Public Lecture by Steven Loft: Lies your nation told you: Aboriginal art and
the Canadian state What is the relationship between Aboriginal art and the
Canadian state? Stephen Loft, one of Canada’s leading experts on Indigenous
Art, will examine this contentious issue in his upcoming lecture at Western: Lies your nation told you: Aboriginal art
and the Canadian state. A curator
and media artist, Loft is a Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) of the Haudenosaunee, and a
Trudeau Foundation Fellow at Ryerson University, where he lectures on
Indigenous art. Prior to this, he was curator-in-residence, Indigenous art, at
the National Gallery of Canada, director/curator of Urban Shaman Gallery
(Winnipeg), Aboriginal curator, at Art Gallery of Hamilton, and artistic
director of the Native Indian/Inuit Photographers’ Association. Loft has curated exhibitions nationally and internationally,
most recently as co-curator of Close Encounters: The next 500 years, the
largest exhibition of contemporary Indigenous art ever mounted in Canada. In
2005, Loft co-edited Transference, Technology, Tradition: Aboriginal Media
and New Media Art (Banff Centre Press), which examines how inexpensive, new
technologies have influenced Aboriginal artists. Loft’s lecture is organized
and presented by the Public Humanities @ Western in collaboration with McIntosh
Gallery and the Department of Visual Arts. For more information, contact:
Joshua Lambier jlambie2@uwo.ca FUSE winter issue launch and reception Founded in 1976, FUSE magazine is among Canada’s leading
periodicals on art, culture and politics. Meet FUSE editorial director Gina Badger and receive a free copy of the latest issue. Free admission to both events: Organized and presented
by the Public Humanities @ Western in collaboration with McIntosh Gallery and
the Department of Visual Arts. For more information, contact: Joshua Lambier jlambie2@uwo.ca Follow us on Twitter: @McIntoshGallery ______________________________________________________
With his signature style of vibrant colours outlined in
black enamel, Clark McDougall (1921-1980) was equally comfortable painting
urban and rural subjects. After years of painting in relative obscurity in St.
Thomas, Ontario, McDougall garnered national acclaim in the late 1960s and
seventies when regionalism preoccupied much of Canadian culture. Admired by
London artist Greg Curnoe and curators Pierre Théberge and Alvin Balkind,
McDougall increasingly attained critical and commercial success. The Vancouver
Art Gallery mounted a retrospective exhibition in 1977. Henry Luce III,
publisher of Time and Life magazines, was an avid collector of
his paintings. McDougall’s unique relationship to specific places—for example, St. Thomas, his
hometown near London where he live much of his life, or Buffalo, where he
visited the American painter Charles Burchfield— is similar to what Guy Debord and the Situationist
International were exploring in Paris at the same time. Their approach to
constructing a relationship to space based on human interaction, memory and
collective histories initiated the study of what they referred to as
psychogeography. In 1957, Guy Debord defined psychogeography as “the study of
the specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or
not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals.”[i] McDougall understood this intuitively. Throughout his
career, he approached the topography and histories of the city and surrounding
countryside in order to create patterns of continuity and resonance. The
resulting genius loci, or sense of
place, apparent in his paintings was informed by a historical consciousness
that exposed the psychic connectivity of familiar urban and rural landscapes.” [ii]
McDougall was, in this sense, a type of flâneur who recognized not only the emergence of the modern city
(his paintings of traffic-filled city streets drenched in neon attest to this)
but also the swath of destruction left in its path.”[iii]
This struggle between past and future, rural and urban, is evident in his
portrayal of doomed farmsteads and vanishing streetscapes. Then there is the way he painted. His characteristic black
outlines and saturated colours suggest the intensity with which he approached
his subject matter. His anxious desire to delineate and record the fleeting
remains of the built environment and his anticipation of its continued demise
is revealed in the countless studies he did of the same locations. It was
almost as if, by constant observation and keen documentation of familiar
locations, he could stop time by constructing a hyper reality based partly on
what he so keenly observed and partly on his memory of it. McIntosh Gallery has long been interested Clark McDougall.
