| 2018 |
| January 14 - April 29, 2018 |
| Anatomy of a Collector: Guest Curator Brian Cooke |
| The TOM is pleased to present Anatomy of a Collector, a major exhibition featuring significant works of Contemporary Canadian Ceramics curated from seven collectors across North America. Guest Curator Brian Cooke, Manager and Curator at Jonathon Bancroft-Snell Gallery in London, Ontario invites viewers into the world of collecting. Why do people collect art? How do they choose what to collect? Anatomy of a Collector will focus on Contemporary Canadian Ceramics but also illustrates what happens when opportunity and desire converge. |
| Michele Karch-Ackerman: Bluebird Dress Factory |
| In Bluebird Dress Factory, artist Michèle Karch-Ackerman explores the intersection of time and death, humanity and ornithology with an installation that includes children’s garments made from heirloom patterns and fabrics, antique dolls and toys, complemented by historic taxidermy bluebirds, nests and eggs. Karch-Ackerman’s artistic practice has involved the act of making clothing – for ghosts, the forgotten and the hurting. The Bluebird Dress Factory exhibition is a healing exploration for the artist herself. |
| Jeff Suchak: The Geography of Ancestry |
| In The Geography of Ancestry, contemplative landscape photographer Jeff Suchak connects with nature at its most mysterious and transitory moments. His photographs provide an opportunity for the viewer to pause, reflect and wonder what lies beyond the mundane. Suchak was a regular visitor to the region, and lived in the area for several years. Exhibition runs to April 21, 2018 |
| Vault 6: The TOM's Visible Storage |
| The Permanent Collection at the Tom Thomson Art Gallery contains work which spans over 160 years and includes many different forms of art—paintings, photographs, sculptures, textiles, installation pieces and even a Kawasaki motorcycle. Made up of over 2500 works, the Permanent Collection continues to grow at a steady pace with the addition of both contemporary and historical works by local, regional and national artists.
The work displayed in Vault 6, while showing a cross-section of what can be found in the Permanent Collection, is only a small percentage of the Collection.
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| New Horizons |
| In our Tom Thomson Room, New Horizons, an exhibition that features Permanent Collection works, that reflect and complement the current contingent of Thomson art works and artefacts on display. Exhibition runs to April 21, 2018 |
| The Conscientious Curator |
| In the lower foyer, The Conscientious Curator exhibition showcases some of the art works donated by those private collectors who have been instrumental in helping the Gallery build its Permanent Collection. Exhibition runs to April 21, 2018 |
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| May 6, 2018 - September 1, 2018 |
| Tim Whiten: Mindful |
| Tim Whiten is a highly prolific senior–career Canadian artist and educator whose pursuits have long been rooted in the Transcendental. In over forty years of exhibiting, he has sought to navigate the territory of the human condition and it’s transformative potential with a body of work encompassing a myriad of forms both two- and three-dimensional, including site specific works, real-time systems, ritual performances, and mixed media installations.
Mindful presents a survey of Whiten's work from the Tom Thomson Art Gallery's permanent collection.
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| Trailblazers: Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven in Ontario's Provincial Parks |
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The Tom Thomson Art Gallery opens its vaults to celebrate the 125th Anniversary of the founding of Ontario’s Provincial Parks system. This exhibition, featuring works by Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven and those artists who came after, not only highlights the beauty of these natural oases, but showcases some of the most beloved treasures in the Gallery’s Permanent Collection.
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George Thomson: 150th Anniversary Exhibition
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2018 marks the 150th Anniversary of George Thomson’s birth, beloved regional artist and eldest brother of Tom Thomson. We are showing selections of his work from the permanent collection in the Gallery’s Lower Foyer.
