ABC Art Books Canada
National and International Promotion and Distribution
of Canadian Art Publications
New Publications 2014
National Gallery of Canada | Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal | Art Gallery of Alberta | Art Gallery of Greater Victoria | Plug In ICA |
Rennie Collection | The Robert McLaughlin Gallery | Textile Museum of Canada | Agnes Etherington Art Centre | Carleton University Art
Gallery | Galerie de l’UQAM | The Ottawa Art Gallery | Kamloops Art Gallery | Burnaby Art Gallery | Musée d’art de Joliette | Cambridge
Galleries | Confederation Centre Art Gallery | Dalhousie Art Gallery | Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery | MacLaren Art Centre | McMaster
Museum of Art | Musée régional de Rimouski | McClure Gallery | MSVU Gallery | Oakville Galleries | Southern Alberta Art Gallery |
Richmond Art Gallery | Kelowna Art Gallery | Rodman Hall Art Centre| Gallery 1C03 University of Winnipeg | Mendel Art Gallery | Gardiner
Museum | Riverside Architectural Press | Beaverbrook Art Gallery | Justina M. Barnicke Gallery | University of Toronto Art Centre |
ABC Art Books Canada
A Story of Canadian Art
As Told by the Hart House Collection
Christine Boyanoski
Contributions from Emma Conner, John Geoghegan, Devon Smither
and Elizabeth Went
Justina M. Barnicke Gallery
NEW PUBLISHER
Released to accompany a major touring exhibition, A Story of Canadian
Art: As Told by the Hart House Collection documents an important chapter
in the modern history of collecting and reveals how collections contribute
to the shaping of both art history and national identity. Hart House was
gifted by the Massey family to the University of Toronto in 1919 as a
cultural centre where students, faculty, and the broader public could
mingle and converse. Since the early 1920s, the Hart House Art
Committee - comprised of students, artists, faculty, and staff - has been
collecting art, originally focusing on the work of the Group of Seven and
their contemporaries, as well as the Beaver Hall Group and Canadian
Group of Painters. This unique collection rapidly gained a national and
international reputation, with works loaned to exhibitions at the Corcoran
Gallery in Washington, DC and the Tate Gallery in London, UK, among
others. Illustrated with archival photographs, the main essay details the
growth of the collection including the establishment of the Justina M.
Barnicke Gallery in 1982, one of North America’s first university art
galleries. Completing the publication are individual scholarly presentations
of over 40 major works by legendary figures such as A. Y. Jackson,
Lawren Harris, Edwin Holgate, Tom Thomson, Emily Carr, Prudence
Heward, André Biéler, David Milne, and B. C. Binning. Each work is
featured with a full-page colour plate. With an introduction by Barbara
Fischer.
Christine Boyanoski is an independent curator who has authored and
coauthored numerous publications, most recently Artists, Architects and
Artisans: Canadian Art 1890-1918 (National Gallery of Canada, 2013).
A Story of Canadian Art
As Told by the Hart House Collection
Christine Boyanoski
Justina M. Barnicke Gallery
124 pp 56 ill. (42 col.) 9.75 x 6.75 in softcover 9780772706652 $20.00 Can. $25.00 U.S.
November 2014
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Jack Bush
Marc Mayer and Sarah Stanners
With contributions from Adam Welch and Karen Wilkin
National Gallery of Canada
“Look - you are no longer a local painter - or even a Canadian painter. You are a
world painter.…Very few painters can handle color like you can.”
Clement Greenberg to Jack Bush
This major monograph on the extraordinary career of the Canadian
painter is published to accompany the first retrospective exhibition in over
35 years. Born in Montreal and raised in Toronto, Jack Bush (1909-1977)
reinvented himself like very few artists -moving from a close association
with Canada’s Group of Seven landscape painters to an even closer
association with the great names of international modernist abstraction.
Four experts in their fields outline Bush’s ambitious trajectory from his
years as an illustrator, through his membership in seminal art associations
like the Canadian Group of Painters and Painters Eleven, to his careerchanging meeting with the influential American art critic Clement
Greenberg. The artist’s enduring professional relationship with the art
world’s most prominent intellectual of the time would ignite his
international career and place him alongside Morris Louis, Jules Olitski
and Frank Stella as one of the great Color Field artists. Jack Bush’s
singular transformation from provincial artist in the 1940s to celebrated
figure on the New York and London gallery scenes in the 1960s and 70s
is engagingly told through new photography, previously unpublished diary
excerpts and fresh scholarship making this unprecedented survey of his
life and work the definitive book on the artist to date. With more than 120
full-color plates, this superb publication features works that boldly burst
through as the best in high modern art.
Marc Mayer is Director and CEO of the National Gallery of Canada and
author of monographs on Thomas Nozkowski (2009) and Neo Rauch
(2006). Sarah Stanners is authoring the forthcoming catalogue raisonné
Jack Bush
Marc Mayer and Sarah Stanners
National Gallery of Canada
300 pp 150 col. ill. 11 x 11 in hardcover 9780888849250 of paintings by Jack Bush. Adam Welch has held curatorial positions at
the National Gallery of Canada and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Karen Wilkin has authored and co-authored numerous publications
notably Color as Field: American Painting, 1950-1975 (2007),
and Clement Greenberg: A Critic's Collection (2001).
$45.00 Can. $54.00 U.S.
November 2014
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Kelly Mark.
