When Imagination and Politics Mix
In striking collaborative works, Shary Boyle and Shuvinai Ashoona explore chimeras of imagination and otherness—as well as ideological critique.
Nadia Myre Fuses the Personal and the Political
Emily Falvey looks at the work of 2014 Sobey Art Award winner Nadia Myre, and her interest in the material extremes of sculpture and performance.
Problem Child: The Provocations of Jonathan Hobin
Jonathan Hobin's newest photographs continue his controversy-courting tendencies, but Emily Falvey argues that they fail to challenge stereotypes.
Sophie Calle Show Dissects the Senses
In her new exhibition at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Sophie Calle tests the limits of the sensory.
CRUM’s Playful Conceptualism
In revisiting a lost exhibition of conceptual art, CRUM create a singularly eccentric, yet seamless, show of their own.
Canadian Biennial Both Dazzles & Disappoints
"Shine a Light: Canadian Biennial 2014" has many impressive artworks, but puts them in a substandard frame, Emily Falvey writes. Our artists deserve better.
Storytelling: The Contemporary Native Art Biennial
Initiated in 2012 by the commercial gallery Art Mûr, the Contemporary Native Art Biennial has the potential to play an interesting role in the Quebec scene.
Textiles Get Tactical at Gallery 101
An artist-run centre with a focus on social practice, Ottawa's Gallery 101 took up the nexus of art and activism in its latest exhibition.
Christopher D’Arcangelo: Anarchism without Adjectives
Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Montreal September 4 to October 26, 2013
Frank Shebageget
Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa
Carol Wainio: Unsettling Painting’s Landscapes
Painting that unsettles our expectations can be increasingly rare. But as critic Emily Falvey contends, Carol Wainio’s work continues to step outside painting’s “proper” concerns—to superb, if challenging, effect.
Rhonda Weppler and Trevor Mahovsky
It is rare to find a creative practice that harmonizes critical thinking and positive momentum. The Vancouver-based artists Rhonda Weppler and Trevor Mahovsky, however, seem to have mastered this delicate balancing act.
Nomads
In their post-structural opus A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the French theorists Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari characterized nomadic movement as “maintaining the possibility of springing up at any point.”
Deborah Margo: Sweet Stuff
The results of the most recent RBC Painting Competition seem to signal a return to process painting, and particularly the kind associated with 1970s Post-Minimalism. Ottawa-based artist Deborah Margo’s work is among the more interesting branches of this vein, and her solo exhibition at Patrick Mikhail Gallery takes a provocative new direction.