There are many ways people are brought into the process of making art. Through my own art practice and experience with producing and participating in socially engaged art projects, I understand that collaboration, participation, and social engagement have the capacity to create transformative experiences and dynamic artwork.  Yet, I have felt the edges of collaboration ..read more

Mi’kmaw artist Alan Syliboy’s retrospective The Journey So Far, curated by Pamela Edmonds at the Dalhousie Art Gallery (May 9 to August 11, 2024), spanned more than fifty years of work. The exhibition included paintings, collage, photography, music, print, mixed media, video, drums, and guitars and even a commissioned wall mural featuring a great horned ..read more

This summer marked the fortieth anniversary of Eastern Edge Gallery, Newfoundland’s only artist-run centre and the site of some of the wildest and most boldly political art exhibited in Newfoundland since the early 1980s. In preparation for celebrations, which took place in St. John’s in August, the gallery staff dug into their archives, hosted story-sharing ..read more

by Kate Lahey A group of over twenty middle school children pour excitedly out of the heavy glass gallery doors as curator Emily Critch, artist Daze Jefferies, and myself make our way toward Jefferies’s first major solo exhibition, stay here stay how stay at The Rooms Provincial Gallery in St. John’s. Jefferies’s joyful giggle whispers through the hard chamber of the building.  Making our way through the entrance lit by a red light, an important signifier of sex work, we are first met not with the title wall, but a small reproduction of a print by Matthaeus Merian titled Description of th ..read more

In his groundbreaking work of theory and criticism, The Black Atlantic, Paul Gilroy writes of the “creolisation, metissage, mestizaje, and hybridity” that make up the modern world in order to argue that “the history of the Black Atlantic…continually crisscrossed by the movements of Black people—not only as commodities but engaged in various struggles towards emancipation, autonomy, and citizenship—provides a means to re-examine the problems of nationality, location, identity, and historical memory.” By thinking in terms of the Black Atlantic, Gilroy argues, we can better understand the African ..read more

We’re eager to hear from writers, artists, and critics to expand and deepen conversations inspired by the artistic vision of emerging and established artists who are pushing the boundaries of art and culture in the Atlantic. For this open call, we are seeking pitches for features, profiles, and exhibition reviews. We prioritize work that pushes back against white supremacy and colonialism. We are committed to anti-oppression and anti-racism practices, and we support Indigenous sovereignty, Black liberation, Queer positivity and gender diversity. The team at Visual Arts News is eager to hear fr ..read more

Three-time JUNO Award nominated singer-songwriter Jenn Grant is primarily known as a musician, but she also holds a degree from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University with a focus in painting and drawing. In fact, her paintings and design work appear on some of her album covers. When Grant’s music touring career came to a standstill during the pandemic, she returned to the canvas at her home in Lake Echo, Nova Scotia.   Originally from Prince Edward Island, Grant has been writing and recording for two decades. Her albums include Forever on Christmas Eve (2020); Love, Inevit ..read more

On July 9, 1975, Dutch conceptual and performance artist Bas Jan Ader left Cape Cod in a thirteen-foot boat on a solo voyage across the North Atlantic never to reach his destination. Ader’s final work left him lost at sea. Nearly fifty years later, artist Will Robinson invites viewers to sit in this grief and honour his disappearance. Just outside the entrance of Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery a student is seated, folding their laundry. The nervous energy of university students yelling in the hallways makes it all the more jarring to enter the dark gallery and the sombre tone inside. The ..read more

It is a bit overwhelming to walk into Mountains of Wonder and Tangles of Truth: Kathy Hooper, a Retrospective at the Saint John Arts Centre. Often overshadowed by her husband, the late sculptor John Hooper, Kathy Hooper has had an equally, if not more, significant impact in the Canadian art world. Over the course of her six-decades-long career, Hooper has worked furiously, creating literal mountains of work from her home studio in Hampton, New Brunswick. Her work spans a vast range of media: she draws, paints, sculpts in both wood and ceramic, makes prints, writes—you name it. The result is a ..read more

Séamus Gallagher knows better than most how cringeworthy it can feel to call yourself an artist and how imposter syndrome can creep in when that’s the reply to a stranger’s asking what you do. But when I ask them the moment they knew for sure they were an artist, they don’t miss a beat delivering a time and date: Moncton, New Brunswick, 2011. The feeling was a thrum in their bones that matched the sound of their computer connecting to the internet, sharing their earliest works—“pop culture-based drawings” inspired by the TV series Twin Peaks—on Tumblr.  “They’re not, like, drawings that I ..read more