Everything is Interesting
Jonathan Watkins, Christina Ritchie and Dan Adler
Justina M. Barnicke Gallery
NEW PUBLISHER
Kelly Mark’s metaphysical preoccupations with time are brilliantly explored
in this twenty-year career monograph. Her use of a wide range of media drawing, video, photography, sculpture, performance - allows Mark to
develop ongoing chronologies that trace shifting concerns and interests
inflected by the saturated landscape of media and signs upon which they
draw. Her persistence in marrying high art and working class culture
produces an astonishing range of minimalist artworks that re-work
conceptual strategies such as process and repetition. And by rigorously
applying herself to numerous repetitive mundane tasks (for which she
dutifully clocks in and out) Mark finds startling moments of pathos,
humour, and poetry. The earliest works are concerned with processes
mechanically performed: Mark would set herself a task and follow it
through methodically, thereby echoing an industrial mode that found its
appropriate counterpoint in the concerns of Minimalism, process art, and
early Conceptualism. More recent focus has shifted from the tautological
nature of “a work made by time spent working,” and the compaction of
time within the mark-making, to frame the poignant actions of others and
the residual flotsam of the everyday. Mark’s trajectory is analyzed and
celebrated though original scholarly essays, personal reflections from
numerous artists and curators, as well as dozens of colour plates
featuring her site-specific projects, installations, videos, public
interventions, performances, ubiquitous punch cards, and much more.
With an introduction by Barbara Fischer.
Contributions by Craig Buckley, Cedar Tavern Singers, Brian Joseph
Davis, Alan Dunn, Dave Dyment, Robert Enright, Jonathan Safran Foer,
Jen Graves, Kristen Horton, Ingrid Jenkner, Germaine Koh, Sara
Krajewski, Micah Lexier, David Liss, Robin Metcalfe, Gabrielle Moser,
Jenifer Papararo, James Prior, Christopher Régimbal, Eileen
Kelly Mark: Everything is Interesting
Jonathan Watkins, Christina Ritchie and Dan Adler
Justina M. Barnicke Gallery
250 pp 70 col .ill 10 x 8 in hardcover 9780772760739 Sommerman, Gill Saunders and Rosie Miles, and Terri Whitehead.
Published in collaboration with Blackwood Gallery, the Mount St. Vincent
University Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Windsor, the Kenderdine Art
Gallery, and the Cambridge Galleries to accompany a nationally touring
exhibition.
$25.00 Can. $30.00 U.S.
February 2015
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Shine a Light.
Canadian Biennial 2014
Taking the pulse of contemporary art production in Canada as it becomes part
of our national art history.
Josée Drouin-Brisebois, Greg Hill, Andrea Kunard, Jonathan
Shaughnessy and Rhiannon Vogl
National Gallery of Canada
With its active approach to collecting works by both acclaimed and
emerging artists, the National Gallery of Canada has amassed an
enormous holding of contemporary art by Canadian artists. Since 2012,
the year of the last Canadian Biennial, the national institution has
increased its collection by nearly 300 works by more than 90 artists. From
this inestimable collection, over 80 works by 26 artists have been selected
for the 2014 edition. Showcasing work by Indigenous artists, anglophone
and francophone artists, and new Canadian artists - all of different
backgrounds and generations - this generously illustrated publication
features film and video installations, sculptures, paintings, drawings and
photographs. As well, the publication documents the efforts of Gallery
curators to build a representative national collection that focuses on
innovation and diversity: Josée Drouin-Brisebois, Jonathan Shaughnessy
and Rhiannon Vogl in Contemporary Art; Andrea Kunard in Photographs;
and Greg Hill, Christine Lalonde and Rachelle Dickenson in Indigenous
Art. An introductory essay is accompanied by 26 individual presentations
and dozens of colour plates. In English and French.
Shine a Light: Canadian Biennial 2014
Josée Drouin-Brisebois, Greg Hill, Andrea Kunard, Jonathan
Shaughnessy and Rhiannon Vogl
National Gallery of Canada
260 pp 108 col. ill. 10.75 x 8 in softcover 9780888849298 $40.00 Can. $47.00 U.S.
October 2014
The artists:
David Armstrong Six, Shuvinai Ashoona, Nicolas Baier, Shary Boyle, Ed
Burtynsky, Tammi Campbell, Mario Doucette, Geoffrey Farmer, David
Hartt, Isabelle Hayeur, Philippa Jones, Stephane LaRue, Rita Letendre,
An Te Liu, David McMillan, Damian Moppett, Luke Parnell, Vanessa
Paschakarnis, Ed Pien, Tim Pitsiulak, Kelly Richardson, Jeremy Shaw,
Althea Tauberger, Jutai Toonoo, Howie Tsui, Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun.
Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun: Red Man Watching White Man Trying to Fix Hole
in the Sky (Detail)
David Hartt: Stray Light
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Convoluted Beauty.
In the Company of Emily Carr
Lisa Baldissera, Vinciane Despret and Erika Dyck
The Mendel Art Gallery
Emily Carr (1871-1945) is acclaimed for being one of the first Canadian
painters to forge a modernist, post-impressionist style. In 1899 Carr
traveled to the United Kingdom precisely to study art, determined to
expand her creative vision. Instead, her time there proved to be a
challenging ordeal, culminating in an 18-month hospitalization with the
diagnosis of “hysteria.” This difficult period became a formative point in
her career, one where she resolutely declared her own personal and
artistic identity. Focusing on these critical London years, this multi-faceted
publication explores notions of the artistic imaginary and artistic identity.