Curator Catherine Elliot Shaw has done extensive research on the artist and maintains
strong connections with the McDougall family. It was in fact a major gift from
the late Mrs. Marion McDougall, Clark’s sister-in-law, of the artist’s archival
material, including drawings, unfinished paintings and photographs that
provided the impetus for the major exhibition Fugitive Light: Clark McDougall’s Destination Place presented at
McIntosh earlier this year. McIntosh Gallery is hosting a public reception on Sunday December
4th from 2:00 to 4:00 P.M. for the launch of the exhibition catalogue. This
beautiful, richly illustrated 80-page hardcover book, the first major
publication on the artist in over 25 years, features essays by York University
professor Anna Hudson and McIntosh curator Catherine Elliot Shaw. The authors
will be available at the launch reception to discuss the McIntosh Gallery’s
McDougall project and to sign copies. [i]
Coverley, p 93. [ii]
Merlin Coverley, Psychogeography
(Pocket Essentials: London, 2006) p16. [iii]
Coverley, p. 20. ------------------------------------------------------------- HAVOQ (Horizontal Alliance of Very Organized Queers) visit London. Photo: Alejandro Zuluaga Undoing
Borders: A Queer Manifesto is a collective writing project of San
Francisco's Pride’s Migrant Justice Work Group and HAVOQ (The Horizontal Alliance
of Very Organized Queers). For the past two years HAVOQ has worked
on the Manifesto
in an attempt to answer the question: What does being queer have to do with
borders? Based on feedback from community gatherings, panel discussions and brainstorming
sessions, HAVOQ has amassed information on the ways in which queerness and a “no-borders”
politic intersect. Moving beyond their base in San Francisco,
HAVOQ is currently traveling across North America to gather more community
input.
Join three HAVOQ Collective members in
a discussion about their work at the intersections of queer and immigrant
experience. A screening of Safe Place: A
Videotape for Refugee Rights in Canada (1989) by Richard Fung and Peter
Steven will complement HAVOQ’s presentation. This
documentary features testimony from four refugees who describe why they fled to
Canada and how they were treated once they arrived.
Presented by McIntosh Gallery, Undoing Borders has been organized by
Jamie Q and Anthea Black. We thank Ron Benner, Jamelie Hassan, the Canada
Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for their support of this
event.
For more information, go to the Undoing Borders tour blog: http://undoingborders.wordpress.com ------------------------------------------------------------------- Nino Ricci at a recent book signing The McIntosh Gallery invites you to a reading by Alistair Macleod and Nino Ricci in memory of Dr. Suzanne Kaufmann. Canadian author Alistair MacLeod was the 2001 winner of the prestigious IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for his novel No Great Mischief (1999). He has also published The Lost Salt Gift of Blood (1976), As Birds Bring Forth the Sun (1986) and Island: The Collected Stories (2000). In 2008 he became an Officer of the Order of Canada. Nino Ricci won the Governor General's Award for Fiction twice: in 1990 for Lives of the Saints (also a Books in Canada First Novel Award winner), and in 2008 for The Origin of Species, which also appeared on the long list for the Giller Prize. In 1997, Ricci’s novel Where She Has Gone was short-listed for the Giller Prize. MacLeod and Ricci were guest writers for the publication Sense of Place: A Cross-Border Print Exhibition, organized by Windsor Printmaker’s Forum. The exhibition is on view at the McIntosh Gallery from January 6th to February 19th 2011. A great friend of the McIntosh Gallery, Dr. Suzanne Kaufmann (1920-2010) graduated in medicine from the University of Cape Town, where she met and married Dr. John Kaufmann. They moved to Johannesburg in 1955 where she worked in health clinics in the black townships of Soweto and Alexandria. In 1972, the family moved to London, Ontario, where she completed a B.A. Honours degree in Visual Art and French at Western. This event is held of honour Suzanne Kaufmann, to celebrate her passion for the arts, and to acknowledge the tremendous contribution she and John have made to the McIntosh Gallery over the years. McIntosh Members: Join us at the Gallery after the reading for a private reception to meet Alistair and Nino and to tour the Sense of Place exhibition with Patricia Coates, President of Windsor Printmaker’s Forum. (Memberships will be available at the door). For more information, contact James Patten (519) 661-2111 ext. 84602, jpatten2@uwo.ca.
February 2 at 7:00 P.M., Conron Hall, University
College room 224
February 2 at 8:30 P.M. (following Steven Loft's lecture), McIntosh Gallery Clark McDougall Book Launch
Sunday December 4th, 2011, 2:00 P.M.
McIntosh Gallery
McIntosh Members: Receive a 25% discount on the $30 list price. A perfect gift for the holiday season!
Undoing Borders: a Queer Manifesto
Tuesday, September 27, 2011, 7:00 P.M.
Tonda Room, London Public Library
Sense of Place: Alistair Macleod and Nino Ricci
Sunday, January 30th 2011 at 2:00 P.M.
Conron Hall, University College
Gallery information
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