Clockwise from left: Karin Davie, Liquid Life With Spine no 3 (large), 2013–13; Feature Contemporary Art Fair's new project director Stefan Hancherow; the Parliament buildings in Ottawa. Photo: Steven Dengler via Wikimedia.
Our editors’ weekly roundup of Canadian art news.
On Wednesday, Association des galeries d’art contemporain (AGAC) announced that Papier art fair’s longtime director Julie Lacroix would be taking a maternity leave, with Christine Blais filling in as interim director. A graduate of the Université du Québec à Montréal, Blais has been working in Quebec’s cultural scene for six years, most recently at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Foundation, where she founded a group devoted to cultivating young philanthropists.
AGAC also announced that Stefan Hancherow has been appointed project director of the second instalment of Feature Contemporary Art Fair in Toronto this fall. Hancherow has worked as the interim administrative director of artist-run centre Hamilton Artists Inc., and was assistant curator of the Sobey Art Award.
Toronto-born, Kirkland, Washington–based painter Karin Davie, best known for her vividly distorted abstract stripe paintings, recently received two prestigious international awards: a 2015 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship Award and an Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation grant. Quebec City’s Diane Landry also received a 2015 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship Award.
On Tuesday, one of the most highly anticipated additions to the country’s cultural scene, the Audain Art Museum, located in Whistler, BC, announced its inaugural exhibition “Jeff Wall: North & West.” The Vancouver photographer’s survey will share the museum’s planned 56,000 square foot, Patkau Architects–designed space with permanent displays of works from the private collection of Michael Audain and Yoshiko Karasawa. The exhibition is scheduled to open November 21, 2015.
On Tuesday, the Canadian Arts Coalition spoke out about the lack of focus on the arts within the federal government’s budget, which was tabled that day in parliament. Kate Cornell, the Canadian Arts Coalition’s spokesperson, said that there were only passing mentions of the arts within the budget, and pointed to a lack of clarity around the allocation of funding that was described.
