Lots of gift-friendly sales and shows at commercial, public, and artist-run art galleries in the Ottawa area this month, and just some of them are listed below.

All the opening events mentioned here are open to the public and are free admission, unless stated otherwise.

Small Bouquet (oil, 10 by 8 inches), by Lorena Ziraldo at Patrick Gordon Framing Studio.

Patrick Gordon Framing Studio, 160 Elm St.: The annual sale offers works by more than a dozen artists, including Erin Robertson, Whitney Lewis Smith, Gordon Harrison, Jason Vaughan and Lorena Ziraldo. More at patrickgordonframing.ca.

Orange Art Gallery, 290 City Centre Ave.: The gallery, in the old railway bank building by the City Centre, has a vernissage from 6 to 10 p.m., Dec. 3, with works by 25 artists from the Ottawa area. Prices start as low as $80. See examples at orangeartgallery.ca.

A ring by Gustavo Estrada, at L.A. Pai Gallery in Ottawa.

L.A. Pai, 13 Murray St: The shop holds its 28th annual jewellery and art show, with one-of-a-kind, handmade objets d’art, made by artisans from Ottawa and beyond. Where else can you buy a pair of seal-skin earrings? Official launch is 5 to 9 p.m., Thursday, Dec. 3. More at lapaigallery.com.

Oddments, Etc… (textiles), by Karina Bergmans at Gallery 101.

Gallery 101, at 51 B Young St.: The artist-run centre’s Retro Pop fundraiser includes an auction of works donated by artists, and karaoke, on Saturday, Dec. 5. Artists include Alisdair MacRae, Dawn Dale, Karina Bergmans and others. Admission is $10, doors open 7:30 p.m. Proceeds help the centre support the local arts community. More at g101.ca

Koyman Galleries, 1771 St. Laurent Blvd.: The largest commercial gallery in the capital has its annual holiday Exhibition of Smalls to Dec. 31. Works include the landscapes of Ken Vincent, the mixed-media and figurative works of Sarah Martin, and others. See more at koymangalleries.com.

Raleigh (mixed media) by Dan Austin, at Cube Gallery

Cube Gallery, 1285 Wellington St. West: The annual Great Big Smalls show has works by more than 50 artists from Ottawa and elsewhere. There are comparatively small paintings or drawings by Kristy Gordon, Katherine McNenley, Russell Yuristy, the late Gerald Trottier and others, and found sculptures by Dan Austin and Clare Brennon. The exhibition and sale continues to Jan 3. More at cubegallery.ca.

Figureworks, 310 St. Patrick’s St.: The annual group exhibition, in the St. Brigid’s Centre for the Arts, focuses on figurative works in various media. Prize winners in this year’s juried show and sale include Alison Fagan’s coloured-pencil drawings, and oil paintings by Nicole Sleeth and Stephen Frew. To Dec. 6. Read more about the exhibition here. Or more at figureworks.org.

Inflated Housing Market, by Andrew King at Pop Up Gallery.

Pop Up Gallery, 281A Richmond Rd.: Artists Andrew King and Alison Fowler have once again temporarily occupied a non-gallery space — this time the former Country Clover store. Each artist has paintings of city and country scenes, and King has calendars, T-shirts, etc. To Dec. 13. More at popupottawa.wordpress.com.

Ottawa Art Gallery, 2 Daly Ave., in Arts Court: The Art and Parcel holiday sale, includes paintings and drawings, sculpture, textiles, jewellery and other items, all priced at no more than $400. The sale in the gallery’s art rental and sales space continues to Jan. 25, which is handy for those people who belatedly remember they’ve forgotten to get a gift for someone. More at ottawaartgallery.ca.

Ottawa School of Art, 35 George St.: The 31st anniversary fundraising sale continues to Dec. 20, with works by “students, instructors and alumni.” A commission from each sale goes to support the OSA’s bursary program. There’s a memorial exhibition of work by Lee Matasi, a graduate who died in 2005, and paintings by the recently deceased aboriginal artist Tom Hogan, who left some 200 works to the school. More at artottawa.ca.

Many other galleries in the National Capital Region have art available for holiday gifting. Buy local, support an artist.

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Louis Helbig is moving to Australia, so the Ottawa photographer is having a studio-closing sale in the Glebe (149 Patterson).

Helbig takes aerial photographs of landscapes and industrial works, including the St. Lawrence Seaway and other sites across Canada. Many prints will be available and discounted. 5 to 9 p.m. Dec. 3, and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Dec. 4, 5 and 6.

Aultsville, Ontario, by Louis Helbig, from the Sunken Villages project and book.

Bitumen slick on a tailings pond at Syncrude’s Aurora North mine near Fort McKay, Alberta, by Louis Helbig, from his book Beautiful Destruction.

The National Gallery has been given five paintings by some of Canada’s best known artists, and says that another 50 works are coming next week.

The five paintings announced as a donation on Thursday include works by Lawren Harris, Paul Peel, A.J. Casson, Prudence Heward and Kathleen Morris, and were donated to the gallery by Imperial, the Canadian energy company.

The other, pending donation, to be revealed Dec. 8, is “a major gift of 50 masterpieces by a famous Canadian painter whose work contributed to forging the identity of Canadian art,” the gallery says in a release. As yet, neither the artist nor the donor have been identified.

Lawren Harris, Billboard (Jazz), 1921, donated to the National Gallery of Canada by Imperial.

The five paintings to be donated by Imperial — once they go through the gallery’s usual acquisitions process — include Harris’s Billboard (Jazz), from 1921; Peel’s Idle Dreams, from 1882; Heward’s Miss Anne Grafftey, 1944; Morris’s Birds Feeding, c. 1945; and Casson’s Twilight Near Britt, from 1960.

The gallery also announced this week a two-year exhibition of works by Joseph Beuys, “the first major exhibition devoted to the German artist in Canada.”

The exhibition includes sculpture and works on paper, gathered from two private collectors, including the Bastian collection, in Berlin, owned by Beuys’ long-time dealer, Heiner Bastian.

“Almost 30 years since his death, Joseph Beuys remains one of the most influential and relevant artists in recent art history,” said gallery director Marc Mayer in a news release.

Meanwhile, the Canadian War Museum has acquired a large, multi-media installation by Ottawa artist Norman Takeuchi.

A Measured Act “reflects on the experiences of 22,000 Canadians of Japanese ancestry — including the artist and his family — who were forcibly relocated to isolated communities and internment camps during the Second World War,” the museum says in a release.

The installation includes paper, photography, painting and drawing. It is not currently on display, not scheduled to be on display any time soon.

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Paul Peel, Idle Dreams, 1882, donated to the National Gallery of Canada by Imperial.

Kathleen Moir Morris, Birds Feeding, c. 1945, donated to the National Gallery of Canada by Imperial.

Prudence Heward, Miss Anne Grafftey, 1944, donated to the National Gallery of Canada by Imperial.

The next great gift to the National Gallery of Canada is found at the intersection of a man who left this country and became an artist, and a man who adopted this country and became an art dealer.

Ash Prakash, the collector and dealer who left his native India as a teenager, has donated to the National Gallery 50 works by James Wilson Morrice, the artist who put Canadian art on the international map.

The gift, which the gallery gives an approximate value of $20 million, was revealed Tuesday at the gallery. It includes highlights such as The Pink House and Canal in Venice, along with 43 other oil paintings, about half of them Morrice’s tiny pochettes, or pocket paintings. There also are five water colours and a sketchbook.

