Detail from Sons of a Lost River – Neal McLeod

NEAL McLeod
Sons of a lost River

Neal McLeod is a visual artist, award-winning poet and non-fiction writer film-maker performance artist, satirist, comedian, and educator. He is currently Associate Professor in the Native Studies Department at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario.

McLeod’s paintings are tied together by the multiple dimensions of the wîhtikow, an evil spirit-being that consumes humans in order to satisfy its greed and self-absorption. In Cree oral traditions, each storyteller varies descriptions in the narratives as well as their meanings. McLeod’s narrative, too, offers many possible readings. While this exhibition continues to explore the theme of the wîhtikow, it expands McLeod’s metaphorical scope to issues of personal, cultural, and collective memory tied to the landscape, to family, and to history.

Organized and circulated by the Mendel Art Gallery. Curated by Dan Ring, Acting Head Curator.

Opening Reception Friday May 7 from 7 to 9 pm, 2010

School Programs Available

Download the 2010 Exhibition Schedule

R. Gary Miller, Native Woman, 2008 oil on canvas

R. GARY MILLER: AGAINST THE WALL

Known for his vivid post-expressionist paintings of trees, landscapes, and people, R. Gary Miller’s works emphasize a bold and direct application of paint and unexpected use of colour to tell meaningful stories on canvas. These distinctive paintings convey an intriguing mix of influences - from the Fauvist styles of avant-garde French artists Matisse and Gauguin, to the dynamic methods of longtime painting partner, Arthur Shilling.   Whether through portraits of nature or humanity, Miller’s respect and enthusiasm for his subjects is evidenced through the focus and balance of line, shape and colour that continually challenges the viewer’s eye as well as the imagination.

R. Gary Miller was born in 1950 on the Six Nations Reserve near Brantford, Ontario. He studied at the Ontario College of Art and Design and the University of Toronto. His recent solo exhibition, Mush Hole Remembered (2008) at the Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford depicted the artist’s own memories of abuse at the Mohawk Institute, a residential school in Brantford.  Upcoming projects include an exhibition with his partner artist Tobe Muir at the Innuit Art Gallery in London, Ontario. Miller currently lives and works with near Coe Hill, Ontario.

Cartographies: Dionne Simpson

Dionne Simpson is a Toronto based artist. The national winner of the prestigious RBC New Canadian Painting competition in 2004, Simpson is quickly building an international career based on her distinctive works which are created through a painstaking process inspired by the West African art of thread pulling - the removal of thread from material in order to create patterns and images.

Her latest series is a highly personal form of Pointillism depicting anonymous urban landscapes as well as a series of self-portraits that pulsate behind the exposed grid she creates from layering her materials into the de-woven fabric. In these mixed-media paintings, she de-weaves the canvas before applying an unorthodox assortment of materials such as soil, hair dye and liquid paper.

Employing the canvas as a metaphor for the underlying fabric of Canadian society, Simpson embeds fragments sourced and imaged from contemporary culture (from corporate logos, images of media personalities to remnants of her daily life) inside the windows formed within the canvas.

This exhibition is co-curated with Sally Frater. A recent graduate of the Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London, England, Frater has a burgeoning curatorial practice that is engaged with contemporary art and post-identity politics.

Join the Art Gallery of Peterborough for a Curators Talk with Sally Frater on Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 7 pm .

Delio Delgado: Discarded Plans

Presenting a new series of mixed-media drawings created over found blueprints - what the artist describes as an ongoing investigation inspired by his daily life. A recent immigrant from the Dominican Republic, Delgado is currently employed as a painter for a general contractor in the Hamilton area. He suggests that the intervention, working over someone else’s construction drawings, blurs the boundaries between his creative process and his job. The ‘found’ blueprints are a support for a many-layered narrative.

As discarded plans, the blueprints bear the weight of their actual or potential consequences on the region that they describe. Symbolic imagery offers direct and indirect references to the many regional realities in a globalized present. In some indigenous cultures, the present is the only relevant tense. In the urban, industrialized areas of Southern-Ontario, newcomers already live over the lives of those who not so long ago displaced Aboriginal inhabitants. In the dominant culture’s present tense, migrant farm workers from Mexico and the Caribbean remain invisible despite their 30-year contribution to the regional economy. Yet, the continuous imprint of their existence—experiences of struggle and salvation—is stamped on the landscape, as illustrated in Delgado’s references.

Photovoice Youth Arts Project

The Youth Gambling Awareness Program at the YMCA in Peterborough has collaborated with The Carriage House Alternative Education Program and the Art Gallery of Peterborough for the Photovoice Youth Art Project. The aim of this Photovoice project is to engage youth in using photography as a medium to record and reflect their community's strengths and problems and to promote dialogue of the issue of addictions in their community.

