Curated by Bruce Johnson

Through monumental installations, video, painting, holography and photography, six Canadian artists consider how history and knowledge are created and used. Participating artists: Tom Bendtsen, Lori Clarke, Alexander Graham, Angela Grauerholz, Alex Livingston and David Morrish.

Curated by Bruce Johnson

This exhibition of collected works explores the idea of night, literally as well as psychologically. Night Set assembles sculpture, painting, photography and printmaking by artists including Christopher Pratt, Barb Hunt, David Blackwood and Will Gill.

Curated by Bruce Johnson

Marlene MacCallum installation presents 30 black-and-white photographs that explore the theatrical nature of architecture. Presented within a grid of recessed niches, this project plays with the illusions created by the eye's interaction with interior spaces.

Curated by Catherine Marshall and organized by the Irish Museum of Modern Art

Spanning works by 24 of Ireland's more celebrated contemporary artists, Comharsana Beal Dorais (a Gaelic phrase translated as Neighbours) offers a rare chance to experience the vibrant artistic production coming from Newfoundland and Labrador's next door neighbour.

Curated by Gordon Laurin

This exhibition offers a rich survey of the Art Gallery's permanent collection (currently comprised of nearly 6000 works). With a focus on the art of Newfoundland and Labrador, the show highlights a broad spectrum of artistic production, historic as well as contemporary.

Curated by Karen Hewett, Gallery Educator

An exhibition celebrating the breadth of student art from across Newfoundland and Labrador. Book-works feature among other artistic endeavors by Junior and Senior High School students who dismiss the phrase "I can't".

Curated by Gloria Hickey

Art, artifacts and documents hint at the provinces rich culture represented by The Rooms permanent collections (Museum, Archives and Art Gallery).

Curated by Karen Hewett, Education Curator

Sketches and studies from the gallery's permanent collection form the content of Stages, an exhibition curated by gallery educator Karen Hewett. Viewers, especially teachers and students, will appreciate the demystification of the masterpiece through the preliminary works of 19 artists including David Blackwood, Rhoda Dawson, Helen Parsons Shepherd, A.Y. Jackson, David Milne, Tony Urquhart, Rae Perlin, Christopher Pratt and Gerald Squires.

Curated by Ihor Holubizky from the McCord Museum, Montreal

Cities of Canada features 40 striking cityscapes commissioned by Samuel Bronfman as part of a groundbreaking art show which toured nationally and internationally in the early 1950s. Suggesting Canada's emerging presence on the post-war global scene, a variety of well known artist including A.Y. Jackson, Charles Comfort, Frederick Taylor, William Goodridge Robers and Walter Phillips offer a picture of Canada as an active, metropolitan and industrial country.

Curated by Charlotte Jones and Sean McCrum

A collaborative exchange between artists from Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario, and Ireland. Artists respond to rare formations of Limestone Barrens common to each region.

Curated by Robin Metcalfe and organized by Saint Mary's University Art Gallery

A survey of photographic installations created by the artist over the past decade. Produced and circulated by Saint Mary's University Art Gallery, the show brings together a series of works exploring our interaction with, and use of, the land.

Curated by Caroline Stone.

The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery examines the Shepherds' artistic production over the last half-century, bringing to light relatively unknown works in private hands as well as presenting favorites from the collections in the care of the Gallery. As Helen became well known for her commissioned portraits and meticulous still-lives, Reginald concentrated on atmospheric serigraphs and watercolours of Newfoundland, and the occasional site-specific painting, such as the Atlantic Place mural and an altarpiece for St. Patrick's Church, which is included in the exhibition.

Curated by Lisa Baldissera, Shauna McCabe and Bruce Johnson

Beauty Queens explores concepts of identity and cultural autonomy within the unique situation of island experience. Drawn from Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, and Vancouver Island, as well as the international settings of Ireland, Hawaii, and Trinidad, this exhibition presents the work of thirteen artists whose work emerges from and reflects upon their island settings. A joint project of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, the Confederation Centre Art Gallery and The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery.

Featuring Artists:
Gerald Beaulieu, John G. Boehme, Gaye Chan, Christopher Cozier, Susan Dayal, Jim Hansen, Barb Hunt, Daniel Jewesbury,Melinda Morey, Wendy Nanan, Marianne Nicolson, Judith Scherer and Dan Shipside.