The gift joins the gallery’s existing collection of 138 paintings and two sketchbooks by Morrice.

Katerina Atanassova., the curator of Canadian art and, like Prakash, an immigrant who fell in love with the historic art of Canada, was ecstatic about the gift.

“I wish every curator had the pleasure of introducing to the nation such an important gift, such an important collection,” Atanassova said in an interview. “I am very humbled.

“It’s a remarkable effort (by Prakash) to really put together . . . this outstanding collection.”

Atanassova said Morrice was “the first Canadian-born artist to attain an international reputation,” to “proclaim Canadian art on the global stage.

“If you look at the works from members of the Group of Seven, like Lawren Harris and A.Y. Jackson, they constantly brought his name forward and said it was Morrice who inspired them,” Atanassova said. “Several generations of Canadian artists felt, and continue to feel, inspired by what he has contributed.”

Malcolm Burrows, executive director of the A. K. Prakash Foundation, added that, “Morrice was the single most acclaimed Canadian painter and, probably for the first part of the 20th century, the single most influential Canadian painter.”

Like Morrice, who left his home in Montreal for Paris in the early 1890s and spent most of the rest of his life there, Prakash left his home in India at age 15. It was a five-week ocean-crossing on a boat full of stinky cattle — the man’s story, like his name, is the stuff of a Salman Rushdie novel.

In the late 1960s Prakash moved to Ottawa, where he married, had children and divorced. He rose swiftly in the public service, and served as an advisor to prime ministers Pierre Trudeau and Brian Mulroney.

Through the years his interest in art, and especially fin de siècle Canadian art, was sparked and stoked.

The Pink House, Montreal (also The Old House, Montreal, c. 1905–08 oil on canvas, gift of A.K. Prakash) by James Morrice, at the National Gallery of Canada.

In the 1990s he left government to focus on art, both as collector and as advisor and dealer for those who shared his passion, and had the money to indulge it. He has been hugely successful in building his own personal collection, and helping other clients build theirs.

Prakash is committed to promoting Canadian art globally and, for example, helped to organize the first major show of Group of Seven works in Europe, at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London in 2011. He always knew where his cherished Morrice collection would go.

“He’d spent over 35 years building the collection, and he’s always thought of it as something he was going to give to Canada,” said Burrows, who spoke in an interview on Prakash’s behalf. In return for the gift, for the next 25 years a room now filled with Morrice’s work will be known the Ash K. Prakash Gallery.

Prakash wasn’t doing interviews this week (“He is very uncomfortable talking about himself,” Burrows said), but he was at the National Gallery last week to speak on behalf of David Thomson, who had given a huge cache of works to the new Canadian Institute of Photography.

The Thomson gift is one of several private donations that have made this a bountiful Christmas season for the gallery: Scotiabank gave $2 million to the photography institute; Imperial, the energy company, donated five major works by Lawren Harris, A. J. Casson and others. Also, the Sobey family gave the gallery control of the prestigious Sobey Art Prize.

The Prakash gift covers the span of Morrice’s career, from his first days in Paris to his death in Tunisia in 1924.

James Morrice’s Fruit Market, North Africa, (c. 1911, oil on panel, gift of A.K. Prakash), at the National Gallery of Canada.

Morrice was born to a wealthy family, and studied law in Toronto. To his father’s dismay, James pursued art, and soon left for Paris, the city that both made him and broke him.

Morrice was an incorrigible alcoholic, and frequented the absinthe-fuelled café scene with other celebrated artists, including Henri Matisse and James Whistler and the author Somerset Maugham. Maugham used Morrice as the model for the poet Cronshaw in his novel Of Human Bondage, and in The Magician as the model for Warren, an artist “whose painting somehow becomes more delicate and thoughtful as he grows drunker.”

Yet Morrice worked constantly, and was admired by the greats including Monet and Rodin. His paintings even began to sell back in Montreal, once they had been validated by European tastes.

“There’s a spontaneity and a life to them, a freeness of the brush stroke that’s very distinctive,” Burrows said. “There’s this wonderful atmosphere in the paintings that I think is really enduring, and captures people’s imagination.”

More than 20 of the new paintings can now be seen at the gallery, and Atanassova said the rest will be exhibited in 2017.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story that said the painting Evening Stroll, Venice was part of the gift, was based on incorrect information given to the Citizen.

James Morrice’s The Golden Hour, Venice Canal, (undated, oil on panel, gift of A.K. Prakash) at the
National Gallery of Canada.

The City of Ottawa’s annual exhibition of new art is bigger this year than it has ever been before, having spread across both the map and the calendar.

The annual unveiling of new purchases and donations to the city’s public art program is typically held at Karsh-Masson Gallery in city hall, where many of those acquisitions are now on display to Jan. 17. (Official opening is 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 17.) To mark this year’s 30th anniversary of the program, there are additional exhibitions in Trinity Gallery at the Shenkman Arts Centre in Orléans (to Jan. 4), and in the Atrium Gallery at Ben Franklin Place in Centrepointe (to Jan. 5).

“Because it’s the 30th anniversary of the public art program, we wanted to do something a little different,” says Jonathan Browns, development officer with the public art program. “We get the works out of the downtown core, and people have an opportunity to see parts of the collection in other parts of the city.”

Because the shows are being staged later in the current calendar year, they include acquisitions made in this year and last, so the number of pieces added to the city collection is 425, double the annual average. Of that total, 157 works, by 97 artists, appear in the exhibitions, though each location has a video slide show in which all acquisitions can be seen.

Whitney Lewis-Smith, What came in with the flowers (2014, digital print on paper, 140 x 112 cm, City of Ottawa art collection)

A fourth, briefer exhibition, to go up this week at city hall, will feature work by a few of the 42 artists included in a donation to the city by the Canada Council for the Arts’ Art Bank.

The Art Bank donation focuses on artists who were active in the city in the years between the creation of the Art Bank, in 1972, and of the city’s public art program, in 1985. 

“It brings in some artists to the collection that are local but we don’t have in the collection, and in other cases it brings in art works from artists to add to works we have of theirs we already have in the collection,” Browns says.

The gift introduces to the collection artists such as Jean-Claude Bergeron, who now runs his eponymous gallery in the ByWard Market, and work by artists previously represented in the city collection, such as Jennifer Dickson.

Norman Takeuchi, After the Bath (2013, acrylic on canvas, 102 x 152 cm, City of Ottawa art collection)

The gifted works by Dickson are among many that make photography the happenstance star of this 2014-15 lot. There’s plenty of eye-grabbing work in other formats — paintings by Gavin Lynch (Dad, circa 1964, and Lake of the Woods),  Norman Takeuchi (After the Bath), Carol Wainio (The way back, and What to do), Peter Shmelzer’s hilarious and sardonic Grumpy Cat, or, in other media, the bead work of Barry Ace — but photography dominates this biennial crop.

The single biggest oomph comes from the young Whitney Lewis-Smith, who combines vintage techniques with large digital prints to bring life to what is dead.  Lewis-Smith’s works “Death of the moth” and “What came in with the flowers” are phantasmagoric, like fleeing glimpses of a memento mori dream.

Olivia Johnston — like Lewis-Smith a graduate of SPAO, the small photography school on Dalhousie Street — has scenes from her series of young women posed as women of the bible.  A woman as Susanna poses next to the text of “the Judgement of Daniel.” In another image, two young women pose as Lot’s daughters, Clara and Emma. Johnston’s series of photographs, titled Fallen, touches meaningfully on too many historical and contemporary issues to be adequately considered in a mention so brief as this.