Scholarly essays touch on a variety of critical frameworks such as the
theme of exile, the concept of hysteria and the psychoanalytic clinic, and
the notion of “unproductivity” in creative work.
Integrated into the publication are works by major international artists who
examine Carr’s legacy on these and other fronts. Thomas Zipp (Germany)
considers the generative qualities of trauma and mental illness, as well as
the idea of the artist as self-healer. Karen Tam (Canada) explores Carr’s
friendship with Chinese artist Lee Nam. Marianne Nicolson (Canada)
reflects on issues of ecology and neo-colonialism. Joanne Bristol
(Canada) creates a newspaper and “composition” for birds. A sound
installation by Louise Lawler (USA) acknowledges Carr’s special
relationship to animals and offers a critique of the structures of the art
world. Cedric and Nathan Bomford (Canada) provide a response to the
architecture of the clinic. Mark Wallinger (UK) conjures up a psychic portal
and the idea of “crossing over” into unknown territory.
Convoluted Beauty: In the Company of Emily Carr
Lisa Baldissera, Vinciane Despret and Erika Dyck
The Mendel Art Gallery
112 pp col. ill. 10.75 x 8.25 softcover
Lisa Baldissera is Chief Curator at The Mendel Art Gallery. Erika Dyck is
Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in History of Medicine,
University of Saskatchewan. Vinciane Despret is Professor of Philosophy,
University of Liège, Belgium.
9781896359861
$25.00 Can. $30.00 U.S.
October 2014
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Alma.
The Life and Work of Alma Duncan
Tom McSorley, Anne Maheux, Jaclyn Meloche, Catherine Sinclair, and
Rosemarie L. Tovell
The Ottawa Art Gallery / Judith & Norman Alix Art Gallery
This striking publication resurrects the ambitious career of an important
Canadian artist and accompanies the first retrospective exhibition of her
work in over 25 years. Largely self-taught, Alma Duncan (1917-2004) was
extremely prolific and worked in a variety of media. Her paintings were
first shown at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 1937, and in 1942 she
won an honorable mention in the Western Hemisphere Poster
Competition held by the Museum of Modern Art. Often considered an
unofficial war artist, she made drawings of arms factories and shipyards,
and depicted the activities of the Canadian Women’s Army Corps. In
1943, Duncan joined the Graphics Division of the National Film Board
and, later on, their Animation Department. In that same year, she formed
a partnership with photographer Audrey McLaren: a personal, commercial
and artistic alliance that was to endure for the rest of their lives. Under the
name Dunclaren, they released numerous animated films which they
created in an Ottawa attic, and won international recognition for their
work. Duncan participated in numerous Canadian and international
exhibitions and was commissioned by Canada Post to design several
popular stamps. Containing over 70 colour illustrations, this monograph
features a wide range of work from Duncan’s 60-year career, including
portraits of well-known figures such as P.K. Page and Norman MacLaren,
ink on paper landscapes, abstractions, a selection of her acclaimed
drawings of wartime industry and munitions factories, as well as several
stunning self-portraits created over her lifetime. In English and French
Tom McSorley is Executive Director of the Canadian Film Institute. Anne
Maheux is Head, Conservation of Art on Paper, Maps and Manuscripts at
Library and Archives Canada. Jaclyn Meloche is a visual artist and
Alma: The Life and Work of Alma Duncan
doctoral candidate at Concordia University. Catherine Sinclair is Senior
Tom McSorley et al
The Ottawa Art Gallery / Judith & Norman Alix Art Gallery
176 pp 78 col. ill. 10.25 x 8.25 in hardcover 9781894906494 $55.00 Can. $65.00 U.S.
Curator at The Ottawa Art Gallery. Rosemarie L. Tovell has authored and
co-authored numerous exhibition catalogues, notably The Solitudes of
Place: Recent Drawings by Ann Kipling (2011) and Take Comfort: The
Career of Charles Comfort (2007).
October 2014
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ACADIA 2014 Design Agency:
ACADIA 2014 Design Agency:
Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of the
Projects of the 34th Annual Conference of the Association for
Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture
Computer Aided Design in Architecture
Editors: David Gerber, Alvin Huang, Jose Sanchez
Editors: David Gerber, Alvin Huang, Jose Sanchez
ACADIA/Riverside Architectural Press
ACADIA/Riverside Architectural Press
752 pp illustrated throughout 11 x 8.5 in softcover 290 pp illustrated throughout 11 x 8.5 in softcover 9781926724478 9781926724485 $59.95 Can. $69.95 U.S.
$44.95 Can. $54.95 U.S.
October 2014
October 2014
The Proceedings of the ACADIA 2014: DESIGN AGENCY
The Projects Catalogue of the ACADIA 2014: DESIGN AGENCY
international conference contains the peer-reviewed research
international conference contains jury-selected and curated research and
papers presented at the 34th annual conference of the
practice projects of the 34th annual conference of the Association for
Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture.
Computer Aided Design in Architecture. Projects by researchers,
Presentations by keynote speakers and ACADIA Award recipients
practitioners, students and by the ACADIA partner organization Tex-Fab
are also included. DESIGN AGENCY brings together a spectrum
are included. DESIGN AGENCY brings together a spectrum of research
of research and creative practice currently occurring within the
and creative practice currently occurring within the ACADIA community.