Curated by Bruce Johnson

St. John's artists Will Gill and Beth Oberholtzer join in a collaborative exhibition of sculpture and installation. Exploring intersections between the personal and the cultural, the artists explore subjects including human conflict, spirituality, sexual identity and the environment.

Curated by Shauna McCabe

Douglas Coupland's Play Again? explores the fine lines between word and image, between clear meaning and pure design. Conceiving a space solely of text, Coupland offers a satirical glimpse of the forces that define our era.

Organized and circulated by the National Gallery of Canada

Janet Cardiff's Forty Part Motet offers a unique sound installation that has received international acclaim as it has toured North America and Europe. Forty Part Motet offers a very personal musical experience; replacing each singer with an audio speaker, their voices are individually mastered and rendered with precise clarity.

Organized and circulated by the National Gallery of Canada

The National Gallery of Canada has marked the 70th birthday of Christopher Pratt, one of Canada's most celebrated painters. Christopher Pratt is unique in highlighting the artist's recent production and focusing on his paintings; some sixty canvases produced between 1964 and 2004 are featured, with an emphasis on work from the last twenty years.

This exhibition was made possible thanks to the generous support of David Marshall.

Curated by Gloria Hickey, guest curator

Silver and Stone is artist Michael Massie's first curated solo exhibition and features 25 silver and 7 stone carved pieces created since 1996. Combining opposing and complementary themes: traditional and non-traditional, urban and rural, Inuit and European, silver and stone, Massie's contemporary forms are characterized by original designs and symbolism that have contributed to the redefinition of Inuit Art.

Curated by Shauna McCabe

Intangible Evidence offers a glimpse of innovative artistic projects that explore the documentation of the latent meanings and hidden stories that reside within historical objects and archival representation. Bringing creative practice to bear on objects drawn from within museum and archive collections of The Rooms, the artists involved in the exhibition have also brought their unique experiences, backgrounds, and obsessions that inevitably infuse the creative process.


Collaboratively, the work of Michael Crummey, Sara Graham, Andy Jones, Alison Norlen, and Graeme Patterson represents an interdisciplinary dialogue that crosses genres of drawing, animation, installation, audio, and text, illuminating the inevitable fluidity of the imagination of history and memory, and the lines of fact and fiction. Reflecting the diversity of creative process as well as artistic forms of cultural research, the exhibition suggests directions for new spaces for artistic creation, innovation, and debate.

Curated by Caroline Stone

Recent acquisitions to the Gallery's permanent collection, ranging from Gerald Squires to Rockwell Kent.

Organized and circulated by the Walter Phillips Gallery

A project by Canadian artist, writer and curator Andrew Hunter, Giddy Up! tells the tale of Andy, a young boy from Southern Ontario who yearns to visit Banff, ride the trails, sleep under the stars and be a 'real' cowboy. The boy's fantasies are fuelled by popular 1960's Canadian television shows like The Tommy Hunter Show, icons like Roy Rogers and country music legends Hank Snow and Wilf Carter. In Giddy-Up! Hunter animates the tale using historical artworks, retro finds from flea markets across the country and new works by William Eakin commissioned specifically for the exhibition.

Organized and circulated by the National Gallery of Canada

Being one of only five galleries in Canada to host this prestigious exhibition, The Rooms is proud to bring to Newfoundland and Labrador some of the most important French nineteenth-century paintings in the National Gallery of Canada's collection. The sixteen Realist canvases represent the reforming movement which transformed French art during the 1800s: a revolution in how artists saw themselves and the world around them. Among the twelve artists included are some of the most influential in the history of western art: Paul Cézanne, Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet, Honoré Daumier, Edgar Degas, Jean-François Millet, and James Tissot.

Supported by the Department of Canadian Heritage through the Canada Travelling Exhibitions Indemnification Program.