The bounty of striking photographs continues across the three venues, with works by Justin Wonnacott, Bozica Radjenovic, Freeman Keats, Jeff Thomas, Rosalie Favell, Andrzej Maciejewski, Tony Fouhse, Ramses Madina, Meryl McMaster, and others.

Browns says there was no deliberate tilt toward photography in the acquisitions or exhibitions, but he does note that “there is a very strong photography community here in Ottawa.”

He  credits the work of professors at the University of Ottawa — at least one of whom, Andrew Wright, is represented in the exhibitions — and at SPAO. “You’ve got some really important people coming out of those schools.”

The city’s new acquisitions are a loud declaration of the truth in that statement.

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What: This is Us Now, new acquisitions by the City of Ottawa art program.

When & where: Shenkman Arts Centre (to Jan. 4), Ben Franklin Place (to Jan. 5), and city hall (to Jan. 17, with official opening 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Dec. 17).

Andrzej Maciejewski, Weather Report number 37, (2004, digital print on paper, City of Ottawa art collection)

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Sales of a sentimental painting in memory of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, the sentry who was slain at the National War Memorial in Ottawa, have raised $75,000 for the family.

Ottawa artist Katerina Mertikas created the painting, of Cirillo and his young son, Marcus, standing guard at the memorial, not long after Cirillo was shot in the back by a would-be terrorist on Oct. 22, 2014. Copies of the painting were sold through Koyman Galleries, where Mertikas shows her work. All profits were pledged to a trust fund to help support Marcus and his family.

Mertikas originally created the painting for an exhibition at Koyman Galleries, but when the painting was featured on the Big Beat, the artist received so much interest from readers that reproductions of the small canvas were produced and the fundraising effort for Marcus began.

Hundreds of the paintings were sold across Canada, and recently the final deposit of $25,000 was made to the trust fund, bringing the total to $75,000, Mertikas says. The fundraising program is now over, she says.

A Palestinian-Canadian artist who sparked outrage in Ottawa last year says she was shot while taking photographs on the West Bank late last week.

Rehab Nazzal, whose 2014 exhibition in the Karsh-Masson Gallery at Ottawa City Hall brought condemnation from the Israeli embassy and right-leaning politicians, says she was doing research to document clashes between Palestinian citizens and Israeli defence forces in the biblical city on Dec. 11 when she was shot through the leg.

“I went to the site of clashes in the city, as usual with my camera, the scene was horrible  — military vehicles, soldiers on foot, and the nightmare Skunk spraying chemical sewage on the protesters and on the surrounding neighborhoods,” Nazzal wrote in a statement first released on her Facebook page.

“I felt something like a fire sting in my leg and looked down to see the blood bursting all over my shoes and pants. I didn’t realize what happened until an ambulance drove toward me and two paramedics rushed with a stretcher and looked at the injury and demanded I go with them to the hospital. At that moment, the occupation forces rained the ambulance with teargas.”

Nazzal was reportedly shot with a “tutu” bullet, a small 0.22 calibre cartridge.

Nazzal’s exhibit in Ottawa was titled Invisible, and it  includes images of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons. Israel’s ambassador to Canada protested that the exhibit glorified terrorism, and he asked Mayor Jim Watson to shut it down. Watson refused and cited the artist’s freedom of expression. Nazzal came to Ottawa and defended her exhibit during at a packed-house event at the St. Brigid Centre for the Arts.

Nazzal, who according to the London Free Press is a third-year PhD student at the University of Western Ontario, said in her statement on Facebook that a bullet “did enter and exist (sic) through my leg making two small holes but didn’t touch the bones.”

She continued, “I am still in shock of what happened, I was only photographing and there was no one around me. The last image I took shows a sniper on the ground, who is invisible to the naked eye.”

Earlier today, Dec. 16, Nazzal wrote on Facebook that “there is no damage to my leg, the physical wound is healing.”

A spokesman for the Israeli embassy in Ottawa said Wednesday there is no report of any such incident, though Eitan Weiss added, “it’s very difficult to ascertain what happens during a riot, because you have to imagine hundreds of people throwing rocks, Molotov cocktails, using live firearms,” and, as for one person sustaining a non-lethal injury, “it’s very difficult to prove that it ever happened, and it’s very difficult to prove that it didn’t happen.”

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If you have a few spare moments amid the holiday tasks, see the exhibit #A.D.D. The Cyberbrain, by Zoltan Veevaete at PDA Projects (361Elgin, by the Lieutenant’s Pump).

Veevaete’s first solo show at PDF, which includes an installation and paintings, “amalgamates, or repositions, tropes found in western art history and flips into unique narratives where his figures challenge eroticism, modesty, opulence, and misery,” the gallery says. “The Cyberbrain features a site-specific mural where Drake, Justin Bieber look upon limos, Bart Simpson and manga-styled figures that float in between Windows 95-styled frames.”

More at pdaprojects.com.

An image from Zoltan Veevaete’s show at PDA Projects on Elgin Street.

New shows and events in and around Ottawa this week:

Holiday Gift fundraiser for the Ottawa Riverkeeper, Dec. 19 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., with presentation by the Ottawa Riverkeeper at 3 p.m., Studio Sixty Six, 202-66 Muriel St. studiosixtysix.ca

Juried Artists’ Co-Op Show, Dec. 19 to 20 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Grist Mill Art Gallery, 21 Main St., Westport.

Other events:

Call for applications for the 2016 Artist-in-residence program at the Diefenbunker Museum, open to all artists in all media living within 100-kilometre radius of Ottawa for a period of three to six months. Works produced through the residency must have a connection to the museum, the Cold War or related themes. A project fee will be paid to the artist and the residency will culminate with an exhibition or a presentation of work, as well as an artist-led tour of the exhibition or talk. Deadline: Before 4 p.m., Dec. 18, 2015. Questions to m.lafreniere@diefenbunker.ca. Information at diefenbunker.ca/artist-in-residence-program.

Related

• Concerts: 12 hot shows to see before (for) Christmas
• What to do Christmas week

Ongoing exhibits:

Ottawa School of Art 31st Holiday Fundraising Art Sale and Memorial for Lee Matasi, to Dec. 19, 35 George St. www.artottawa.ca

Actiniaria: Susan Roston, new sculpture, to Dec. 20, Studio Sixty Six, 202-66 Muriel St. studiosixtysix.ca

Migrations: Julie Beauchemin, to Dec. 20, Art-Image, 955 boul. de la Gappe, Gatineau. maisondelaculture.ca

December Choice: selection of works by Wallack Gallery artists, to Dec. 24, Wallack Galleries, 225 Bank St. www.wallackgalleries.com

Patrick Gordon Framing November group show: 19 artists, to Dec. 24, 160 Elm St. patrickgordonframing.ca

DistURBANce: Studio Zone V group photography show, to Dec. 27, Exposure Gallery, 1255 Wellington St. W. www.exposuregallery.ca

The Painted Season: Lori Richards, and new works by glass artist Nick Chase, to Dec. 27, Wall Space Gallery, 358 Richmond Rd. wallspacegallery.ca

Nocturnes tropicaux — Changing Day into Night: Wendy Trethewey, to Dec. 31, Bistro Le Forain, 189 St-Joseph Blvd., Gatineau. galerieartefe.ca

The Four Seasons: group show, to Dec. 31, Kanata Civic Art Gallery, 2500 Campeau Dr. www.kanatgallery.ca

Revisit: Brodie Shearer, the man and his art, to Dec. 31, Bistro Le Forain, 189 St-Joseph Blvd., Gatineau. galerieartefe.ca

Holiday Exhibition of Smalls: gallery artists, to Dec. 31, Koyman Galleries, 1771 St. Laurent Blvd. koymangalleries.com

Joanne Gervais, to Jan. 2, The Table, 1230 Wellington St. W.