ACADIA community. This combined research reflects new
This combined research reflects new paradigms that are redefining
paradigms that are redefining contemporary architecture.
contemporary architecture. Specialized computational design topics
Specialized computational design topics include cloud
include cloud organization, big data, global project delivery, and new
organization, big data, global project delivery, and new forms of
forms of collective intelligence in design, architecture, urbanism,
collective intelligence in design, architecture, urbanism,
fabrication and media arts. The event is supported by the combined
fabrication and media arts.The event is supported by the
research networks of the University of Southern California, University of
combined research networks of the University of Southern
California Los Angeles and Southern California Institute of Architecture.
California, University of California Los Angeles and Southern
ACADIA 2014: DESIGN AGENCY: Los Angeles, California at the USC
California Institute of Architecture.
School of Architecture on October 23-25, 2014.
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From Ashgabat to Istanbul.
Caméléon
Oriental Rugs from Canadian Collections
Jean-Pierre Larocque
Natalia Nekrassova, Neil Brochu, Sarah Fee, Michael Gervers,
Max Allen and Michele Hardy
McClure Gallery
Textile Museum of Canada
Published to accompany the inaugural edition of the Virginia McClure
Ceramic Biennial, this publication features the work of four remarkable
Canadian artists: Susan Collett, Neil Forrest, Rory MacDonald and Linda
Sormin. The work of each artist accentuates themes characteristic of the
discipline such as adaptation, reinvention and metamorphoses. Together
The history of Canadian collecting practices and cultural context
of the Oriental rug production is highlighted with a beautifully
illustrated display of over 70 distinctive rugs, horse and camel
decorations, and tent bands and bags from Central and West
Asia – regions well known for the richness of their rug weaving
traditions developed by diverse cultures and peoples. The
they articulate a lively ceramic language in constant mutation and - by
provocation or poetry - deconstruct the history and traditions of the
medium to create something new. As a result, they remind us that clay is
indeed chameleon. In English and French.
accompanying essays trace Canadian social history as reflected
in rug collecting practices and incorporates interviews with
collectors, dealers, curators and business owners. The many
items presented are drawn from 30 private collections and public
institutions. In English and French.
168 pp 88 col. ill. 8.5 x 8.5 in softcover
9780980908831
$29.95 Can. $36.95 U.S.
October 2014
Jean-Pierre Laroque has taught at numerous institutions, notably, Emily
Carr Institute of Art + Design, New York State College of Ceramics at
Alfred University and California State University. A solo exhibition of his
work inaugurated the reopening of Toronto’s Gardiner Museum of
Ceramics in 2006.
76 pp 51 col. ill. 24 x 22 cm softcover
9780986593390 $24.95 Can. $29.95 U.S.
October 2014
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Terms of Engagement.
Averns, feldman-kiss, Stimson
Christine Conley and Kirsty Robertson
Agnes Etherington Art Centre /
Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery
The Canadian Forces Artists Program (CFAP) was launched in 2001 to
embed artists alongside Canadian troops. Unlike earlier official war art
programs, CFAP does not exhibit or collect the work produced by artists
who volunteer for the privileged access it offers. This publication
documents work by three artists who have recently been deployed to
conflict zones as CFAP participants. Dick Averns was hosted by the
Multinational Force and Observers at North Base, Sinai, in Egypt during
2009; nichola feldman-kiss was embedded with the United Nations
Mission in Sudan in 2011; and Adrian Stimson was stationed at Forward
Operating Base Màsum Ghar and Kandahar in Afghanistan in 2010.
Working across the mediums of photography, video, sculpture and
installation, the works in the exhibition reflect CFAP’s arm’s-length
relationship with the military, which allows for greater independence of
artistic expression.
As curator Christine Conley explains, the artists “are all conscious of the
complex relation of culture to conflict, given their situation as embedded
observers whose access to war zones depends upon military hospitality,
protection and social networks.” Compelled by narratives of genocide, the
traumatic legacy of colonialism, and the War on Terror, the works
presented here offer an encounter and critical engagement with Canada’s
place in the world. Co-published with the Esker Foundation.
Terms of Engagement: Averns, feldman-kiss, Stimson
Christine Conley and Kirsty Robertson
Agnes Etherington Art Centre /
Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery
68 pp col. ill. 10 x 8 in softcover 9781553394037 $30.00 Can. $35.00 U.S.
September 2014
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Reading the Talk
Rachelle Dickenson and Lisa Myers
With an introduction by Lee-Ann Martin
The Robert McLaughlin Gallery
Contemporary Indigenous artists explore ancient treaties to reveal what
they say about relationships to lands, region and territory, while
considering distinct Indigenous perspectives on the history of treaties in
this land now called Canada. Both the breadth and originality of the
curatorial premise in this exhibition catalogue reveal contemporary
Indigenous perspectives on understandings and treaties among nations,
as well as interpersonal relationships of the individuals who inhabit the
land. The astute selection of artists and works underline what Rachelle
Dickenson calls the “synergies between medium, symbolism, customary
practice and critical theory that are key strategies used to assert the
principle of interrelationship at the core of Indigenous ontology.” The
artists: Michael Belmore, Hannah Claus, Patricia Deadman, Vanessa Dion
Fletcher, Keesic Douglas, Melissa General. Published with Museum
London, Art Gallery of Peterborough and MacLaren Art Centre.