Curated by Bruce Johnson

Capturing places urban and rural, settled and wild, modern and rustic, Thaddeus Holownia: The Terra Nova Suite is a major survey of work examining 25 years (1981-2006) of photographs that offers powerful evidence of the changing landscapes of the province and its complex culture and society. Drawing on pieces from The Rooms Provincial Archives, The Terra Nova Suite also integrates an educational component, presenting documentary elements of the extensive history of photography in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Curated by Karen Hewett, Education Curator

This exhibition include photographs and cameras drawn from The Rooms'
collections, detailing historic photographic processes from the 19th and 20th centuries.

Organized and circulated by the MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, Saskatchewan

The Paintings and Prints of Mary Pratt encompasses a ten year period in the artist's life (1993-2003). This exhibition focuses on a number of still life paintings, as well as the collaboration between Pratt and Japanese master print maker, Masato Arikushi, entitled Transformations which includes the actual woodblocks used to create the final series of prints. With its realism, sumptuous colors and technical perfection, Mary Pratt's work brings a sense of rich symbolism to our most intimate domestic experiences.

Curated by Karen Hewett, Education Curator

Students use a variety of media to explore form, light and reflection.
Presented in associated with the exhibition Simple Bliss: The Painting and Prints of Mary Pratt.

Curated by Bruce Johnson

Combining explorations of portraiture, technology and interpretation, Peter Wilkins: 12 Kinetic Portraits features representations of twelve celebrated Canadian writers, including Margaret Atwood, Douglas Coupland and Wayne Johnston. Off-camera, Wilkins has engaged his sitters in a series of personal questions, exploring their hopes, fears and ideals. The resulting likenesses embody the process of "sitting" itself, pushing the traditional idea of portraiture by adding the dimension of time.

Organized and circulated by Library and Archives Canada

Consisting of 69 works of art, Rocky Shores and Stormy Seas -The Atlantic Region includes works by artists from the Winkworth Collection, as well as related paintings and printed documents from other Library and Archives Canada collections. One of the largest acquisitions ever made by the federal government, this comprehensive collection is the culmination of Peter Winkworth's passion for early Canadian art and is a testament to his commitment to preserving Canada's heritage through paintings, watercolours, drawings and prints.

Organized and circulated by the Art Gallery of Hamilton

In the Shadow of the Midnight Sun marks the first ever in-depth comparative analysis of two distinct cultures: the Canadian Inuit and the Norwegian Sámi. Curated by Jean Blodgett, this exhibition presents a selection of work by Canadian Inuit artists and Sami artists from Norway, Sweden and Finland made between 2000 and 2005. In the Shadow of the Midnight Sun was produced in collaboration with The Art Museum of North Norway in Tromso, Norway.

Organized and circulated by the Beaverbrook Art Gallery

Both a farmer and a painter, Anthony Flower lived and worked in New Brunswick for most of his life and celebrated his lifelong passion for art by painting the world around him in Queens County, New Brunswick. Taking his inspiration from the events and scenes described in newspapers of the day, Flower painted until his death at the age of eighty-three. His work now opens a window to a time and place now gone and sometimes forgotten.

Curated by Patricia Grattan, guest curator

One of Canada's finest printmakers, Anne Meredith Barry (1931-2003) described her work as a personal response to the ever-changing natural environment and the forces of beauty and destruction visible outside her studio window. Natural Energies, the first comprehensive exhibition of Anne Meredith Barry's work, is a major retrospective consisting of 90 works created since 1982.

Known for her visual aesthetic that fused bold colour, strong forms and sweeping lines into powerful expressions of weather, land and sea, Natural Energies consists oflarge-scale canvases, paintings, prints, artist's books, and sculptural objects that reflect major bodies of Barry's work. While sketchbooks and other materials provide a sense of the artist's distinctive creative process and working methods, the exhibition draws together work from a range of Canadian and international private, corporate and public collections, further defining Barry as a celebrated and internationally recognized artist.

Natural Energies is organized by The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery and made possible with the generous support of the Museums Assistance Program, Department of Canadian Heritage, and The Canada Council for the Arts.

Curated by Gilbert Gignac, guest curator

William Hind (1833-1889) traveled from the Maritimes to the Pacific; his art depicting the peoples and landscape of what was to become Canada - from a 19th century point-of-view. This exhibition focuses on the original sketches and paintings created in the summer of 1861 when William Hind accompanied his brother Henry up the Moisie River (in present-day Quebec), on a major cartographic and resource assessment exploration of the interior of the Labrador Peninsula. This geographic region stretched from Hudson's Bay in the west to the Atlantic coast. The expedition's objective was to follow traditional Aboriginal routes across the height of land to the Atlantic Ocean, however, due to the rough terrain the group had to turn back.