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| September 9, 2018 - January 6, 2019 *dates may be subject to change |
| Carl Beam: Dreaming Ourselves as Each Other: Guest Curator Anong Beam |
| Anong Migwans Beam, an artist, Curator and Director of the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation (Manitoulin Island), curates an exhibition of never-before seen early works by her father, Carl Beam, providing audiences with an up-close interpretation of his works – both from a contemporary Indigenous curatorial context and from a daughter’s personal perspective. The exhibition will include some of the artist’s works held in the Gallery’s permanent collection and will critically address the Indigenous experience in Canada and the influence of Jewish culture and history on Beam’s future work. |
| Community Curators Select |
| Community Curators Select offers members of the community the opportunity to go behind the scenes at the Gallery into our permanent collection area. Assisted by our collections curatorial staff, “community curators” select an artwork that they like or consider important for feature display in the exhibtion. Each guest curator then has the opportunity to explain why they chose the work.
The intimate forum that Community Curators provides allows for a different kind of “art education” to take place. This exhibition provides important information to the public as to how an art gallery operates and the range of concerns around building and maintaining a collection. Community Curators Select is an important means of community outreach and of meaningfully connecting the Gallery with its immediate community members.
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| 2017 |
| January 15, 2017 - May 14, 2017 |
| Michael Markowsky: The Persistence of Doubt |
| In The Persistence of Doubt, Vancouver artist Michael Markowsky has used documents which have been in the Tom Thomson Art Gallery’s care for several decades and never yet released to the public to inspire his series of large-scale ink drawings. He also collaborated with Louise Solecki Weir to create forensic reconstructions of the skull found in 1956 that may or may not actually belong to Tom Thomson. Markowsky is also presenting a video work that reveals his artistic process and his quest to find answers to the mystery of Thomson’s death while also offering possible scenarios. The Persistence of Doubt explores untold stories and possibilities inviting the viewer into a world of discovery about the mythic man and artistic maverick. |
| Clare Langan: The Winter of 13 Storms |
| The TOM is very pleased to host a major exhibition of artist Clare Langan’s work. Consisting of poetically evocative videos and photographs, her films have been described as being a contemporary meditation on the Romantic Landscape in its entire beautiful, haunting and melancholic splendor, as she takes us on a journey through multiple geographical locations both real and constructed, allowing us access to dreamlike visions of the potential chaos that exists in nature and in our cinematic memories. Langan studied Fine Art at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin and with a Fulbright Scholarship, completed a film workshop at New York University in 1992. She is based in Dublin. Her film Metamorphosis, 2007 won the Principle Prize at the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, Germany. Her work has been exhibited at the Lyon Biennale; Houldsworth Gallery, London; Loop, Barcelona; NCA Gallery, Tokyo; Pratt Art Gallery New York and the Miguel Marcos Gallery, Barcelona. |
| Centennial Spirit |
| This selection of works from the Gallery’s Collection, reflects the diversity of visual arts in Canada during the time that the Tom Thomson Art Gallery was built. In 1967, from East Coast to West, from the Arctic to the Great Lake waters, this land had a diverse range of visual art styles from High Realism to Abstraction, and it was all being celebrated as part of Canadian Culture and the Centennial Spirit. |
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| May 28 - September 10th, 2017 |
| Betwixt & Between: An Untold Tom Thomson Story |
| Betwixt & Between: An Untold Tom Thomson Story is a muli-faceted, fully immersive, interactive exhibition. The project is an innovation combination of story-telling, and ancient as well as modern technologies which will unfold in several stages, beginning with the launch of the gallery exhibition in May 2017 at the TOM, and the launch of teh accompanying APP. The Betwixt & Between project challenges the role of museums, governments and educational systems as traditional bastions of authority and explores the relationship between false representation and truth. The lead and participating artists - Joel Richardson, Germinio Pio Politi and Nyle Johnston - have spend an extensive amount of time researching through primary documents and source materials in order to develop a narrative that fuses fabricated and factual elements that could be considered 85% authentic. Tying the story to real events in Thomson's life and in Canadian history, the story as presented isn't necessarily fiction - rather it is just not fully proven. |
| The 50th Anniversary Show |
| Selections from the Gallery’s collection featuring works that were either created or collected in 1967, 1977, 1987, 1997, 2007, along with newly acquired works in 2017 |
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| September 24, 2017 - January 7, 2018 |
| Maria Hupfield: East Wind / West Wind |
| “East Wind” is a mural by Maria Hupfield that depicts Tom Thomson’s “West Wind” in reverse and in which, a silhouette of Hupfield has been inserted into the composition. Thomson’s “West Wind” will be presented opposite of Hupfield’s “East Wind.” This work explores issues around the idea of nationhood, as well as addressing constructed historical narratives that ignore or obscure different voices – in this case, the narratives of the First Nations peoples and women. Historical and contemporary work from the TOM’s collection will be integrated in adjacent gallery spaces and will contribute towards multiple discursive dialogues of the themes Hupfield is addressing in this exhibition.