Rachelle Dickenson is Curatorial Assistant, Indigenous Art at the National
Gallery of Canada. Lisa Myers is engaged in MFA research in Criticism
and Curatorial Practice at OCAD University. Lee-Ann Martin is an
independent curator and former Curator of Contemporary Canadian
Aboriginal Art at the Canadian Museum of History (Civilization) and former
Head Curator of the MacKenzie Art Gallery.
Reading the Talk
Rachelle Dickenson and Lisa Myers
With an introduction by Lee-Ann Martin
The Robert McLaughlin Gallery
76 pp col. ill. 10 x 8 in softcover 9781926589848 $20.00 Can. $24.00 U.S.
September 2014
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Michael Blum. Our History
Michael Blum
Galerie de l’UQAM
While published to accompany an exhibition, this publication is not an
exhibition catalogue; neither is it an artist’s book nor an essay on artist
Michael Blum. Rather, it is a report on research conducted by the artist on
his adopted country - Canada - and the search for identity of its largely
Francophone province, Quebec. To this end, Blum sent a questionnaire to
600 public personalities, the responses of 86 of whom are documented
here. Well-known political, artistic and educational figures respond to
questions such as: What does Quebec mean to you?; How would you
explain the differences between Canada and Quebec to a nonCanadian?; What would a museum dedicated to the differences between
Canada and Quebec collect?; How do you see the relationship between
Canada and Quebec in two or three generations? In English and French.
Born in Jerusalem, Michael Blum studied at Université de Paris
Panthéon-Sorbonne, and at Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten,
Amsterdam. He is currently professor at the Université du Québec à
Montréal’s School of Visual and Media Arts. Through video and
installation, Blum’s artistic practice develops critical readings of cultural
history. His work has been shown at numerous venues including the
Centre Georges-Pompidou (Paris) and the New Museum (New York).
Michael Blum: Our History
Michael Blum
Galerie de l’UQAM
156 pp col. ill. 8 x 5 in softcover 9782920325500 $15.00 Can. $18.00 U.S.
September 2014
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Off the Grid.
Abstract Painting in New Brunswick
Terry Graff
Contributors: Virgil Hammock, Ian G. Lumsden, Jacques Martin and
Maryse Grondin, and Ingrid Mueller
Beaverbrook Art Gallery
NEW PUBLISHER
This lavishly illustrated publication constitutes a ground-breaking
statement on the presence, nature and meaning of non-representational
painting in New Brunswick. In most authoritative narratives of the visual
arts in Canada, developments in the artistic life in the province are often
pushed to the historical margins or even absent, in favour of reinforcing
the same identifiable names, movements and styles. In reality, however,
the story of the visual arts in Canada is infinitely richer and more complex
than most cursory discourses tell us. As this publication ably reveals,
there is a unique history of abstract painting in New Brunswick that has,
until now, never been told. And it is one that can only deepen our
understanding and appreciation of Canadian visual arts culture.
The artists featured include a wide range of senior, mid-career, and
emerging artists: Jared Betts, David Bizzo, Sarah Cale, Luc Charette,
Lionel Cormier, Mark DeLong, Angel Gomez, Georges Goguen, Toby
Graser, Jay Isaac, Jocelyn Jean, Christian Michaud, Deanna Musgrave,
Dana O’Regan, Sarah Petite, Lori Slauenwhite, and David Umholtz.
Also highlighted is a selection of non-figurative art by some of the
province’s pioneering abstract painters, most notably Jack Humphrey,
Lawren P. Harris, Fritz Brandtner, Claude Roussel, Joseph Kashetsky,
and Roméo Savoie, and the surprising recovery of R. D. Turnbull, one of
Canada’s earliest abstractionists, who made a significant contribution to
the development of Abstract Expressionism in North America, but is
virtually unknown in the annals of Canadian art history.
Off The Grid: Abstract Painting in New Brunswick
Terry Graff et al
Beaverbrook Art Gallery
212 pp 130 col. ill. 9 x 9 in softcover 9780920674772 $50.00 Can. $55.00 U.S.
July 2014
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Ted Smith
Roger Boulet and Charo Neville
Kamloops Art Gallery
Five decades of work are featured in this brilliantly illustrated monograph
documenting the first retrospective exhibition of the painter’s career in
over 20 years. Ted Smith is a master of colour and knows how paint can
convey the most subtle feelings and how abstract elements, influenced by
the natural environment, can change the fundamental nature of a work.
His work is informed by the surrounding landscape and he has always felt
comfortable moving between the representational and the abstract.
Sometimes a landscape is depicted through fine brushstrokes and a
definition of form; sometimes it is present only through subtle reference.
Most often his paintings contain a tension between the two. It is this bold
approach to landscape, or more accurately, his interest in the act of
painting, that defines Smith’s artistic practice.
Ted Smith was born in Vernon, British Columbia in 1933 and did not
immediately pursue an artistic career. Only in 1960 did he enter the
Vancouver School of Art where he trained with artists such as Roy
Kiyooka and Jack Shadbolt. Smith has remained a prolific painter for the
past many decades and continues to paint into his 80s. His works can be
found in major collections throughout the country.
Ted Smith
Roger Boulet and Charo Neville
Kamloops Art Gallery
96 pp 60 col. ill. 12 x 12 in hardcover 9781895497823 $29.95 Can. $34.95 U.S.