Beauty’s Awakening: Drawings by the Pre-Raphaelites and their Contemporaries from the Lanigan Collection, British draftsmanship of the Victorian era, to Jan. 3, National Gallery of Canada, 380 Sussex Dr. gallery.ca

A Little Art: group holiday show, to Jan. 3, Foyer Gallery, Nepean Sportsplex, 1701 Woodroffe Ave. www.foyergallery.com

Orange Christmas Show, group exhibit, to Jan. 3, 290 City Centre Ave. www.orangeartgallery.ca

Celebrate 28!: Holiday Art Show, contemporary jewellery, sculpture and art by Canadian artists, to Jan. 3, L.A. Pai Gallery, 13 Murray St. lapaigallery.com

From Hanoi too Havana: The World of Working People (The Art of Getting By), informal street portraits by artist Barry Fawcett,  to Jan 3, ArtScene Spencerville, 11 Spencer St, Spencerville. artscenespencerville.weebly.com

A Little Art, group holiday exhibition, to Jan. 3, Foyer Gallery, Nepean Sportsplex, 1701 Woodroffe Ave. www.foyergallery.com

Relativity No. 1, Doppler Shift by Denis Larouche, part of the Cube Gallery Great BIG smalls group show, now an Ottawa tradition, Nov. 24 to Jan. 3.

Great BIG smalls XI: over 50 artists in group show, to Jan. 3, Cube Gallery, 1285 Wellington St. W. cubegallery.ca

Doris Genest, to Jan. 4, Galerie d’Art Eugène-Racette, 6600 Carrière St., Orléans. mifo.ca

This Is Us Now: Additions to the City of Ottawa Art Collective, first of a three-part exhibit at three locations, to Jan. 4, Trinity Art Gallery, Shenkman Arts Centre.

This Is Us Now: Additions to the City of Ottawa Art Collective, part of a three-venue exhibit, to Jan. 5, Atrium Gallery, Ben Franklin Place, 101 Centrepointe Dr. ottawa.ca/en/liveculture/atrium-gallery

Watercolour Studio Works, to Jan. 11, Studio Gallery, Nepean Visual Arts Centre, Nepean Sportsplex, 1701 Woodroffe Ave.

This Is Us Now: Additions to the City of Ottawa Art Collective, part of a three-venue exhibit, to Jan. 17, Karsh-Masson Gallery, 110 Laurier Ave. W. ottawa.ca/en/liveculture/karsh-masson-gallery

witness / témoin: Nicola Feldman-Kiss, curator tour Jan. 21 at 5:30 p.m. Exhibit to Feb. 7, Ottawa Art Gallery, 2 Daly Ave. artscourt.ca

A Photographic Love Story: Malak Karsh, to Jan. 17, Ottawa Art Gallery Annex, 110 Laurier Ave. W. ottawartgallery.ca

Truth of the Matter: Rachel Kalpana James, Cindy Stelmackowich, Norman Takeuchi, Howie Tsui, curator tour on Jan. 21 at 5:30 p.m.; exhibit to Feb. 7, Ottawa Art Gallery, 2 Daly Ave. ottawartgallery.ca

Art & Parcel Holiday Art Sale and exhibit: group show, to Jan. 24, Ottawa Art Gallery, 2 Daly Ave. ottawartgallery.ca

Group 6 — The Canadian Forces Artists Program, 2012-2013: Joseph Amato and Alicia Payne, Sophie Dupuis, Leslie Hossack, Mary Kavanagh, Thomas Kneubühler, Sharon E. McKay, Leslie Reid, Rhonda Weppler and Trevor Mahovsky, to Jan. 31, Diefenbunker Museum, 3929 Carp Rd. diefenbunker.ca

La vie continue: John F. Marok, large scale oil paintings, to Jan. 31, Espace Odyssée, 855 boul. de la Gappe, Gatineau. maisondelaculture.ca

Painting a Life Together: Kathleen Daly and George Pepper, to Feb. 14, Ottawa Art Gallery, 2 Daly Ave. ottawartgallery.ca

A Bridge to Modernity: Monet, 12 of the painter’s seminal works, exhibit to Feb. 15, National Gallery of Canada, 350 Sussex Dr.  gallery.ca

Les manteaux blancs de l’hiver: Gordon Harrison, Alexi Hunter, Dulce Albalindeza, David Thai, Pauline Paquin, Dan Ryan, to Feb. 28, Gordon Harrison Gallery, 495 Sussex Dr. gordonharrisongallery.com

Ottawa Selects: Selections from the Firestone Collection of Canadian Art, to Feb. 2016, Ottawa Art Gallery Annex, Ottawa City Hall, 110 Laurier Ave. W. ottawaartgallery.ca

Fluxus∞: Marie-Hélene Parant, 30-foot interactive video wall, exhibit to April 30, Âjagemô, Canada Council for the Arts, 150 Elgin St. canadacouncil.ca

Temporal Re-Imaginings, a new curation of indigenous art works by Alexandra Kahsenni:io Nahwegahbo, exhibit to April 2016, Âjagemô, Canada Council for the Arts, 150 Elgin St. canadacouncil.ca

Send information on art shows and events to kendemann@ottawacitizen.com by 8 a.m. Monday, two weeks before the event. Photos welcome. 

@keendemann
kendemann@ottawacitizen.com

Francis Bacon was one of the 20th century’s pre-eminent artists, and he had a personality that, like his paintings, was enigmatic and built on extremes.

That charged, insatiable temperament shines through in Francis Bacon in Your Blood, the new memoir by Michael Peppiatt that’s published in hardcover this week.

Peppiatt, the critic and art historian, has written several books on Bacon — including 1997’s Anatomy of an Enigma, considered the definitive biography of the Irish-British artist. The new book is Peppiatt’s memoir, yet the figure of Bacon loomed so large in the writer’s life that the memoir is necessarily as much about the artist as about the critic. The friendship, with its heady highs and cruel lows, was essential to both men. 

In the new book, Peppiatt accompanies Bacon over several decades through the restaurants and cafés and galleries of London and Paris — “I’ve almost never spent time with him outside, even in a street, let alone a garden, a park or the open fields,” Peppiatt writes. In the bars, swank or seedy, the two men drink and talk about the human condition and how it’s captured by artists, for better or worse. Bacon’s comments are often unguarded, his tongue loosened by prodigious amounts of alcohol. 

Here are a few quotes by Bacon from the book, touching on art, artists and characters ranging from the artist Henry Moore to the criminal Kray brothers. 

“One can’t really talk about painting, only around it. After all if you could explain it why would you bother to do it?”

“In painting, well, in all art I imagine, one always hopes to recreate experience in a way that makes it come back on to the nervous system with greater intensity.”

“I think if you lived in luxury every day the boredom would be ghastly. What I like is the distance between luxury and poverty, it’s much more interesting to drift between the two in the kind of gilded squalor I live in.”

