Shorts: Five Shows in Canada

We head to Saskatoon, Vancouver, Edmonton, Toronto and Montreal

Simon Hughes: Surreal collage paintings

Like a quilter collecting scraps of material, Winnipeg artist Simon Hughes collects scraps of images from sources as diverse as National Geographic magazines and 1970s fantasy-art calendars. “Once I have a blank canvas in front of me, I start going through my drawers of collage material looking for things to use as a starting point for the painting,” Hughes said in a 2020 interview with Arsenal Contemporary.  “Usually I find an image, or maybe a few, that have a colour palette that inspires me, and I go from there.” A self-titled exhibition of Hughes’s work is at Blouin Division in Toronto from Sept. 21 - Nov 4. “In this work,” says a gallery statement, “compositions that can loosely be interpreted as landscapes are created through the integration of collage elements and simple shapes painted in overlapping glazes of acrylic colour.” These collage elements result in what the gallery calls “a hybrid form of classic Surrealism.” Accompanying the exhibition is an archival box that acts as a bibliography for Hughes’s vast collage of source material. Visitors can peek inside.

Dorothy Knowles: by the water

Prairie landscape artist Dorothy Knowles was one of Saskatchewan’s most beloved painters. She died May 23 this year in Saskatoon at age 96. Kenderdine Gallery on the campus of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon is honouring the memory of Knowles with an exhibition of 15 paintings “by the water.” Curator Leah Taylor started work on the exhibition before Knowles died and continued afterwards closely consulting with the artist’s daughter Cathy and studying the works in Knowles’s studio. “It was such a privilege to see her incredible and prolific oeuvre,” says Taylor. The exhibition paintings are gathered from that studio, various public collections and Saskatoon’s The Gallery/Art Placement. In a 2018 interview with the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, Knowles said she does not paint for others, but for herself.  “I just want to pour that out on the canvas: My love for the landscape, my love for the trees and the sky and the wonderful radiance of the skies.” And it would seem, her love for Saskatchewan’s rivers and lakes. The exhibition runs from Sept. 15 to Dec. 15.

Two Iranian artists: Reshaping Silence

Film-maker Shirin Neshat is one of Iran’s most celebrated artists. She depicts an otherworldly country populated by chanting imams and gangs of black robed women enacting mysterious rituals. The work of two Iranian artists opening Oct. 7 at Paul Kyle Gallery will take you on a similar journey with their exhibition Reshaping Silence. Like Neshat, Marzieh A. Fakhr, a painter, and Mahdieh Raiesi, a sculptor, bridge the gaps between east and west, ancient and modern. Fakhr's paintings are billed as intense visceral examinations of human nature and the body reminiscent of Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, a unification of beauty, eroticism and the grotesque. Raiesi presents a series of bell sculptures, as a testament to the cultural significance of bells in Iran. These sculptures encapsulate the essence of victory, championship, and reverence deeply ingrained in Iranian culture and ritual. The exhibition closes Nov. 11.

Rehab Nazzal: Driving in Palestine

In 2015, Palestinian-Canadian artist Rehab Nazzal was shot in the leg by a sniper while documenting the Israeli occupation of Bethlehem in an area where the infamous “skunk truck” was spewing at Palestinians a stench reminiscent of decomposing bodies. Nazzal was at the time in the midst of a 10-year project driving around Palestinian territories documenting the lives of people under Israeli occupation. The resulting exhibition, Driving in Palestine, at Montréal, arts interculturels is a  multimedia installation combining photography, video, printed matter and sound to offer glimpses of what the gallery calls “Israel’s structures of segregation, confinement, surveillance and restriction to freedom of movement that proliferate the occupied West Bank.” The exhibition “invites viewers to witness manifestations of this regime including the apartheid wall, military checkpoints, gates, fences, watchtowers, and roadblocks that Palestinians have had to navigate for the past 70 years.” The exhibition runs from Sept. 7 to  Oct 21.

Botanical Photographs: A Link With Nature

There is a basket overflowing with flowers and fruit like some 17th century Dutch painting. Another posey is so bright you would think it was a photograph of the sun. These and other foliage comprise the Art Gallery of Alberta photography exhibition A Link with Nature: Botanical Photography 1850-1950, running from Sept. 2 to Dec. 31.  The exhibition includes work from more than 25 photographers working in Europe and North America and such photographic processes as cyanotype, daguerreotype, autochrome, platinum print and gelatin silver print. Curator Danielle Siemens particularly asks viewers to study Imogen Cunningham’s Agave Design, a gelatin silver print made around 1925 and printed in 1975. This photo, owned by the National Gallery of Canada, is part of a renowned Cunningham series about agave fronds. “Coming out of Cunningham’s intensive botanical studies in the 1920s, this photograph is a bold and striking experiment with contrasts in light and shadow,” says Siemens. “Cunningham helped blaze a trail for the recognition of photography as an art form that could go beyond documentation to explore pure expression and visual experimentation.” ■

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