July 2014
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Eric Atkinson:
Journeys Through the Landscape
Ted Fraser, Terry Graff and Don Bonham
Beaverbrook Art Gallery
NEW PUBLISHER
Eric Atkinson is a major Canadian abstract landscape painter, whose
extensive career as an artist and art educator straddles both sides of the
Atlantic, and is currently being rediscovered in England. A visual poet of
the landscape, his paintings are created on the studio floor by working
from all four sides of a canvas. He disrupts the picture plane, an amalgam
of sand and glue, with incised calligraphic markings that suggest the
natural rhythms of wind and water, of sculpted landforms created over the
course of thousands of years from geological erosion - a layering of time
and ancient memory. Appropriately referred to by the artist as “journeys
through the landscape”, his paintings are not literal depictions, but
expressions of the interpenetration of inner and outer landscapes, of the
integral relationship between the processes of art making and the forces
of nature, or as Atkinson states, “the forms echo the geological structure
of the land and the calligraphy left by man and nature upon its surface.”
Born in Hartlepool, England, in 1928, Atkinson was the assistant to Harry
Thubron at Leeds College of Art from 1955 to 1961 before he succeeded
him as Head of Fine Art. He emigrated to Canada in 1969 and became
Dean of Applied Arts at Fanshawe College in London, Ontario. The Basic
Course at Leeds is now recognized as one of the most innovative postBauhaus education programs in Europe, a radical change in art
educational thinking that values self-expression and the creative process
over the transfer of technical skills and a permanent set of artistic values
that also became part of Atkinson’s legacy at Fanshawe College.
Atkinson’s work has been exhibited widely in Britain, Canada, and the
United States, and is represented in many public and private collections.
Eric Atkinson: Journeys Through the Landscape
Ted Fraser, Terry Graff and Don Bonham
Beaverbrook Art Gallery
88 pp 41 col. ill. 11 x 9 in softcover 9780920674758 $30.00 Can. $36.00 U.S.
July 2014
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David Thauberger.
Road Trips & Other Diversions
Sandra Fraser, Timothy Long, Peter White, Andrew Kear, Patricia Bovey
and Ted Fraser
The Mendel Art Gallery
This wonderfully illustrated casebound edition highlights the work of one
of Canada’s most important contemporary artists. David Thauberger’s
paintings, prints and ceramics are immediately recognizable for their
iconic depictions of vernacular architecture, such as legion halls, falsefront businesses, churches and houses. Whether working in patterned
watercolours, flocked prints, ceramics, or taped and stenciled paintings,
Thauberger straddles the line between industrial and handmade
techniques, his extensive formal training counterbalanced by a rejection
of the formal limitations of a fine art approach. Informed by popular
culture, postcard imagery, folk art, and utopian urban planning concepts,
his art practice combines a keen eye for popular idioms with an
encyclopedic knowledge of twentieth century art. Through his work
Thauberger shows that Regionalism and Modernism are not always
contradictory. Six original essays discuss a wide range of topics related to
the artist’s work, notably, the material and psychological richness of the
Prairies as understood through his complex relationship to it. Published in
conjunction with a major nationally touring retrospective exhibition, this
first comprehensive overview of a remarkable career features 100 full
colour reproductions of works created between 1971 and 2009, and a 30minute documentary on DVD produced by Novina Motion Pictures Inc.
Essays in English and French. Published with the MacKenzie Art Gallery.
David Thauberger has one of the most impressive exhibition histories
among Canadian artists with works included in over 80 public and
corporate collections, including the National Gallery of Canada,
Vancouver Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Ontario, and Musée d’art
David Thauberger:
Road Trips & Other Diversions
Sandra Fraser, Timothy Long et al
The Mendel Art Gallery
208 pp 100 col. ill. 10.25 x 9.25 in. hardcover (casebound)
9781896359847
$55.00 Can. $65.00 U.S.
September 2014
contemporain de Montréal. David Thauberger lives and works in Regina,
Saskatchewan.
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Four Turns of a Key.
Metalworks by Elma Johnston McKay
Laura Ritchie
Beaverbrook Art Gallery
NEW PUBLISHER
Elma Johnston McKay is a master metalsmith who, between 1996 and
2009, researched and crafted an extensive collection of replications and
interpretations of historical keys. This publication presents, for the first
time, McKay’s creative exploration of the design, metalwork, and symbolic
use of keys in imagery and lore across time and different cultures. This
collection of handcrafted keys formed in copper, silver, brass, and gold
includes “inspiration” pieces (replicas or likenesses of historical keys
derived from artworks or literary sources) and contemporary reinventions
of those key(s) based on themes ranging from competition to tolerance,
patronage to greed.
McKay has identified four core qualities that are exemplified by the key as
an object: Beauty, Difference, Symbolism, and Progress. These qualities
resonate in the work: the aesthetic quality and exquisite craftsmanship
and artistic skill evident in the individual works; the metaphoric celebration
of individualism objectified in the key (a thing that must be unique to
function); the continuation of an art historical tradition of engaging
symbolism to convey universal themes; and a physical manifestation of
progress in the relationship between old and new, inspiration and
interpretation, traditional craft and contemporary art. Elma Johnston
McKay’s practice is a rare merging of contemporary fine craft, fine art, and
art history.
Four Turns of a Key:
Metalworks by Elma Johnston McKay
Terry Graff
The Beaverbrook Art Gallery
72 pp 78 col. ill. 10 x 8 in softcover 9780920674734
$25.00 Can. $30.00 U.S.
July 2014
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Emanuel Licha.