“No one ever knows in his own lifetime whether his work has any real quality. Just think of all the fuss that’s been made in our century, and who is there of real importance? . . . Picasso and Duchamp. And to some extent Matisse. Who else has made a profound innovation? No one.”

“Time is the only real critic.”

“I’m not surprised (David Hockney has) been so successful. After all the paintings are like illustrations for Marie Claire, there’s nothing to stand up to in them and that’s why people like them.”

“Artists are never satisfied with their work, though I believe Henry Moore is.”

“I still hear from (the Krays) now that they’re in prison. They send me these paintings they do there. They’re very odd. They’re always of these kinds of soft landscapes with little cottages in them. The thing is that’s just the kind of life they always wanted. A life of ease in the country.”

“One is never disciplined enough. You have to be disciplined even in frivolity, perhaps above all in frivolity.”

“I was born without innocence. I always knew how things were from the start.”

Francis Bacon in Your Blood is published by Bloomsbury and available as hardcover or e-book.

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For the past 11 years Howard Hartley, 78, has turned a life-long interest in social nudity into an opportunity to make a little extra money to supplement his old age pension by modelling for life drawing classes.

“I’ve always had an interest in naturism or social nudity,” Hartley explains, “I think I have ever since I picked up one of my father’s books when he came home from overseas.”

He clearly is comfortable in his own skin.

Howard Hartley, 78, poses for an animation class at Algonquin College.

In a darkened Algonquin College art studio, Hartley steps down from the small lighted platform to take a break and then wanders among the 30 or so third-year animation students looking at their artwork.

Wearing nothing but flip flops and a towel draped over one shoulder, he appears to make the young students a little nervous as he stops to chat to them about their artwork.

He shrugs later saying he finds it curious that artists would feel uncomfortable talking to him while he’s still nude just moments after they spent 20 minutes sketching him in detail.

It wasn’t until he was a young married man serving in the Royal Canadian Navy while living in Moncton in the mid 1950s that he first tried naturism.

His wife was hesitant to join him at first. Some women from the club however, got in touch with her and managed to put her at ease.

Howard has been an avid naturist ever since.

“Some people say, ‘Oh you just want to show off (but) no, it just feels comfortable.”

In 2004 a fellow naturist taking an art class at the Nepean Sportsplex suggested he would be a good model and he should think about joining the many life drawing models that work the circuit. He scoffed at the suggestion saying, “What do you mean model? That’s for young, good looking people!”

“Well for one thing, your face is fantastic for drawing,” the friend replied, “and good artists are drawing human beings the way they are.”

So Howard gave it a try and now poses two or three times a month for about three hours at a time. He earns about $25 an hour.

Algonquin College Life Drawing professor and independent animator Jeff Amey says, “Howard’s age is one obvious attribute that is rare in the world of life drawing.”

“Not many people his age are willing to take off their clothes and hold a pose for 20 or 30 minutes allowing students to draw them from 360 degrees.”

“His poses may be less dynamic in gesture but he has a great profile that the students can work with to get some real caricature.”

Across the city at the Greenboro Life Drawing Workshop, Ella-Rose Swinimer manages to stifle a sneeze while holding a pose during a Saturday afternoon session.

“That’s a pretty funny thing that can happen to you (when posing), especially nude,” the professional model, photographer and media entrepreneur says with a laugh.

She was convinced to model for art classes more than 10 years ago when a friend who was an animation artist suggested she should attend a life drawing art group at the Sandy Hill Community Centre to see what was involved.

Ella-Rose Swinimer models for a Kristy Gordon portrait workshop held at the Artist’s Studio on Gladstone Avenue.

“I knew that fine art models are nude so I was a bit offended at first,” she says. “But when I saw all the beautiful art being made from the model posing, I thought that is something I really wanted to do.”

Serafina Adams recently returned to posing after a four year hiatus now that her four-year-old son started school. She started out doing photography modelling for a friend when she learned about life drawing classes from another photographer. She practises both yoga and martial arts which helps her to control the poses.

“It’s very different than photography modelling because the poses are longer and you have to be more in tune with your body and understand yourself,” she says. 

If you’re interested in becoming a model or wish to attend as an artist there are a number of art schools and workshops organized around the city and you can easily start your search at the Greenboro Life Drawing Workshop or the Sandy Hill Life Drawing Workshop.

The annual, unusual “Collector’s Show” returns to Cube Gallery (1285 Wellington W.) from Jan 5 to Feb. 14.

Art held in private collections will be for sale, including original works by Marc Chagall, Jean Paul Riopelle, David Thauberger, Alexander Calder, Joyce Devlin and others.

Though the practice of “artist resale right” is not yet law in Canada, as it is in many other nations, Cube’s Collector’s Show does include a five-per-cent royalty to the artists’ or their estates.

The official opening is 2 to 5 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 10. See more at cubegallery.ca.

Hibou VIII (1970, lithograph, 22 by 30 inches), by Jean Paul Riopelle, in the Collector’s Show at Cube Gallery.

Dinosaurs, comic books and a star of what may be the world’s best magazine will all be featured in local galleries and museums in 2016.

I’ve been poring over early details of what has already been announced for the public and private exhibition spaces of Ottawa-Gatineau in the next year, and below are a few shows that stoke anticipation, arranged by date: 

A photo from Amalie Atkins’ Wundermärchen, coming to Central Art Garage in January.

Amalie Atkins, Jan 8 to Feb 19, Central Art Garage: Amalie Atkins’ work, such as the films collectively titled “we live on the edge of disaster and imagine we are in a musical,” earned her a place in the important Oh, Canada touring exhibition. Wundermärchen includes stills from the films, to be shown in the appealingly nondescript garage on LeBreton Street, focus on the all-female, fairy tale-like narratives of the Saskatoon artist’s work. Click here for more.

Mathew Reichertz, Jan. 18 to April 3, Carleton University Art Gallery: Halifax-based Mathew Reichertz will install panels up to five metres in length that tell a neighbourhood story. In effect, he’ll turn the university gallery into a giant comic book. Click here for more.

Barry Ace, Jan. 28 to March 6, Karsh-Masson Gallery: Mnemonic (Re)Manifestations will include more of Barry Ace’s works of tradition “in a state of constant flux.” The Ottawa-based Anishinaabeg artist creates mixed-media art that weaves traditional motifs and materials into a wholly contemporary framework. Click here for more.

Nanook and Tagaq, Feb. 22, AXENÉO7: Tanya Tagaq, the Polaris-winning musician who recast Inuit throat singing for the modern age, will accompany Nanook of the North, Robert Flaherty’s 1922 “documentary” of an Inuk family in Northern Quebec. The concert is indoors at the artist-run centre in Gatineau, and a small number of tickets are available for $49. The music will be broadcast outdoors to Brewer Creek skating rink, where the film will be shown free of charge.

Rousseau Redux, by Anita Kunz, comes to Cube Gallery in March.

Anita Kunz, March 29 to April 4, Cube Gallery: Toronto-based Anita Kunz’s work has been selected at least 11 times as cover art for The New Yorker, one of the world’s most respected and storied magazines. Her show at Cube will be themed “fine art redux,” with pieces titled “Picasso redux,” Matisse redux,” etc. Click here for Kunz’s website.

Sarah Hatton, April 21 to May 4,  Galerie St-Laurent + Hill: The Chelsea artist Sarah Hatton, who has gained international attention with her complex, conservational “bee works,” returns with Lake Fever, “large scale paintings that explore the place of the lake in the Canadian psyche . . . like the feeling of staying in someone else’s cottage.” Click here for Hatton’s website.