This exhibition also features Henry Hind's book about the six-week trek; published in London in 1863 and illustrated with prints based on William Hind's watercolours. William Hind's work presented the world with the first published visual description of the vast Labrador Peninsula territory and its peoples.

This exhibition is organized and circulated by The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery with support from the Museums Assistance Program, Department of Canadian Heritage.

Organized and circulated by the National Gallery of Canada

Albrecht Dürer (1471 - 1528) is recognized as a critical figure in the dissemination of Italian Humanism and classicist innovations throughout Northern Europe at the beginning of the sixteenth century. His woodcuts and engravings were instrumental in establishing his fame. They were widely distributed during his lifetime and remain compelling today as images of astonishing originality of invention, iconographic complexity and technical virtuosity.

Dürer was born and worked most of his life in Nuremberg, a thriving centre of printmaking and book illustration at the time. Here Dürer learned the craft in the studio of Michael Wolgemut, a painter well known for his woodcut illustrations. Intrigued by artistic developments in Italy, Dürer traveled to Venice in 1494-95 and in 1505-07. Both visits had a profound impact on his art and printmaking. He began to explore the secrets of perspective and to wed ideals of beauty, proportion and harmony to a northern European taste for realism and detail.

Drawn from the National Gallery of Canada's fine collection of Dürer prints, the 53 works in this exhibition are representative of the artist's entire career. The selection demonstrates the masterful range of Dürer's printmaking genius and his innovative approach to subject matter and execution. Among the celebrated prints included are The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1496-98), Saint Eustace (1501), Nemesis (The Great Fortune) (1502), Adam and Eve (1504), the sixteen Engraved Passion series (1507-13), The Knight, Death and the Devil (1513), Melancholia (1514), and Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony (1524).

Curated by Andrea Hickey, guest curator


Andrea Hickey assembles a survey of contemporary Canadian artists working in encaustic painting and wax. Participating artists include: Steven Andrews, Eric Blum, Nichole Collins, Cheryl Coon, Aganetha Dyck, Louis Fortier, Raphaelle Goethals, Timothy McDowell, Tony Sherman and Maggie Simonelli.

Curated by Bruce Johnson

St. John's artist Annette Manning creates mobiles and installations exploring the interaction of neurons with anti-depressant drugs. This is the first project in the gallery's "Space-Based" series, highlighting new work by artists in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Curated by Bruce Johnson

Selections from the gallery’s permanent collections are offered in a series of thematic installations.  A variety of artists and media, including Gerald Squires, Scott Walden, Kym Greeley, Reed Weir and David Blackwood.

Curated by Bruce Johnson

Named after a Belfast street, The Candahar is Winnipeg-artist Theo Sims' detailed re-creation/relocation of a fully functional, traditional Irish bar. Considering ideas surrounding community, autobiography and memory, The Candahar asks one big question, which leads to a lot of other questions: What makes an authentic Irish Pub?

The Candahar comes to St. John's after popular acclaim at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery, the 2007 Montreal Biennial and Plug In ICA.

Curated by Bruce Johnson


St. John's artist Jim Hansen is like a private detective investigating himself. His installation invites you to explore The Hansen Files; a case room offering fragments of evidence fraught with irony, humour, and doubt. This is the second project in the Gallery's "Space-Based" series, highlighting new work by artists in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Organized and circulated by the National Gallery of Canada

This exhibition of 69 photographs from the early decades of the twentieth century examines the expansive, innovative and often contradictory modernist ethos that shaped the look of photographic art during the period 1900 to 1940, and includes the work of German, Czech, American, Canadian, French, Russian, Hungarian, and Japanese photographers Margaret Bourke-White, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Alexander Rodchenko, Charles Sheeler, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, John Vanderpant and Edward Weston.


The radical technological advances in the early decades of the twentieth century prompted photographers to look at the world with different eyes. The excitement generated by the new perspectives inspired artists and photographers alike to reconsider traditional perspectival representation. Many photographers, particularly those closely associated with avant-garde art movements, dreamed of turning the established conventions of photographic picture-making upside-down.