Maria Hupfield is a member of the Anishinaabe Nation at Wasauksing First Nation (Ontario) and is currently based in Brooklyn, NY. Recently selected for the SITELines Biennial SITE Santa Fe 2016, she received national recognition in the USA from the Joan Mitchell Foundation for her artist-sewn industrial felt sculptures earning a painting and sculpture grant. Her work travelled across Canada for the exhibition Beat Nation: Aboriginal Art and Hip Hop and shown at the Museum of Arts and Design New York, Toronto Power Plant, and 7a*11d International Performance Festival. Her project Artist Tour Guide was commissioned by The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, New York, with an iteration at The McCord, Montreal, PQ. In 2015 she designed a nine foot birchbark style hunting canoe out of industrial felt to be assembled and performed in Venice, Italy over three consecutives evenings for the premiere of Jiimaan.
The TOM gratefully acknowledges TD Community Giving as Lead Sponsor of this exhibition.
TD invests in communities to make a positive impact where it does business and where our customers, clients and employees live and work. In 2016, TD donated over $100 million to support community organizations in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. In Canada, we focus on Education and Financial Literacy, Creating Opportunities for Young People, and the Environment. |
| Standing Tall |
| In counterpoint to the male-dominated vision of early 20th century Canadian art, the TOM proudly presents these works by historic and contemporary Canadian female artists who share with us their own unique interpretations of the Canadian landscape and the enduring image of the iconic “single tree”, an undoubtedly Canadian image made famous in Tom Thomson’s The West Wind.
Each of the works included this exhibition have been selected from the Gallery’s permanent collection. Through these works, the artist, share their unique relationships with the land and their visions of Canada through a variety of stylistic and media expressions. From the satirized to the serene, true-to-life or even fabricated interpretations of the Canadian landscape, this exhibition seeks to explore the diversity of these artists and the land on which they lived and created. Likewise, Standing Tall celebrates the spirit of all the women who have steadfastly forged their own trails in Canadian art history.
Curated by David Huff, Curator of Collections, and Heather McCorquodale, Collections Assistant*, and researched by Joan Hawksbridge and Rosemary Preuss, Collections Volunteers.
*Funding for this position has been made possible through a generous donation from Elisabeth and Trevor Falk.
