard Market. Emig gave me an advance peek at the works while they were still at his studio at Enriched Bread Artists. He was planning on putting eight works in the exhibition. The biggest, when installed on a wall, is shaped like a diamond 78 inches high and 78 inches wide. The rest look about half that size.

This is Emig’s first major solo show in the Ottawa area since 2007, when he took over the vast exhibition spaces of AXENEO7 in Hull. More recently, in September 2011, Emig exhibited work in the Moscow Biennale. This coming summer he will join other Enriched Bread Artists for a show in The Netherlands.

Emig’s architectural light boxes are made of wood that have been painted black on the outside and either red, orange, or bluish-mauve in the inside. Light fixtures of two concentric circular fluorescent tubes are hidden in the box. When the tubes are lit, they interact with strategically placed mirrors so that the viewer sees reflections of reflections stretching to infinity.

This is art for the whole family. Even young kids should enjoy the show. But they will surely start asking their parents how exactly these things work.

The post ARTFUL BLOGGER: Kenneth Emig’s new sculpture exhibition at Galerie St. Laurent + Hill is all light, mirrors, and magic appeared first on Ottawa Magazine.