Bill Vazan: Works from the Permanent Collection

Montreal artist Bill Vazan is of the first generation of Canadian artists whose work originated out of the conceptual and minimalist art of the 1960s. An inveterate world traveller, Vazan has built a multidisciplinary arts practice dealing with the investigation of boundaries. A leading proponent of "Land Art", for over forty years, he has drawn, painted, sculpted and photographed the earth's environment reflecting his on-going interest is the abstract construction of territories and the power relations that lie behind them. This exhibition features photographic and sculptural works drawn from the AGP permanent collection, including his unique photo-mosaics.

Allyson Mitchell, Ladies Sasquatch, 2009, detail of installation image credit Cat O’Neil Ladies Sasquatch: Allyson Mitchell Allyson Mitchell's newest installation presents an epic gathering of figures, each one a monumental symbol of female brains, brawn and sexuality-a community of Lady Sasquatchs. The free standing, sculptural works by this Toronto-based artist marry feminist theory with her favourite material, fun fur. This curatorial project presents the artist's realignment of feminine representation in which she symbolizes the mythical feminine as something not easily captured or domesticated, or harnessed to sell, yet undeniably powerful and attractive. Organized and circulated by the McMaster Museum of Art. Curator: Carla Garnet.   Robyn Love, Knitting Sprawl, 2009, detail Robyn Love: Knitting Sprawl Knitting Sprawl is a cross-country art project exploring knitting, suburbia and community in Canada.  It is a large-scale collaboration that includes many components, including knitting, video, photography, and performance.  The work grows out of the series of organized meetings or “knit-togethers” that the artist attended with groups of people who knit in suburban communities across Canada, including Peterborough.  As the participants spend time with the artist and knit they have conversations about what life is like in their community, with a particular focus on the question: What is the center of our community? Through its multi-media approach and broad participation, Knitting Sprawl becomes a metaphor for the boundary-less, sprawling nature of our contemporary suburbs. Taylor Leahy, Body : IMAGES, Thomas A. Stewart Secondary School, Student Exhibition 2009 Body: IMAGES Photo-based work exploring the theme of representation, distortion and the body by students at Thomas A. Stewart Secondary School in Peterborough. Organized by artist and educator Micky Renders in partnership with Reframe Film Festival. Visit ReFrame.       Workshop  with Micky Renders  - January 30, 1- 5 pm.

6 NOVEMBER, 2009 THROUGH 3 JANUARY, 2010 Vid Ingelevics: hunger/gatherer Opening Reception & Celebration: Friday November 6, 2009

Image: Vid Ingelevics, Platform 10B, 2004, chromogenic print, 94 x 117 cm

Vid Ingelevics is a photographer based in Toronto and Heathcote, near Owen Sound, Ontario, who investigates human presence and cultural imposition on the landscape. His large-scale photographs of rustic hunting platforms and common woodpiles expose viewers to human-made structures that are so ubiquitous to our region of the province we rarely think about them. This exhibition draws our attention to what Ingelevics calls “two of humankind’s oldest survival strategies” - hunting and gathering. We have no clear idea of the exact location of any one of these platforms, and this has the effect of transforming the structures into aesthetic objects. Capturing structures that seem to exist outside of any recorded history, his large-format photographs record sites of collective memory without disturbing them. Artist talk with Vid Ingelevics on November 26 at 7 pm

July 17 through Oct 18, 2009 AGP 35th Anniversary Exhibition Opening Reception & Celebration: Thursday July 23, 7 to 10pm	image: David Bierk, A Eulogy to Art, Ingres1, 1998 (detail) oil on photographs on board, steel. Collection of the AGP
The Art Gallery of Peterborough celebrates its 35th anniversary with a major exhibition that offers insight into the genesis of the gallery’s collection. Collective Visions provides the impetus for discourse on a range of historic and contemporary artists of regional, national and international significance and their relationship to our community. Drawings and prints by local artists George Raab of Millbrook and Peer Christensen of Peterborough compliment work by artists from across Ontario and throughout Canada. Among the strengths of the AGP’s holdings is a comprehensive collection of paintings by Peterborough artist David Bierk (1944 -2002) and acclaimed abstract Toronto-Regina artist Ronald Bloore. Works of Canadian historic significance that will be highlighted are paintings and drawings by William Bymner, Horatio Walker and A.Y. Jackson.
The collection of The Art Gallery of Peterborough began in 1974, the same year it was established as a public gallery, with a gift of historical European and Canadian Paintings from the Peterborough Teacher’s College. The AGP Volunteers Committee initiated the first purchase made by the Art Gallery of Peterborough in 1977 when they raised funds, matched by the Province of Ontario, to purchase a painting by Jack Shadbolt, now included in this exhibition. Also included is a collection of works on permanent loan from the Peterborough Collegiate Vocational Institute. For many years the PCVS student council to raised funds to purchase art. Thanks to their vision, our community is now privileged to enjoy the work of Group of Seven Member’s Casson, Jackson, MacDonald and Harris along side Brigden, Houser and Bieler.