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| Owen Sound 160: Selections from the Collection in celebration of Owen Sound |
| The Gallery has a diverse collection of artists’ interpretations of the City in its Permanent Collection. Some artworks are by artists who briefly passed through town, other artists in the Collection have called Owen Sound home. During this 160th Anniversary of the Owen Sound’s incorporation in 1857, the Gallery is happy pleased to present vivid interpretations of our city by – Janos Buda, Caron Cooper, Roly Fenwick, Stephen Hogbin, Heather Hughes, Jay Isaac, Pegi Nicol MacLeod, Allan Pollock and George Thomson |
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| 2016 |
| January 17, 2016 - March 27, 2016 |
| Crossing Natures: Guest Curator Paul Petro |
| Crossing Natures is a group exhibition that explores cross-generational influences and affinities, and a lineage of feminism, found in the work of Joyce Wieland (1931-1998), Christiane Pflug (1936-1972), Janet Morton and Mélanie Rocan. Crossing Natures looks at the idea of thresholds that convey aspects of our relationship to habitat and the natural world. |
| Dermott Wilson and Lesczek Wyczolkowski: Our Cosmic Geometries |
| The works by Dermott Wilson and Lesczek Wyczolkowski are inspired by the “magical” philosophies and cosmologies of Sir Robert Fludd, the last of the great British Alchemists. The artists will invite the city to help create a pseudo-scientific map of the community’s circles that will be interpreted and presented in accordance with some of Sir Robert’s ideas about microcosm and macrocosm. |
| Yechel Gagnon: The River in the Tree |
| Close engagement with the material qualities inherent to each form and medium has served as the foundation for Yechel Gagnon’s artistic practice, encompassing plywood bas-reliefs, embossed prints, frottage drawings, etchings, cast-aluminum works and large-scale architectural installations. In The River in the Tree, Gagnon carves and creates sculptural bas-reliefs in response to existing works in the TOM’s permanent collection, creating new work that challenges ideas around landscape, environmental issues and the inevitable forces of nature. The River in the Tree reveals the symbiosis between the natural and the man-made; how they coexist and relate in nature. Gagnon’s works have been exhibited in more than twenty solo exhibitions and over fifty group shows in commercial galleries, artist-run centres and museums across Canada, in the United States, China and France. Yechel Gagnon lives in Montreal and is represented by the Cynthia Reeves Gallery in New Hampshire and Newzones Gallery of Contemporary Art in Calgary. |
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| April 3, 2016 - June 19, 2016 |
| Heather Murray, John Latour & Tim Laurin: In Spirit |
| The spiritual realm comes alive through the works of Heather Murray, John Latour and Tim Laurin. In Spirit, a co-presentation between the TOM and the Art Gallery of Burlington, examines absence, loss and the potential of the past to continue to assert influence over us now, yet their work also reminds us that histories are constructed on memories and that the truth may not be universal.
In Spirit is a co-presentation between the TOM and the Art Gallery of Burlington.
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| Diana Thorneycroft: Herd |
| Thorneycroft presents a series of carefully staged photographs and a sculptural installation that invite the viewer into a world of the extraordinary, the magical and of intuitive knowledge. Herd explores hybrid transformations and symbolic possibilities that are powerful yet ambiguously mysterious. |
| Recent Donations: The Arlene Kennedy Collection |
| This exhibition is a selection of art works by nationally-known artists who have had personal connections to, or made work about, the region that Kennedy has collected over the years, and has now recently donated to the Gallery. Arlene Kennedy worked professionally as a director, curator, and educator promoting the visual arts in Ontario for many decades. Since 2005, she has co-owned Circle Arts, a commercial gallery in Tobermory and has lived on the North Bruce Peninsula since 2006. An enthusiastic art collector for years, her own private collection now overflows beyond her available wall space. |
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| June 26, 2016 - September 18, 2016 |
| The Resonance of the Tree |
| Guest curator Stephen Hogbin raises the question of whether trees are sentient beings in Resonance of the Tree, an exhibition that features all new works by local artists Lorne Wagman and Vera Dernovsek, Peter Pierobon of Vancouver, and the collaborative duo Kevin Yates of Toronto and his brother Robert Yates of Montreal. While investigating natural history, early industries, and contemporary ecological issues, the works in this exhibition conjure poetic metaphors about understanding our sense of place within, and relative to, the natural world.
Hogbin is Chair of The Extraordinary Tree project, a collaboration with the TOM, Grey Roots Museum and Archives, Grey Sauble Conservation Authority and Landscape Design programme at Fanshawe College.
