David Hoffos: Scenes from the House Dream

These works were executed over the past five years by Canadian multimedia artist David Hoffos. The series consists primarily of small, realistic-looking dioramas of dwelling spaces as well as urban and suburban landscapes that are hallmarked by Hoffos’ signature low-tech but highly effective illusionism.

Organized by Rodman Hall Art Centre/Brock University in collaboration with the Southern Alberta Art Gallery and TrepanierBaer Gallery, Alberta

Meet the curator Thursday Nov 12

Recent Acquisitions to the Photographs Collection

This installation of 30 photographs brings together a small selection of works that have been added through purchase and donation to the collection over the past few years. There are images by American, Canadian, French, German, Japanese, Italian and South African photographers of the 20th and 21st centuries.

The Drawings and Paintings of Daphne Odjig: A Retrospective Exhibition

This exhibition brings together works produced by Daphne Odjig over a 44-year period, providing a critical and long-overdue assessment of the artist’s extensive aesthetic, philosophical and cultural investigations. The exhibition comprises nearly 60 works, including examples of Odjig’s history and legend paintings, murals, erotica, abstractions and landscapes. As a group, these works articulate the breadth of Odjig’s engagement with her personal and cultural history. They also trace the remarkable aesthetic development of the artist from her initial experimentation to the mastery of her media. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue available in English, French and Anishnabe.

Organized by the National Gallery of Canada and the Art Gallery of Sudbury. Presented by Pratt & Whitney Canada

Visit the exhibition website

Miller Brittain: When the Stars Threw Down Their Spears

Miller Brittain: When the Stars Threw Down Their Spears presents over 70 drawings, paintings and murals dating from 1930 to 1968 by the important New Brunswick artist, Miller Brittain. Realist images of the social crises of the 1930s and of his life in the air force during the Second World War are preludes to Brittain’s religious and visionary post-war paintings and drawings. This exhibition provides a significant introduction to the life and work of this renowned Canadian artist.

Organized and circulated by the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick.

Visit the exhibition website.

Uuturautiit: Cape Dorset Celebrates 50 Years of Printmaking

This year, Cape Dorset, Nunavut, celebrates 50 years of making prints. Initial experiments in linocut, stonecut, and stencil begun in the late 1950s culminated in the inaugural collection of 1959, the first catalogued prints to be made by Inuit artists.

This significant exhibition pays tribute to the anniversary and continued dynamism of Cape Dorset artists by pairing recent and innovative work, including prints from the Fall 2009 release, with the 1959 collection, being shown for perhaps the first time in five decades.

Organized by the National Gallery of Canada in collaboration with Dorset Fine Arts. Supported by First Air and the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada

Meet the curator and the artists

CMCP - Gabor Szilasi: The Eloquence of the Everyday

Over the course of the last 50 years, Gabor Szilasi (b. Budapest, 1928) has created one of Canada’s significant and influential bodies of photographic work, comprising environmental portraits, domestic, commercial, and urban views of Montreal and Budapest, and images of rural Quebec.  His photographs have been sustained by an unwavering belief in the humanistic and documentary value of the medium. This exhibition uncovers the essence of Szilasi’s artistic vision through his observations of urban and rural life and his recordings of the connections between culture and community.  How people present themselves to the photographer and furnish their homes, as well as the character of their surroundings, all contribute to the creation of an intricate social and historical record.

Organized by the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography and the Musée d’art de Joliette.
Presented by Pratt & Whitney Canada.

Visit the exhibition website.

The Library of Charles Comfort

Charles Fraser Comfort was a distinguished Canadian artist who served as Director of the National Gallery from 1960 to 1965. His long career was marked by friendships with Canadian artists, service abroad as an official war artist and steadfast commitment to artistic practice and teaching. His personal library reflects a multitude of interests and associations, forged during a lifetime devoted to the arts in Canada.

Part II: Rethinking Abstraction from an Indigenous Perspective

This series of exhibitions presents works by celebrated artists such as Alex Janvier and Kenojuak Ashevak, whose expressive use of colour, line and form communicate their political, social and cultural concerns. Drawn from the NGC collection, the series presents abstract and modernist work produced by Indigenous artists in Canada and abroad, from the 1960s to the present.

Douglas Gordon. Play Dead: Real Time

“Play dead” is one of the tricks performed by Minnie, the elephant star of internationally acclaimed artist Douglas Gordon’s mesmerizing three-channel video installation. The artist arranged for the young Indian elephant to be brought to New York City’s spacious Gagosian Gallery, where a professional crew filmed her performing a series of tricks – play dead, stand still, walk around, back up, get up, and beg.

General Idea. One Year of AZT

The Toronto-based collective General Idea - AA Bronson, Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal - created a profound body of work in response to the HIV/AIDS crisis until 1994, when Partz and Zontal were lost to the disease. This work renders in high relief the drug AZT that is prescribed to HIV-positive patients to delay the onset of AIDS. The pills are arranged on the wall in daily, monthly, and yearly dosages, the composition recalling both the calendar and the efficient look of pharmaceutical packaging.

Indigenous Art Collection

The Indigenous art collection comprises works by Aboriginal artists in Canada and Indigenous artists from around the world. Many of the works demonstrate ongoing links to the ancestral visual traditions of the past as they engage in the social, political and theoretical discourses that inform much of the art produced today. These works are integrated in chronological, thematic and monographic installations throughout the Canadian, Indigenous and Contemporary art galleries.

Contemporary Art Collection

The contemporary art collection is the beating heart of the National Gallery of Canada and offers visitors a rich and varied encounter with the best Canadian and international works in sculpture, painting, video, film, drawing, printmaking and installation produced over the past three decades.

Engaging with living artists, the contemporary collection represents current trends in the art world while continuing to build upon and create relationships to the museum’s historical works. As one of Canada’s foremost institutions to experience contemporary art, the gallery is a site for exchange, debate and contemplation.