Kathleen Munn and Lowrie Warrener: The Logic of Nature, the Romance of Space
September 30, 2011 to January 8, 2012
The work of Kathleen Munn and Lowrie Warrener represents some of the earliest abstract art in Canada as it first emerged during the 1920s and 30s. Munn, a New York-trained and Toronto-based artist, exhibited regularly from 1909 until the late 1930s. Sarnia-born Warrener also worked in Toronto during the 1920s and 30s; they both contributed paintings to the official Group of Seven exhibition held in 1928 and were included in that year’s influential Yearbook of the Arts compiled by renowned artist and writer Bertram Brooker.
This exhibition investigates these artists in relation to dominant artistic and philosophical movements of the period to provide a fuller, often alternative perspective on Canadian art. Munn’s great knowledge of theory led her to radically reinterpret traditional subjects such as religious and pastoral scenes into fractured, daring designs. She combined the mystical aspects of modernism with her own spiritual beliefs, culminating in her greatest series on the Passion of Christ. Warrener was a protégé of the Group of Seven, yet his landscape imagery is his own, projecting the lyrical stylization and bright cloisonnism of European art onto the Canadian wilderness. He also extended the search for ‘national’ cultural identity into the field of theatre, producing innovative stage designs and writing an avant-garde play with celebrated dramatist Herman Voaden.
Michèle Mackasey: face à nous
September 30, 2011 to January 8, 2012
Saskatoon based artist, Michèle Mackasey has created a new body of work that puts the spotlight on single mothers. These large portrait paintings of local families capture the bond between mothers and their children, as well as point to the complex family dynamics where the father is literally out of the picture. In Mackasey’s life-size oil and acrylic paintings, the artist imbues her subjects with the dignity and stature that has been associated with portrait painting for centuries. Yet these portraits depict families, who continue to live on the margins, facing prejudice and economic hardship with mothers balancing the roles of sole provider and caregiver. Mackasey utilizes body language, facial expression and composition with great empathy in this moving and insightful series of paintings.
Artists by Artists: Jennifer Crane and Karla Griffin
Coming and Going
September 30, 2011 to January 12, 2012
Coming and Going explores the ever-shifting relationships among people, places and objects, in connection with the notion of home as a construct of personal desire. Artists Jennifer Crane and Karla Griffin navigate both the private and public aspects of the domestic sphere in an attempt to capture the traces of human actions and experience. Focusing on empty interior spaces and abandoned household objects, these artists draw attention to the narrative and theatrical possibilities offered by their subject matter. Narrative is mainly evoked through an absence in the space or of the objects — as in a blank wall without pictures, or furniture without walls. Crane’s interiors reference the absent occupant while Griffin’s work points to the absence of a home and the actions of absent individuals.
Courtney Milne: The Pool Project
June 24 – September 18, 2011
Courtney Milne was one of Canada’s most recognized professional photographers, renowned worldwide for his images of landscape and nature. He made more than 350,000 exposures, photographing in 35 countries and on all seven continents. He wrote more than 180 illustrated articles for photographic magazines and produced numerous popular books of photography of the Canadian prairies, as well as several books of images of global sacred sites and spiritual landscapes. His best-selling 1991 book, The Sacred Earth, features a foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
The Pool Project is Milne’s first solo exhibition at the Mendel Art Gallery. This unique collaborative project brings together more than 40 of Milne’s stunning colour photographs of the surface of his outdoor swimming pool, captured over the course of a decade (2000-2010) with the spiritual musings and reflections of a broad array of local and international personalities. The Pool Project is both a celebration of Milne’s unique ability to capture the qualities of light, colour, and texture and an opportunity for visitors of all backgrounds to contemplate aspects of the spiritual through art.
The Mendel Gift
June 24 – September 11, 2011
Saskatoon would lack much of its verve without the contributions of one of its citizens: Frederick Salomon Mendel. In 1940, he came to this city with his wife, Clare, and their two daughters, Johanna and Eva. He was a prosperous, 52-year-old businessman fleeing from Nazi Germany, and within months of his arrival, he opened the enterprise that would become Intercontinental Packers Limited. Twenty years later, while managing the fourth largest meat processing plant in Canada and Saskatoon’s biggest industry, Fred Mendel approached Mayor Sidney Buckwold, to initiate the creation of a public art gallery. With Mr. Mendel’s philanthropy and funding from the province and city, the Mendel Art Gallery and Civic Conservatory opened to an enthusiastic public on October 16, 1964.
Betty Goodwin: Darkness and Memory
June 24 – September 18, 2011
Drawing from the permanent collection of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal an ensemble of 27 works by Betty Goodwin, this touring exhibition offers a critical journey into a unique and luminous body of work where an acute awareness of the human condition combines with the knowledge that pain, death and oblivion are also part of the unconsciousness.