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| Laura Donefer, Susan Edgerly and Karina Guevin: With a Destiny |
| In With a Destiny, glass artists Laura Donefer, Susan Edgerley and Karina Guevin present sculptures and installations, inspired by the work, life and mythic story of Tom Thomson. Coming from Eastern Ontario and Quebec, all three artists are well-known for exploring ideas of destiny, chance and fate and their effects on both natural and personal environments in their work. |
| Donald Woodman: Agnes Martin and Me |
| Like Tom Thomson, Agnes Martin (1912-2004) is an artist shrouded in myth. She was one of only a handful of women to emerge in the male-dominated art movements of Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism. Martin also struggled with mental illness, battling to keep her incessant inner voices in check and it is against this backdrop that American photographer Donald Woodman chronicles their seven roller coaster years together (1977-1984) during which, he was her assistant and they were in constant contact with each other. Agnes Martin and Me presents never before seen photos of Martin by Woodman along with writings and ephemera that chronicle a tumultuous relationship while providing insights about the artist, known only to a chosen few. |
| Tom Thomson: Jack Pine Sketch |
| Complementing Resonance of the Tree and With a Destiny, the TOM has borrowed The Jack Pine sketch (c. 1916) by Tom Thomson (1877-1917) from the Riverbrink Art Museum. The sketch is being featured in our on-going exhibition, The Tom Thomson Experience, which tells the “story” of Thomson – a mythic figure in Canadian art and history – in all its fullness, complication and contradiction. |
| Extraordinary Trees in the Gallery’s Collection Lower Foyer |
| The Ontario landscape is dominated by trees, and it is not surprising that they are a common subject matter for many of the artists whose work is part of the Gallery’s Collection. Thomson and the Group of Seven’s renderings of singular rugged trees have become symbolic of the enduring Canadian Spirit, an individual alone persevering against the forces of nature.
The image of the single tree is so iconic that contemporary artists have continued the tradition. On display are some of the extraordinary trees in the Gallery’s Collection by contemporary Canadian artists: Tom Benner; April Hickox; Vid Ingelevics; Lorraine Simms and Greg Staats.
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| September 25, 2016 - January 1, 2017 |
| Greg Staats: on the edge of the woods: condolence towards renewal |
| Everyone, at some point in their life, will deal with loss. When confronted with someone who has experienced a loss, we are often ill-equipped, feel awkward and may fall back on cliché expressions. Previous generations had protocols and expected ways of behaving when dealing with death that were ingrained and taught within societies. We have become largely disconnected from those protocols and ceremonies – a systemic loss in and of itself – and we often struggle because of that. That struggle is further complicated when what we are mourning is something that we have been disenfranchised from. We question ourselves and the legitimacy of our reaction in mourning what we have never known but that we feel a disconnect from, regardless. In Greg Staats: on the edge of the woods: condolence towards renewal, Staats calls back to the Condolence Ceremony of the Haudenosuanee for inspiration in the creation of the photographs, sculptures and installations within this exhibition. His family histories and stories provide the sources that he draws upon, drawing out expressions and visualizations on the loss of home, family and traditions, and how that impacts throughout the generations. While intensely personal, Staats’ works speak to the universal experience of loss and of disconnect from the past, and at the same time offers viewers the opportunity to find a means of acknowledging that loss and finding ways of coming to peace with it.
Greg Staats, Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk), (b. Ohsweken, Six Nations of the Grand River Territory). Solo exhibitions include: McMaster Museum of Art, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, Walter Philips Gallery (Banff Centre), Mercer Union, Gallery TPW, Trinity Square Video/Images festival. Group exhibitions include; National Gallery of Canada, Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Art Gallery of Southern Manitoba and the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (Santa Fe). Staats is the recipient of the Duke and Duchess of York Prize in Photography. Staats has lived and worked in Toronto since 1985.
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| 2015 |
| Information coming soon. |
| 2014 |
| Information coming soon. |
| 2013 |
| Information coming soon. |
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