Striking a Pose
Marie-Hélène Leblanc, Andréanne Roy & Tina Di Carlo
Musée régional de Rimouski
Best known for his provocative War Tourist series, Emanuel Licha has
built a reputation for constructing images that blur the line between real
and simulated military conflict. His films, videos and photographs operate
as real-life tours of battle-stricken areas, investigating how traumatic and
violent events are looked at and are shown. Works featuring a mock Iraqi
village set up by the American army in the Mohave desert and now
operated by Hollywood professionals, or a French military unit that plays
both sides in a simulated conflict encourage us to question the images of
war that incessantly invade our lives. This career overview looks at major
installations including Mirages (2011), R for Real (2008) and War Tourist
(2004-2008). In English and French.
Born in Montréal, Emanuel Licha lives in Paris where he is associate
Professor at the École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Paris-La
Villette. He is a member of the Centre for research architecture,
Goldsmiths College, University of London. Recent exhibitions of Licha’s
work have been held at MACBA (Barcelona), NGBK (Berlin), Art Gallery
of Ontario (Toronto), Parsons New School for Design (New York), Witte de
With Centre for Contemporary Art (Rotterdam), and Musée d’art moderne
de la ville de Paris.
Emanuel Licha: Striking a Pose
Marie-Hélène Leblanc, Andréanne Roy
and Tina Di Carlo
Musée régional de Rimouski
54 pp 34 col. ill. 10 x 7 in softcover 9782923525488 $25.00 Can. $30.00 U.S.
June 2014
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Christos Dikeakos.
Nature Morte
Claudia Beck, Harold Rhenisch, Jeff Wall, Liz Wylie
Kelowna Art Gallery
As a first-generation member of the Vancouver photoconceptualist scene
with Ian Wallace and Jeff Wall, Christos Dikeakos is as much an historian
as a photographer. For Dikeakos, the process of looking at a subject
overlaps with looking back. Reflecting a preoccupation with vanishing
rural farming and orchard landscapes and the shifting economic terrain of
the British Columbia’s famed Okanagan Valley, this publication features
photographic images, prints and large projections as well as various
objects and documents drawn from the region. The result is a multilayered reading of place through art. The phrase Nature Morte, the
French-language pictorial equivalent of Still Life, here connotes the literal
death of nature. Christos Dikeakos has exhibited across the country most
recently in Traffic: Conceptual Art in Canada 1965–1980. With an
introduction by Jeff Wall.
Claudia Beck is founder of Vancouver’s Nova Gallery, a pioneer among
commercial galleries to show photography. Harold Rhenisch is a poet and
novelist based in British Columbia. Jeff Wall is an internationally
acclaimed artist. Liz Wylie is curator at Kelowna Art Gallery.
Christos Dikeakos: Nature Morte
Claudia Beck, Harold Rhenisch, Jeff Wall and Liz Wylie
Kelowna Art Gallery
76 pp 36 col. ill. 10 x 7 in softcover 9781896749709 $15.00 Can. $18.00 U.S.
June 2014
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The Adoration of the Shepherds
by El Greco
New study of a significant cornerstone in understanding the artist’s early career.
David McTavish
Agnes Etherington Art Centre
A scholar of European art brings new understanding to this Greco-Italian
masterpiece. In 1991 Queen’s University’s Agnes Etherington Art Centre
acquired a remarkable small Adoration of the Shepherds painting by El
Greco from donors Alfred and Isabel Bader. For author McTavish this was
the beginning of an adventure in tracing the work’s origins to El Greco’s
early career, and more specifically to his first major transition from his
native Crete to the artistic hotbed of Venice. Using investigative methods
that include radiography and infared refelectography, the author maps out
the work’s position in relation to the artist’s early production but also to
Cretan art, Renaissance prints and works by Titian, whose ability to
convey dramatic light and dynamic movement left an indelible mark on his
young Greek follower.
David McTavish has held many notable positions, including, Curator of
European Painting and Sculpture at the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto),
and Director of the Agnes Etherington Art Centre (Kingston).
The Adoration of the Shepherds by El Greco
David McTavish
Agnes Etherington Art Centre
48 pp 22 col ill. 9 x 7 in softcover
9781553394044
$12.00 Can. $15.00 U.S.
April 2014
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Beneath a Petroliferous Moon
Artists from around the world respond to the oil industry.
Jen Budney, Vaclav Smil, and Marcella Durand
The Mendel Gallery
Petroleum, in its extraction, distribution, economics, and social, political,
and environmental impacts, defines our contemporary world, yet in the
developed countries that consume it most, oil remains conspicuously
invisible. Taking its title from a Pablo Neruda’s 1940 poem, Standard Oil
Co., this survey of artistic responses to the oil industry from artists around
the world offers a spectacular range of ideas. While some artists focus on
petroleum’s environmental impacts, others choose to respond to its social
significance, its modern history, or the awe-inspiring visuals of the
industry’s infrastructure and detritus.
Works in the exhibition include: masks fashioned from jerry cans and
found objects by the Yoruba artist Romuald Hazoume, of Benin; kinetic
sculpture based upon the tar sands of northern Alberta by Calgary artist
Robyn Moody; lace-like sculptures made from oil drums by New Yorkbased Canadian artist Cal Lane; photographs, drawings, and videos
made in Arctic Canada by Vermont artist and farmer Louisa Conrad;
documents and drawings by Austrian artist Ernst Logar made in the
".....beneath a petroliferous moon,
a subtle change of ministers
in the capital, a whisper
like an oil tide,
and zap, you’ll see
how Standard Oil’s letters shine above the clouds,
above the seas, in your home,
illuminating their dominions."