Equally influential in creating a fundamental revision of the photographer's visual language was the intense experimentation in painting and sculpture that occurred during this period. Along with formal innovation - a principal characteristic of modernist practice - there was also a growing consciousness of the power of the photographic image to witness, and possibly change, social and political awareness.

Curated by Jason Sellars, Education Curator

Work by students from across the province celebrating 10 years of the ArtSmarts program in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Curated by Bruce Johnson

In The Forest, St. John's artist Craig Francis Power blends large-scale cardboard cutouts and video to create an installation examining our ideals of nature, leisure and cultural tourism. This is the third project in the Gallery's "Space-Based" series, highlighting new work by artists in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Curated by Bruce Johnson

Pootoogook's drawings challenge conventional assumptions made of Inuit art. Her drawings of domestic interiors and outpost camps reflect the disparate social, economic and physical realities of today's Canadian North. Many of her images are disturbing; addressing issues such as alcoholism, domestic violence, suicide, depression and drug addiction.

Pootoogook's was the 2007's recipient of the prestigious Sobeys Art Award. This exhibition is organized by the Illingworth Kerr Gallery, ACAD and curated by Nancy Campbell.

Curated by Caroline Stone

Originally from England, Peter Bell came to St. John's from South Africa in 1963, to become Memorial University of Newfoundland's Specialist in Art and head of the university's Art Gallery. Bell became very influential in the visual arts here, in his role at the gallery and later as arts critic for The Evening Telegram. At the same time, he painted in a colourful, hard-edge style and made silkscreen prints. Never reconciling to the Newfoundland climate, Bell's antidote involved the construction of a series of geodesic greenhouse domes in which he lived and made art. Having his studio next to an indoor goldfish pond and surrounded by jungle plants, Bell found spiritual joy in the forms and colours of his tropical haven, and in the landscape of the Caribbean island of Domenica, which he visited during this period. He communicated this through his intricately patterned images. In 1987, Bell returned to the UK to live on the west coast of Scotland.

This exhibition is the first in a collections-based series designed to highlight works by important figures in the development of the visual arts in Newfoundland and Labrador. Organized by The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery.

For centuries, scientists have created technology for gathering information that is not visible to the human eye, working to render this information both visible and comprehensible. The artists in Time & Space each take their own approach to exploring this process of rendering visible that which cannot be seen. Featuring new work by Dianne Bos, Joe Kelly and John Noestheden; Time & Space includes artists who address the process for interpreting astronomical data and the representation of this from historical to contemporary modes.

This exhibition is organized by the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery

Curated by Caroline Stone

Don Wright (1931-1988) was an inspiring teacher who travelled the province from 1967 to 1983 as art specialist with Memorial University of Newfoundland's Extension Service. Notably, Wright also co-founded St. Michael's Printshop. As an artist, Wright's drawings, watercolours, prints, sculptures and installations reflected his intense involvement with the natural world and its impact on human experience.

This exhibition is the second in a collections-based series about important figures in the development of the visual arts in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Guest curated by Gloria Hickey

Merchant Vessels presents a survey of functional ceramics from this region, revealed through the work of six practicing potters. Guest curator Gloria Hickey situates the work of Deb Kuzyk & Ray Mackie, Isabella St. John, Linda Yates & David Hayashida and Alexis Templeton within the larger context of Canadian ceramics.

Guest curated by Gail Tuttle

A mysterious handwritten tale is discovered within a cookbook preserved in the oven of a floating house. It recounts The Flood at Furnace Cove, a catastrophe that obliterates a Newfoundland outport. This story, created by artists Angela Antle and Reed Weir, unfolds through Weir's clay sculpture and Antle's encaustic paintings. Combining motifs of water, rural life and cataclysm, The Flood at Furnace Cove explores themes of upheaval, transformation and the loss of community.

This exhibition is organized by the Sir Wilfred Grenfell College Art Gallery.