Élisabeth Lousie Vigée Le Brun, June 10 to Sept. 11, National Gallery: “Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun is considered the most important female painter of her time,” the gallery says. She was also court painter to Queen Marie-Antoinette, and had to flee France after the Revolution. Her reputation continued to grow, but this will be the first “true retrospective” over her work. Click here for more.

Melanie Authier, Oct. 6 to January, Ottawa Art Gallery: A solo exhibition of paintings by the Ottawa-based artist, who was a finalist for the RBC Painting Competition. Authier’s work hangs in the National Gallery, and any opportunity to see more is not to be missed. Click here for more of Authier’s work.

And two shows from the capital region’s national museums . . .

Horsepower, March 25 to April 17, 2017, Museum of History: Words such as “exquisite” and “sumptuous” are being used to describe the restored carriages and sleighs on loan from the Paul-Bienvenu collection, “the finest collection of horse-drawn vehicles in North America.” Click here for more.

Ultimate Dinosaurs, June 11 to Sept. 5, Museum of Nature: A collection of 16 skeletons of dinosaurs that once roamed the ancient, southern continent of Gondwana, including the 12-metre-long Giganotosaurus, which “may have been the largest land predator ever to have lived.” Click here for more. 

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New shows and events in and around Ottawa this week:

Artistes en herbe: Emmanuelle Crites, Sarah Horton, Elisabeth Lalonde, vernissage Jan. 7 from 7 to 9 p.m., exhibit to Jan. 29, Galerie d’art Eugène-Racette, 6600 Carrière St., Orléans. mifo.ca

un-sold: Stéphanie St-Jean Aubre, installation piece where the artist’s studio is moved into the studio, revealing the artist’s process, Jan. 7 to 24, vernissage Jan. 14 from  to 9 p.m., Studio Sixty-Six, 202-66 Muriel St. www.studiosixtysix.ca 

Cast From Heaven: Chris Banfalvi, vernissage Jan. 7 from 6 to 10 p.m,, exhibit to Jan. 24, Orange Art Gallery, 290 City Centre Ave. www.orangeartgallery.ca

Sarolta Sasa Gyökér, vernissage Jan. 8 from 7 to 10 p.m., Black Squirrel Books and Café, 1073 Bank St.  

Eat Me: The Third Annual Filthy Dirty Art Show, group show, Jan.  8, 8:30 to 11 p.m., Venus Envy, 226 Bank St. 

Wundermärchen: Amalie Atkins, photographs, Jan. 8 to Feb. 19, Central Art Garage, 66B LeBreton St. N. centralartgarage.com

Related

• What to do this weekend and beyond
• Gigs to see this week

Ongoing exhibits:

Watercolour Studio Works, to Jan. 11, Studio Gallery, Nepean Visual Arts Centre, Nepean Sportsplex, 1701 Woodroffe Ave.

This Is Us Now: Additions to the City of Ottawa Art Collective, part of a three-venue exhibit, to Jan. 17, Karsh-Masson Gallery, 110 Laurier Ave. W. ottawa.ca/en/liveculture/karsh-masson-gallery

witness / témoin: Nicola Feldman-Kiss, curator tour Jan. 21 at 5:30 p.m. Exhibit to Feb. 7, Ottawa Art Gallery, 2 Daly Ave. artscourt.ca

A Photographic Love Story: Malak Karsh, to Jan. 17, Ottawa Art Gallery Annex, 110 Laurier Ave. W. ottawartgallery.ca

Truth of the Matter: Rachel Kalpana James, Cindy Stelmackowich, Norman Takeuchi, Howie Tsui, curator tour on Jan. 21 at 5:30 p.m.; exhibit to Feb. 7, Ottawa Art Gallery, 2 Daly Ave. ottawartgallery.ca

Art & Parcel Holiday Art Sale and exhibit: group show, to Jan. 24, Ottawa Art Gallery, 2 Daly Ave. ottawartgallery.ca

Extravaganza: group exhibition, to Jan. 24, Foyer Gallery, Nepean Sportsplex, 1701 Woodroffe ave. www.foyergallery.com

Painting The Streets of Ottawa and Beyond: Patrick S. Greene, to Jan. 28, GigSpace Art Gallery, 953 Gladstone Ave. 

Group 6 — The Canadian Forces Artists Program, 2012-2013: Joseph Amato and Alicia Payne, Sophie Dupuis, Leslie Hossack, Mary Kavanagh, Thomas Kneubühler, Sharon E. McKay, Leslie Reid, Rhonda Weppler and Trevor Mahovsky, to Jan. 31, Diefenbunker Museum, 3929 Carp Rd. diefenbunker.ca

La vie continue: John F. Marok, large scale oil paintings, to Jan. 31, Espace Odyssée, 855 boul. de la Gappe, Gatineau. maisondelaculture.ca

Painting a Life Together: Kathleen Daly and George Pepper, to Feb. 14, Ottawa Art Gallery, 2 Daly Ave. ottawartgallery.ca

A Bridge to Modernity: Monet, 12 of the painter’s seminal works, exhibit to Feb. 15, National Gallery of Canada, 350 Sussex Dr. gallery.ca

Les manteaux blancs de l’hiver: Gordon Harrison, Alexi Hunter, Dulce Albalindeza, David Thai, Pauline Paquin, Dan Ryan, to Feb. 28, Gordon Harrison Gallery, 495 Sussex Dr. gordonharrisongallery.com

Ottawa Selects: Selections from the Firestone Collection of Canadian Art, to Feb. 2016, Ottawa Art Gallery Annex, Ottawa City Hall, 110 Laurier Ave. W. ottawaartgallery.ca

Fluxus∞: Marie-Hélene Parant, 30-foot interactive video wall, exhibit to April 30, Âjagemô, Canada Council for the Arts, 150 Elgin St. canadacouncil.ca

Temporal Re-Imaginings, a new curation of indigenous art works by Alexandra Kahsenni:io Nahwegahbo, exhibit to April 2016, Âjagemô, Canada Council for the Arts, 150 Elgin St. canadacouncil.ca

Send information on art shows and events to kendemann@ottawacitizen.com by 8 a.m. Monday, two weeks before the event. Photos welcome. 

@keendemann
kendemann@ottawacitizen.com

Chris Banfalvi turns scraps of found metal into fantastical creatures and objects, from seahorses to sailboats to mechanical birds, and even the objects look as if they’ve somehow grown out of nature’s bounty.

Banfalvi’s exhibition Cast from Heaven launches the new year at Orange Gallery (290 City Centre Ave.). Dates Jan. 6 to 24, vernissage 6 to 7 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 7.

Click here for more.

Boat, by Chris Banfalvi

A rose of wrought metal, by Chris Banfalvi at Orange Gallery.

Ottawa filmmaker Mike McKay recently won the “best film from away” award at the Maine Outdoor Film Festival.

The film, titled Chaos Theory: Point of Divergence, is a short, at around four minutes, that merges white-water rafting with painting — specifically, the painting of Ottawa artist Jaya Krishnan.

Click here to watch the video. 

