Shorts: Four Shows in Canada and Beyond

We stop in Edmonton, Halifax, New York City and Calgary.

Between Things: Alberta Ceramics

For sheer exuberance, it’s hard to top the work of Calgary-based Mariko Paterson, whose Vanity Faire, Vanity Fare is one of the standout installations in Between Things: Alberta Ceramics, a fascinating group show on view at the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton until March 3. Paterson’s vanity is littered with paraphernalia moulded in clay – a lush red lipstick, a hairbrush, even a perpetually lit cigarette propped in an ashtray. Gleaming under the vanity’s lights and reflected in its mirror are two ceramic dogs and three large urns decorated with everything from red wine and pizza slices to digital screens and skeletal faces. This comprehensive show includes a wide array of work by familiar names in the province’s ceramics community – Greg Payce, whose optical-illusion vases might have been glazed by German painter Gerhard Richter; wall works by Corwyn Lund that look like tiles lifted from a steamy shower; and intricately patterned objects by the late Mary Shannon Will. In all, the show features 16 artists, including Kasia Sosnowski, Amy Gogarty, the late Les Manning and Benjamin Oswald, whose elegant slit vessels are also featured until Dec. 9 in a solo show, The Shape of Absence, at the Mitchell Art Gallery at MacEwan University in downtown Edmonton. Between Things is curated by Lindsey Sharman and Diana Sherlock, who note in the show’s information panels that the artists share an interest in exploring “how ceramics can activate our experience of and relationship to the world around us.” – Portia Priegert

Eleanor King: HIVEMIND

Nova Scotia artist Eleanor King, now based in New York, has been exhibiting sculpture and installation for most of her two-decade career. Her site-specific wall paintings, which use layered, evocative texts that evoke the work of her former teacher Garry Neill Kennedy, have been shown across the country. But with HIVEMIND, on view until Oct. 3 at Katzman Art Projects in Halifax, she has transitioned from site-specific installations toward the familiar format of easel painting. Still rooted in language, her new works layer words and phrases into dense geometric compositions that the viewer is challenged to decipher. Painterly marks jostle against hard-edged typography and vibrant colours clash and combine in a visual dazzle reminiscent of camouflage. Drawn from song lyrics (Tonight’s the night and I WAS GONNA), slogans (No Jerks and Til Death), book titles (Honeybee Democracy) or her own terse phrases (Trying not 2 think about U), the works in HIVEMIND convey a frantic energy that feels like our times. The show is in a gallery that’s also in transition. The venerable commercial space Studio 21 was recently sold to gallerist Marianne Katzman, who moved to Halifax from Toronto during the pandemic. HIVEMIND is the first exhibition in her eponymous gallery. – Ray Cronin

Caroline Monnet: Worksite

Montreal-based artist Caroline Monnet, whose solo American debut, Worksite, is on view at Arsenal Contemporary Art  in New York City until Oct. 21, grew up amidst construction and deconstruction as her family fixed up houses to resell. “Her parents’ many building projects have left her with a fondness and comfort with this state of becoming – the unfinished walls, fibreglass insulation, tar-paper, and the spiders,” says Greg Hill, former senior curator of Indigenous art at the National Gallery of Canada. The show, which Hill curated, includes works from this year that continue Monnet’s explorations of building materials such as insulation and plexiglass. She sometimes works with noxious black mould on gypsum board, a problem in poor-quality housing in Indigenous communities, or embeds symmetrical patterns into other construction materials. “Those designs are inspired by traditional Anishinaabe design ­– I’m Anishinaabe by my mom,” Monnet told Cultured magazine. “I like to see any surface as a potential for ornament, where we can instil pride and Indigenous presence back into our cityscapes.” Also implicit in the work is a critique of the construction industry and its impact on the land. 

Geoff McFetridge: These Days are Nameless (The Drive, The River, And Hills)

By any calculation, Calgary-born Geoff McFetridge has had a remarkable career. A graduate of what is now the Alberta University of the Arts in Calgary, he went on to work as a graphic designer with clients such as Hermès, Patagonia and Apple, while also producing an array of critically acclaimed art, including poetry, animation, sculpture and painting, which have been shown in major galleries in Canada and the United States, where he is based. Now, in a homecoming of sorts, he is featured in a solo show, These Days are Nameless (The Drive, The River, And Hills), on view at Contemporary Calgary until Oct. 29. The show intersects with the Sept. 21 and Sept. 24 screenings of the documentary film Geoff McFetridge: Drawing a Life, at the Calgary International Film Festival. Filmmaker Dan Covert tries to get under the skin of the workaholic artist, who talks about his life and his work, including his anxieties and self-doubt. At Contemporary Calgary, the show’s focus is three short animated videos from 2020, accompanied by some of the gouache works on paper McFetridge used to create them. They reflect on the pandemic and explore themes related to uncertainty. Says McFetridge: “All the works are drawn from memories: memories of how things looked at the time, and how they felt in retrospect.” ■

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