The isolated town of Woodrow, Saskatchewan is now a ghost-town, inhabited only by the memories and traces of its former inhabitants. Re-created by Graeme Patterson, Woodrow is a sculptural installation combining scale models of iconic buildings and sites with animatronics and video-animation. Patterson's Woodrow resonates with contemporary issues of out-migration in Newfoundland and Labrador, offering bittersweet homage to life in rural Canada.

This exhibition is organized by the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia and the Mendel Art Gallery. Graeme Patterson was Artist-in-Residence at The Rooms in 2006.

Born in Saint John, NB, Miller Brittain (1912-1968) studied at the Art Students' League in New York in the early 1930s. He was deeply influenced by American and Canadian social realist artists, and brought a similar approach to depicting the people of Saint John. Brittain was an official war artist during WWII, and then from 1946 to the mid-1950s, he devoted himself to biblical subject matter. During the last decade of his life, Brittain's images became more personal and fantastical. As exhibition's curator Tom Smart describes, "Ordinary urban narratives, New Testament parables, figurative abstractions, and variations on organic metaphors all contribute to the iconographic lexicon of an artist who constantly pushed himself into new, perhaps dangerous, creative territory."

This exhibition is organized by the Beaverbrook Art Gallery and has been made possible in part through a contribution from the Museums Assistance Program, Department of Canadian Heritage.

Newtopia explores key developments in modern Newfoundland, considering the new province's early decades as a series of Utopian experiments. The exhibition focuses specifically on the post-Confederation period, when nascent industrialization spawned a series of major, idealistic development projects. The show assembles artists whose investigations tackle visionary Modernist design, the Cold-War American presence, Smallwood-era industrialization and the current lure of big oil. Curated by Bruce Johnson, Newtopia features installations by John Haney, Janaki Lennie, Scott Walden and Peter Wilkins.

In Trauma Sutra, wall-mounted steel sculptures reveal patterns of raised marks; these polished, metal welts are the signs of impact, created by bullets from a .357 handgun, precisely targeted. Accompanying these sculptures is a series of subtle, process paintings that blur boundaries between representation and minimal abstraction. An essay by guest writer, Dr. Peter Trnka, accompanies the show.

Trauma Sutra is the third exhibit in The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery's ongoing Space-Based exhibition series.

Curated by Shauna McCabe

This new media commission by Rebecca Belmore takes on various narratives of the capture of Demasduit, the young Beothuk woman taken by British settlers at Red Indian Lake in Newfoundland and Labrador and renamed Mary March. This exhibit was made possible with the support of the Media Arts Commissioning Program of the Canada Council for the Arts.

Image credit: Rebecca Belmore, video still, 2008

In The Lost Boys, Karch-Ackerman explores a generation's transition from childhood to adulthood, during the harrowing events of World War 1, when conscription or a sense of duty led many young people to the battlefields of Europe and to the abrupt end of childhood innocence. Weaving together fictional tales with biographical stories of so many lives lost in the First World War, the artist honours and pays tribute to these "Lost Boys", referencing found photographs, and incorporating hand-knitted sweaters and other domestic materials.

Image: knitted sweater for Herbert E. Badcock, Royal Newfoundland Regiment, 2008

Gary Kennedy’s sense of realism comes from a desire to depict the landscape and people of eastern Newfoundland through a lens that is direct and celebrative. He was influenced at a young age by the tutorship of American realist painter George Noseworthy, who conducted classes in Hibb’s Hole on the Port de Grave peninsula. This exhibition presents a selection of Kennedy’s larger works – meticulously rendered landscapes and portraits that blending documentation with elements of commemoration and nostalgia.

Based on Deanne Fitzpatrick's experiences exploring her family connection to Placentia, Newfoundland, this exhibition of hooked rugs explores the importance of visiting – "what it is to knock upon the door unannounced", as she puts it.  Fitzpatrick has exhibited widely and her work is included in various public collections. She has written books about rug hooking and operates a rug hooking studio in Amherst, Nova Scotia.

Suzanne Swannie is a Halifax-based designer and weaver who creates functional textiles, tapestries and large architectural installations for private and public environments. Swannie weaves pictorial tapestries and is known for unique fabric constructions such as the installation Repassage. Both the woven works and the constructions display the Danish Modern principle of repetition of modular units as a means of generating surfaces and structures with emphasis on rich colour harmonies.