Scottish oil town of Aberdeen; a delicately carved jerry can by
from 'Standard Oil Co.' Pablo Neruda
billboard by Saskatoon artist David LaRiviere.
Vancouver’s Brian Jungen; a video set in North America’s first oil town, Oil
City, Pennsylvania, by Ohio artist Robert Ladislas Derr; a large sculpture
based on oil drums and advertising by Cherokee artist Jimmie Durham
(Rome/Berlin); photographs of the Alberta tar sands by renowned Toronto
photographer Edward Burtynsky; drawings and sculpture inspired by the
Exxon Valdez disaster by expat Canadian artist Susan Turcot (UK); and a
Jen Budney is Associate Curator at the Mendel Gallery. Vaclav Smil is a
Beneath a Petroliferous Moon
Jen Budney, Vaclav Smil, Marcella Durand, and Pablo
Neruda
The Mendel Gallery
80 pages 45 col. illus. 8.5 x 6.5 inches hardcover
9781896359816
$24.99 Can. $29.99 U.S.
April 2014
scientist, policy analyst and Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the
Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba. Marcella Durand is
the author of AREA (Belladonna Books) and Traffic & Weather
(Futurepoem Books).
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Jinny Yu:
To Activate Space
“Jinny Yu has made a career from pushing boundaries or just leaving them
behind as she moves forward.” Clayton Windatt, Drain.
Mark A. Cheetham, Penny Cousineau-Levine
and Ola Wlusek
The Ottawa Art Gallery
Jinny Yu challenges more than the concept of painting. Her work
questions the very existence of predisposed artistic practices as she blurs
the lines between methodology and ideology. Oscillating between the
fields of the abstract painting and the object, Yu seeks out aspects of
painting beyond the pictorial space, striving to depict that which is beyond
the image. The choice of materials is integral to her artistic practice and
conceptual preoccupations and she frequently paints with oil on
aluminum, whose semi-reflective surface comprises a pictorial space. For
the artist the pictorial space of the aluminum is a material fact, a preexisting condition of the as yet unpainted surface, and by painting on such
a surface, one that is already pictorial, Yu’s work begins where painting
often ends. Born in Korea in 1976 and based in Canada since 1988, Jinny
Yu has shown widely, with exhibitions at the ISCP Gallery (Brooklyn),
Pulse New York, Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation (Venice), the Kyoto
Municipal Museum of Art (Kyoto), and Sotheby’s (London, UK). Published
with Éditions Art Mûr, this monograph is thoroughly illustrated with original
essays and an interview with the artist.
Mark A. Cheetham is Professor in the Department of the History of Art at
the University of Toronto and author of Abstract Art Against Autonomy:
Infection, Resistance, and Cure since the 60s. Penny Cousineau-Levine
is Professor of the History and Theory of Art at the University of Ottawa
Jinny Yu: To Activate Space
Mark A. Cheetham, Penny Cousineau-Levine
and Ola Wlusek
The Ottawa Art Gallery
59 pp 30 col. ill. 10 x 9.5 in softcover
9782923243078
$30.00 Can. $35.00 U.S.
April 2014
and author of Faking Death: Canadian Art Photography and the Canadian
Imagination. Ola Wlusek is Curator of Contemporary Art at The Ottawa Art
Gallery.
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Miriam and Hudson Sargeant Art Collection
Voices in Longitude and Latitude
Catherine Sinclair
Marnina Gonick and Noam Gonick
The Ottawa Art Gallery
MSVU Art Gallery
26 pp 28 col. ill. 8.5 x 6 in softcover 32 pp col. ill. 7.5 x 7.5 in softcover
9781894906487 9781894518703
$10.00 Can. $12.00 U.S.
$20.00 Can. $24.00 U.S.
July 2014
June 2014
This catalogue documents the Gallery’s 2013 acquisition of the
Publication accompanying a video installation about what it means to be a
Miriam and Hudson Sargeant Art Collection: a significant holding
girl in the 21st century. The aspirations of teen-aged girls were recorded
of works by historical twentieth-century artists such as A.Y.
with individuals from communities across Canada: Inuit in Kugluktuk,
Jackson and Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté, as well as by
Nunavut; trans-gender in Halifax, Nova Scotia; Jewish in Toronto, Ontario;
contemporary First Nations artists such as Norval Morrisseau and
and Congolese, Rwandan, Ethiopian and Sudanese immigrants in
Jane-Ash Poitras. The Sargeants were both teachers and their
Winnipeg, Manitoba. The girls, aged 13 to 23, appear in a 17-minute,
influence was strongly and widely felt in the Ottawa community.
four-screen projection. This project represents the first collaboration
Their love for the arts has now been extended to an even wider
between siblings Noam Gonick, the renowned Winnipeg filmmaker, and
public. In English and French.
Dr. Marnina Gonick, Canada Research Chair in Gender at Mount Saint
Vincent University, Halifax. Sitting at the intersection of ethnography and
art, their joint work provides insight into the question of how audio-visual
media can open new possibilities and ways of knowing in social research.
Noam Gonick is a Canadian filmmaker and artist. His films include Hey,
Happy!, Stryker, and Guy Maddin: Waiting for Twilight. Marnina Gonick is
the author of numerous books and articles notably Between Femininities:
Ambivalence, Identity and the Education of Girls (SUNY Press, 2003).
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