2020 exhibitions

2019 Karsh Award laureate

January 16 to July 26, 2020

Apex: Interloper consists of 11 of 17 photographs of a panoramic set that was shot in Apex, Nunavut, at 63°43’28.5”N 68°27’00.6”W. On public view in Ottawa, home to the largest population of Inuit outside Nunavut, this work spans 70 linear feet. The repeated and offset views seem to present a remote, picturesque and largely pristine environment. However, each segment contains either overt or subtle evidence of various incursions into and onto this landscape at the top of the world. Visible are the historic buildings of the Hudson Bay Company, established in 1670, military and public infrastructure, crisscrossing snowmobile trails and endless horizons at the edge of the unknowable arctic landscape.

In “The Sugar Rush of the Sublime,” Lisa Moore’s introduction to Northrup Frye’s The Bush Garden (1971), she states: “Frye poses a terrifying conundrum: the refusal of the Canadian landscape to be fettered or framed or coaxed into submission by perspective or cliché. We cannot hide in a garrison from “out there.” The best we can do, Frye suggests, is look; but perhaps we need to squint. (…) We hold the terror of the unknown at bay long enough to make art of it.”

Apex: Interloper coincides with another exhibition by 2019 Karsh Award laureate Andrew Wright. Filmtrack 4 a Sound: Suite Kurelek de Fiala will be on display at Karsh-Masson Gallery from January 23 to March 15, 2020.

Biography

Artist Andrew Wright creates works in many media and has been preoccupied with using photography in traditional and decidedly non-traditional ways for over 25 years. Wright has exhibited widely in Canada and abroad with shows in places such as the U.S., the U.K., the E.U., Korea and China. He has exhibited at such venues as the London Gallery West; the Polygon Gallery, Vancouver; the Art Museum at the University of Toronto; the Art Gallery of Ontario; the University of California, Berkeley; Oakville Galleries; and the Today Art Museum, Beijing. His works can be found in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the X'i’an Art Museum in China, the City of Ottawa, the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, the University of Toronto, the Ottawa Art Gallery, Canada’s High Commission in London at Canada House and private collections around the world.

A six-time nominee for the Sobey Art Award, Wright was a semi-finalist in 2007. In 2011, Wright won the inaugural Gattuso Prize at Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival in Toronto. His work has been curated by Joan Fontcuberta and he has shown alongside artists such as Michael Snow, Iain Baxter&, Ed Burtynsky, Rebecca Belmore and Kelly Mark. Andrew Wright is an Associate Professor of Visual Art and the Graduate Program Director in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Ottawa.

Selections from the City of Ottawa Art Collection

October 16, 2020 to February 14, 2021

Curated by Jonathan Browns and Sarah Patterson, this exhibition presents a selection of digital videos from the City of Ottawa Art Collection that use water as an allegory to explore themes such as geography, urbanism and mental illness. Featuring artwork by Cheryl Pagurek, Philip Rose, Komi Seshie and Craig Commanda.

Artworks from this circulating collection are placed in over 170 public spaces and municipal buildings to be viewed and enjoyed by residents and visitors. The City of Ottawa and its various municipal predecessors have been actively collecting artwork by professional artists for over 30 years. As a result, the City of Ottawa Collection has grown to include more than 2,900 artworks by more than 800 artists.