The retrospective selection includes tapestry works from the 1970s; pieced and appliquéd wall textiles created in collaboration with the Mi’kmaq women of Eskasoni Reserve (1977-1980); production household textiles (1980s); the creased-silk installation Repassage (1986); subsequent tapestry carpets and their paper studies (1990s, 2000s); and the major figurative tapestry triptych completed in 2007.

Edward Burtynsky: Oil - Canadian Premiere May 7 – August 15 Level 3

Oil explores one of the most important subjects of our time by one of the most respected and recognized contemporary photographers in the world. Edward Burtynsky has travelled internationally to chronicle the production, distribution, and use of this critical fuel. In addition to revealing the rarely-seen mechanics of its manufacture, Burtynsky photographs the effects of oil on our lives, depicting landscapes altered by its extraction from the earth and by the cities and suburban sprawl generated around its use. He also addresses the coming "end of oil," as we confront its rising cost and dwindling availability. Image: Edward Burtynsky, Alberta Oil Sands #6, Fort McMurray Alberta, Canada, 2007. Chromogenic color print. Photograph © Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto; Hasted Hunt Kraeutler, New York; and Adamson Gallery, Washington, DC. Edward Burtynsky: Oil is made possible with the generous support of Scotiabank Group. This exhibition is organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Scattered over sixteen reserve communities, two countries, and countless urban centres, the Iroquois Confederacy - a historical alliance of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca and Tuscarora nations traditionally known as the Haudenosaunee or People of the Longhouse - continues to distinguish itself resolutely as six nations ideologically united under one roof.

The exhibition Oh So Iroquois emphasizes the dynamism of both traditional and contemporary Iroquoian creative processes. The featured work is deeply rooted in a cultural system of values and æsthetic qualities that permeate the social, political, spiritual, and economic infrastructure of Haudenosuanee society.

As a participant in The Rooms' Space-Based Program, Tara Bryan explores the form and allure of icebergs in this new series of large mixed-media canvases.

 Image credit:
Repose (chilled to the bone, Tara Bryan, Oil on Linen, 2010)

The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery Collection was established in 2003; this exhibition highlights selected additions to the collection since The Rooms opened its doors to the public in 2005. Most of these recent acquisitions have been generous gifts from artists and collectors to the people of this province. There have also been purchases, made possible through matching funds from The Canada Council for the Arts. All are valued acquisitions, as The Rooms moves forward in building its new collection.

The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery Collection is one of three collections under the care of the Gallery. The others are the Provincial Art Bank Collection and the Memorial University of Newfoundland Collection.

Newfoundland artist Luben Boykov's new work explores transience, presence and contemplation through the human form. This exhibition combines drawings and sculpture created from bronze, natural materials, fabric, and epoxy.

Luben Boykov: "My artworks are relatives of the organic forms that surround me in my everyday life in rural Newfoundland. Through my work I attempt to grasp the inherent rift and accord between humans and the world around us in our indefatigable search for a place between the atoms and the stars."

Combining the new with the old, REPUBLIC explores signs of Newfoundland identity, 60 years after Confederation with Canada. Painting, photography, sculpture, installation and film combine with historic artifacts from historic collections, including The Rooms Provincial Archives and the A.C. Hunter Library's Newfoundland & Labrador Collection.

Curated by Bruce Johnson, the show includes new work by Angela Antle, John Haney, Ned Pratt, Bill Rose, Patrick Tomlinson, as well as works from The Rooms' collections.

16 of our larger artworks, most over five feet in size, in our four smallest galleries = concentrated art power! Includes works by Anne Meredith Barry, David Blackwood, Christopher Pratt, Mary Pratt, Don Wright and other significant artists. And don’t miss our “recent acquisition” corner …

 Image credit: Peter Bell Night on Morne Trois Pitons 1970 Oil on board The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery, Memorial University of Newfoundland Collection

This exhibition highlights a selection of recent additions to The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery Division's Collection, most of which have been generous gifts from artists and collectors to the people of this province. There have also been some purchases, made possible through matching funds from The Canada Council for the Arts. All are valued acquisitions, as The Rooms moves forward in building its collections.