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New shows and events in and around Ottawa this week:

un-sold: Stéphanie St-Jean Aubre, installation piece where the artist’s studio is moved into the studio, revealing the artist’s process, vernissage Jan. 14 from 6 to 9 p.m., exhibit to Jan. 24,  Studio Sixty-Six, 202-66 Muriel St. www.studiosixtysix.ca

Hard Street: Norman Takeuchi, photographic pieces depicting upheaval around the world, vernissage Jan. 14 from 5 to 8 p.m, exhibit to Feb. 14, Ottawa School of Art, 35 George St. artottawa.ca

100 Years of Loss: exhibit by the Legacy of Hope Foundation, archival photographs and documents, first-person testimonies and art of the experience of the Residential School System in Canada, Jan. 14 to 30, National Arts Centre, main lobby, 53 Elgin St. nac-cna.ca

Vintage Collage Art: TahiniSauce, Jan. 14 at 7 p.m., Hintonburg Public House, 1020 Wellington St. W. 

Comment épuiser un objet (chaise): Pascale Théorêt-Groulx, Jan. 15 to March 13, vernissage Jan. 15 from 5 to 8 p.m., Art-Image, 855 boul. de la Gappe, Gatineau. maisondelaculture.ca

Memory Garden: Frances Caswell-Routhier, vernissage Jan. 15 at 6 p.m., exhibit to Feb. 21, Le Centre d’exposition L’Imagier, 9 Front St., Gatineau. www.limagier.qc.ca

The Great Escape: Erica Hawkes and Laura Culic, Jan. 16 to Feb. 7, Wall Space Gallery, 358 Richmond Rd. wallspacegallery.ca

Souhaits: Pilar Macias, Jan. 16 to Feb. 16, vernissage Jan. 21 at 5 p.m., Voix Visuelle, 67 Beechwood Ave. www.voixivuselle.ca

witness / témoin: Nicola Feldman-Kiss, curator tour Jan. 21 at 5:30 p.m., exhibit to Feb. 7, Ottawa Art Gallery, 2 Daly Ave. artscourt.ca

The Natalie Brettschneider Archive: Carol Sawyer, ongoing series that features photographs, texts, a video, and music recitals to reconstruct the life and work of genre-blurring performance artist, Jan. 18 to April 19, vernissage Jan. 18 at 5 p.m.; artists and curators in conversation Jan. 19, 7 p.m., Carleton University Art Gallery, St. Patrick’s Building. cuag.carleton.ca

Garbage: Mathew Reichertz, architectural-scale series of panels that transform the gallery into a comic book, Jan. 18 to April 3, vernissage Jan. 18 at 5 p.m.; artists and curators in conversation Jan. 19, 7 p.m., Carleton University Art Gallery, St. Patrick’s Building. cuag.carleton.ca

 Continuum: Abstraction in Contemporary Indigenous Art, Carleton Curatorial Laboratory (CCL), works in the collection of the Carleton University Art Gallery,  Jan. 18 to April 18, vernissage Jan. 18 at 5 p.m., Carleton University Art Gallery, St. Patrick’s Building. cuag.carleton.ca

Contemporary North: exhibition of Inuit printmaking, drawing, sculpture and tapestry, featuring works of students of the Nunavut Arctic College and the Embassy of imagination, opening reception and culture events on Feb. 21 from 1 to 3 p.m., exhibit to Feb. 28, Lalande + Doyle, Ottawa School of Art, Orléans, 245 Centrum Blvd. www.artottawa.ca

OTHER EVENTS

Art Moves Me, part of the Family Sundays at the National Gallery of Canada, is an all-ages dance, song, story and craft event (involving making dancing puppets) with Luv2Groove, including kid-friendly gallery tours, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., 380 Sussex Dr. Cost: Including with admission price. www.gallery.ca

Art Battle 341, a live competition as artists battle to create art in 20 minutes before an audience in the round, with votes determining the winner. All pieces created are available for purchase in a silent auction,  Jan. 19, 7 p.m.,  Arts Court, 2 Daly Ave. Tickets: $15 in advance, $20 at the door, $10/students.  artbattle.ca

Related

• What to do this weekend and beyond
• Concerts: 10 gigs to see (and the Bowie songs we hope they cover)

Ongoing exhibits:

This Is Us Now: Additions to the City of Ottawa Art Collective, part of a three-venue exhibit, to Jan. 17, Karsh-Masson Gallery, 110 Laurier Ave. W. ottawa.ca/en/liveculture/karsh-masson-gallery

A Photographic Love Story: Malak Karsh, to Jan. 17, Ottawa Art Gallery Annex, 110 Laurier Ave. W. ottawartgallery.ca

Truth of the Matter: Rachel Kalpana James, Cindy Stelmackowich, Norman Takeuchi, Howie Tsui, curator tour on Jan. 21 at 5:30 p.m.; exhibit to Feb. 7, Ottawa Art Gallery, 2 Daly Ave. ottawartgallery.ca

Art & Parcel Holiday Art Sale and exhibit: group show, to Jan. 25, Ottawa Art Gallery, 2 Daly Ave. ottawartgallery.ca

Extravaganza: group exhibition, to Jan. 24, Foyer Gallery, Nepean Sportsplex, 1701 Woodroffe ave. www.foyergallery.com

Cast From Heaven: Chris Banfalvi, to Jan. 24, Orange Art Gallery, 290 City Centre Ave. www.orangeartgallery.ca

Patrick Greene’s pieces are on exhibit at GigSpace until January 28.

Painting The Streets of Ottawa and Beyond: Patrick S. Greene, to Jan. 28, GigSpace Art Gallery, 953 Gladstone Ave. 

Artistes en herbe: Emmanuelle Crites, Sarah Horton, Elisabeth Lalonde, to Jan. 29, Galerie d’art Eugène-Racette, 6600 Carrière St., Orléans. mifo.ca

Group 6 — The Canadian Forces Artists Program, 2012-2013: Joseph Amato and Alicia Payne, Sophie Dupuis, Leslie Hossack, Mary Kavanagh, Thomas Kneubühler, Sharon E. McKay, Leslie Reid, Rhonda Weppler and Trevor Mahovsky, to Jan. 31, Diefenbunker Museum, 3929 Carp Rd. diefenbunker.ca

La vie continue: John F. Marok, large scale oil paintings, to Jan. 31, Espace Odyssée, 855 boul. de la Gappe, Gatineau. maisondelaculture.ca

Painting a Life Together: Kathleen Daly and George Pepper, to Feb. 14, Ottawa Art Gallery, 2 Daly Ave. ottawartgallery.ca

A Bridge to Modernity: Monet, 12 of the painter’s seminal works, talk: Claude Monte and Camille on her Deathbed, Jan. 21 at 6 p.m.: exhibit to Feb. 15, National Gallery of Canada, 350 Sussex Dr. gallery.ca

Wundermärchen: Amalie Atkins, photographs, to Feb. 19, Central Art Garage, 66B LeBreton St. N. centralartgarage.com

Les manteaux blancs de l’hiver: Gordon Harrison, Alexi Hunter, Dulce Albalindeza, David Thai, Pauline Paquin, Dan Ryan, to Feb. 28, Gordon Harrison Gallery, 495 Sussex Dr. gordonharrisongallery.com

Ottawa Selects: Selections from the Firestone Collection of Canadian Art, to Feb. 2016, Ottawa Art Gallery Annex, Ottawa City Hall, 110 Laurier Ave. W. ottawaartgallery.ca

Fluxus∞: Marie-Hélene Parant, 30-foot interactive video wall, exhibit to April 30, Âjagemô, Canada Council for the Arts, 150 Elgin St. canadacouncil.ca

Temporal Re-Imaginings, a new curation of indigenous art works by Alexandra Kahsenni:io Nahwegahbo, exhibit to April 2016, Âjagemô, Canada Council for the Arts, 150 Elgin St. canadacouncil.ca

Send information on art shows and events to kendemann@ottawacitizen.com by 8 a.m. Monday, two weeks before the event. Photos welcome. 

