Gallery hosts Hassan's unique view

trevor.kenney — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 21:53:08 +0000

Four decades of artwork by London, Ont. artist Jamelie Hassan is featured in the installation, At the Far Edge of Words, at the U of L Main Gallery from Sept. 16 to Oct. 29.

The exhibition, which is comprised of key pieces that intertwine her work as an artist with an enduring interest in text, language, memory, personal history and identity, is on a national tour circulated by Museum London.

"As soon as I saw the tour proposal from Museum London, I jumped at the chance to bring this survey of Jamelie Hassan's career to the Gallery," says Dr. Josephine Mills, director/curator. "I have seen Hassan's work in different exhibitions over many years and have always been impressed with how she works with a range of artistic approaches to open up a dialogue about the ideas she addresses in her work. Hassan manages to explore both the specifics of her own locale and personal history, and yet also address bigger issues around hybridity and interactions between cultures."

Melanie Townsend, head of Exhibitions and Collections at Museum London, curates the exhibition.

"Hassan's practice has been distinguished by her use of a wide range of media – ceramics, watercolours, bookworks, photographs, video, and installations – from which she selects an approach best suited to the task at hand," says Townsend. "For example, watercolours, which are swift and portable, occupy much of her work made on the road, while robust installations are often employed to confront the complexity of cultural politics and personal history."

Hassan's work is in numerous collections including the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa); Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto); Glenbow Museum (Calgary); Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery (Vancouver); Museum London (London). In 2001, she was a recipient of the Governor General's Award in Visual Arts.

The opening reception for At the Far Edge of Words is Thursday, Sept. 16 at 4 p.m.

Featured artist: Carl Beam (1943-2005)

trevor.kenney — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 20:22:11 +0000

Carl Beam was an internationally acclaimed contemporary Canadian artist of Ojibway descent, whose work will survive as a milestone in the development of the Canadian Aboriginal voice on the international art scene.

Beam was born in 1943 at M'Chigeeng (West Bay) on Manitoulin Island. As a child he was sent to the Garnier Residential School in Spanish, an awful experience that would influence some of the powerful imagery used in his later work.

Beam studied at the Kootenay School of Art, the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Victoria (where he earned a BFA in 1974) and the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Alberta. In 1986, the National Gallery of Canada was the first of the major Canadian galleries to recognize Beam's work with the purchase of The North American Iceberg. From 1983–1992 his work was included in all the landmark exhibitions that altered the segregation of aboriginal art in Canada.

Beam's works can be read as juxtapositions between long held perceptions and challenging alternatives. Early influences during his formal studies included Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. His well known, appropriated images (a pieta, an embryo, Abraham Lincoln, Sitting Bull, a crow, the Pinta and Maria, and Einstein, among others) were cross-cultural symbols that he utilized to convey a universal message about the environment and the relationship between man, nature and the passage of time.

With a linear pattern or formal grid, he tried to visually create the fourth dimension in his work, a spiritual space inhabited by a quiet intellect. That he was an artist of native and white heritage added to the scope of the complex subjects he chose.

Beam's work, executed in diverse media such as drawing, watercolour, etching, non-silver photography, photo transfer, collage, installation and ceramics, has been exhibited throughout North America as well as in Italy, Denmark, Germany and China. It is found in major Canadian and international collections including
the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Art Gallery and the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, N.Y.

In 2000, Beam was inducted into the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts, and in 2005 he received the Governor General's Award in Visual Art and Media. He died July 30, 2005, of complications arising from diabetes.

UNews - Art Gallery of Ontario

Gallery hosts Hassan's unique view

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Featured artist: Carl Beam (1943-2005)

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