@keendemann
kendemann@ottawacitizen.com

Art Battle returns to Ottawa with another night of competitive creativity Jan. 19 at Arts Court (2 Daly Ave.)

Artists complete paintings in 20 minutes, and the audience chooses winners. The paintings are then available for bidding in a silent auction. 7 p.m. start. Early bird tickets are $15. Buy tickets or register to compete at artbattle.ca.

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Consider two new art exhibitions, with one artist, Chris Banfalvi, using trash to create animals, and the other, Nathalie Grice, using animals to consider our often trashy behaviour.

I briefly mentioned Chris Banfalvi at Orange Gallery in an item posted last week, but the show deserves further comment. Banfalvi’s scrap-metal creations are memorable for their physical and imaginative scale, and also because they often look like functional machines — sometimes disconcertingly so. 

A piece titled Observing From Above has a five-foot span of graceful wings, cut from sheets of metal. A tubular body is made of cogs and other recognizable parts, and at the head is the zoom lens of a 35-mm camera. The surveillance beast is mounted on an eight-foot pedestal, so it looks down at you when you look up at it. It is startling and beautiful observation in this age of CCTV, satellites and a camera in every pocket.

Detail of Chris Banfalvi’s Tempting the Divine, at Orange Gallery. (Photo courtesy the gallery)

Orange Gallery is crammed full of such pieces by Banfalvi. Tempting the Divine looks to be part sail and part flowing alien creature of some sort. It seems to be semi-organic, an elegant symbiosis of machine and nature.

This elegance continues throughout the exhibition, in the horse’s head traced from thin strips of metal, in the musical instruments that seem to flower, in the seahorses, in the giant, awesome hummingbird.

Banfalvi’s exhibition, titled Cast from Heaven, is the first great thing I’ve seen in an Ottawa gallery in 2016. It continues to Jan. 24. Orange is at 290 City Centre, in the old railway bank building.

A STATE OF GRICE

Nathalie Grice’s exhibition is entitled La Forêt des Folies, or Forest Follies, and it is a meditation via installation on “the true strength nature has over us.”

The strength that Grice portrays in her exhibition, at the Shenkman Centre of the Arts in Orleans to Feb. 9, is not one of physical domination over us by animals — no bears taking bites out of Leonardo DiCaprio here. Rather, the strength Grice sees is in animals’ “rebellion against us (by) having adapted to, and found power within, their changing environment.”

Nathalie Grice’s Forest Follies, in Trinity Gallery at Shenkman Arts Centre in Orleans. (Photo courtesy Eric Grice)

Grice’s portrait of the rebellion is a more-or-less life-sized installation of animals contentedly living in the forest, despite the adaptations they’ve had to make. Turtles crawl and snakes slither though covered in white paint, two-headed ducklings waddle happily, mice play in a fishbowl, and chipmunks scamper as chipmunks should. I particular liked the golden skunk, which is a flummoxing combo of shallow commodification and nature at its most impressively odoriferous.

Nature’s most obvious adaptations to humanity’s disposable attitude are the raccoons, rabbits and deer that wear graffiti or tattoos on their fur, as if they stood still long enough for some yahoo to cover them in paint. Skittish fawns are covered in tags. A doe has studs implanted on her back legs, like she’d encountered a gang of catch-and-release piercers.

The mighty buck is tattooed most masculinely; his side is emblazoned with snakes, and a sword and heart wrapped in a banner that declares “Death Before Dishonor.” Or, adaptation before extinction.

Peer into the small window built into the buck’s chest and, if you squint enough in the low light, you’ll see a “sacred heart,” and roses. Inside another window built into the installation platform, which I didn’t notice, is a mummified baby raccoon that, Grice says, a friend found in his attic — a moment of harsh reality among the fantasy.

Grice chose animals as her canvas because “we naturally see them as metaphors for human identity. We can see something of ourselves in them.”

Decades of Disney’s anthropomorphization leave little doubt of that truth. But title this Disney movie, Who Tagged Bambi?

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Nathalie Grice’s tattooed buck, at Shenkman Arts Centre. (Photo by Peter Simpson, Ottawa Citizen)

Click here to read more from The Big Beat

psimpson@postmedia.com

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Three prominent American artists will take part in the public “conversations” series that was so popular at the National Gallery of Canada last year.

Kiki Smith, Anne Chu and Theaster Gates will be part of the Contemporary Conversations 2016 schedule, which includes onstage Q & A sessions at the National Gallery.

The program, co-presented by the gallery, the U.S. embassy and the U.S. State Department, was launched last year with artists Eric Fischl, Nick Cave, Marie Watt and Stephen Wilkes. It was so popular that there were long waiting lists for the free tickets.

Vicki Heyman, the wife of U.S. ambassador Bruce Heyman and the personification of the spirit of the series, says in a news release that Smith, Gates and Chu can help Canada and the U.S. move “forward into a better future together.” Heyman, who speaks passionately about art and its transformative powers, continues, “I truly believe that art and the artist’s voice are the most powerful agents for change.”

The second year of Contemporary Conversations will begin March 31 with Kiki Smith, though viewers in Ottawa needn’t wait until then to focus upon her work. An exhibition of work by Smith and her father, the sculptor Tony Smith, opens at the National Gallery this week as part of another ongoing series, Masterpiece in Focus.

The masterpiece series, open to April 24, includes a close curatorial inspection of Smith the elder’s work Black Box, from the mid-1960s, and Smith the younger’s work Born, from 2002. The two works are being shown together for the first time in Canada, and they “each offer equally compelling meditations on presence, embodiment and consciousness,” says a separate release from the gallery.

Theaster Gates will speak at the National Gallery of Canada. (Photo Sara Pooley, courtesy the artist)

Lest anyone be unaware of the Smith’s stature, the gallery refers to the father and daughter as “two of the 20th century’s most influential artists,” and each represents “the zeitgeist of their respective generations.” Kiki Smith, the release continues, “has garnered international acclaim for her sculptures, prints and drawings, which focus on narrative, the human condition and the natural world.”

Theaster Gates, who will be at the National Gallery May 12, is a Chicago artist who works on a grand scale. His Dorchester Project has turned a once dilapidated neighbourhood on Chicago’s south side into a hub of collections and working cultural spaces, “places where moments of beauty can happen,” he told The New Yorker in 2014.

The artist Anne Chu will be part of the Contemporary Conversations series at the National Gallery. (Photo Jen Fong, courtesy the artist)

Gates’ urge to repurpose can work on a comparatively smaller scale. Inside the U.S. ambassador’s resident in Ottawa is a sort of framed tapestry made of decommissioned fire hoses.

Anne Chu, whose appearance will wrap up the 2016 series on Sept. 29, is based in New York City. Her multi-disciplinary works “journey across cultures to present a cast of characters appearing at once strangely foreign, yet also wonderfully familiar,” says a release.

The influential Saatchi Gallery says on its website that Chu’s “ancient dynasties always seem strangely contemporary, bringing mystery and romance to life.” 

For more details of the Contemporary Conversations series, see the website.

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Click here to read more from The Big Beat

psimpson@postmedia.com

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