 

Comprising nearly forty oil paintings selected from the National Gallery of Canada's permanent collection of Canadian Art, this exhibition examines works by Maurice Cullen, alongside those of his contemporaries, James Wilson Maurice and William Brymner. The show also features works by artists whom Cullen was know to have influenced, including his stepson, Robert Pilot, and future member of the Group of Seven, A.Y. Jackson.

This exhibition includes several canvases that Cullen and members of his circle painted, both abroad and at home. Contrasted with the rural Canadian winter landscapes for which he is so well-known, these works reveal the complex relationships that figure in the urban and rural boundaries around such cities as Montreal and Quebec at the time. Some of the works selected for this show have not been exhibited publicly for almost two decades. This exhibition is curated by Crystal Susan Parsons, winner of the National Gallery's 2006 Guest Curator Program.

Image: Maurice Cullen, Summer Night, 1907, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa Royal Canadian Academy of Arts diploma work, deposited by the artist, Montreal, 1907. Photo © NGC.

John Hartman has painted cities both large and small; his imagined aerial perspectives look down on the contours of the urban space where towers, cranes, and docks meet the open blue of an ocean, lake or river. As one of Canada's leading contemporary painters, Hartman is known for his large-scale expressionistic landscape paintings animated with the imagery of local historic events and personal narratives. Born in Midland, Ontario, John Hartman studied Fine Art at McMaster University and has exhibited in Canada, Great Britain, Denmark, and Germany. This exhibition is curated by Stuart Reid.

This exhibition is organized and circulated by the Tom Thomson Art Gallery, Owen Sound, Ontario; the presenting sponsor is Scotiabank Group.


Image: John Hartman, The Southside Hills, St. John's, 2004, Oil on Linen, 48 X 54 Inches, Nicolas Metivier Gallery, Toronto  

Water and ice have been recurring themes in the work of Canadian artist Jan Kabatoff. Most recently, the world’s glaciers have been her source of fascination, reflecting deep concerns with change, transformation and the interconnectedness of the natural world.

Since 2005, Kabatoff journeyed to seven different glaciers from Alberta to Mongolia to the southernmost reaches of South America, charting their ephemeral nature as global warming accelerates their melting. Ice Flows and Sound Retreats is a multi-media installation combining painting, mould impressions, hand-dyed textiles, photography and sound recordings of glacial ‘voices’; an experience linking science and human wonder with a shared, growing concern.  This exhibition is curated by Bruce Johnson.

Image: Perito Moreno Glacier (2009),
digital photomerge, Jan Kabatoff

In this new body of work, St. John’s artist Greg Bennett explores the imagery and symbolic value of horses. Bennett’s paintings -full of doubled and mirrored images, overlapping planes and repeating motifs- offer surfaces where the material and the dreamlike meet.

Greg Bennett is the latest artist-in-residence participating in The Rooms’ Space-Based program. This initiative supports emerging and mid-career artists in the creation of new work within our on-site studio. This exhibition is curated by Bruce Johnson.

Image: Moly Eyed Dream, oil on canvas, Greg Bennett

Artist Talk on Dark Horse: Greg Bennett Wednesday, February 17, 7 - 8 pm
Join artist Greg Bennett as he discusses his new exhibition Dark Horse: Greg Bennett currently on view at The Rooms. Greg Bennett is the latest artist-in-residence participating in The Rooms Space-Based program.

The work of Helen Gregory ponders the boundaries of transience and permanence, nature and culture. The artist’s ongoing investigation of the act of collecting by focusing on organic forms such as skulls, bones, desiccated birds and dead flowers has resulted in a body of work that is simultaneously dramatic, haunting, macabre, beautiful and ostentatious. This exhibition is curated by Lisa Moore.

 Credit: Helen Gregory, Lament II,
Acrylic on canvas, 2006.

Image credit: Ed Pien, In the Safety of Trees, 2007 / Photo: Belal Ashraf

In celebration of film festival season, this juried exhibition of one-minute video shorts seeks to tell a story; create a portrait; animate a new world. The works from artists of all ages and experiences are drawn from categories such as digital-based contemporary artwork, visual collage, fiction, experimental, documentary, animation, and music and explore various genres such as drama, comedy, mockumentary, satire, sci-fi, thriller, and horror. The jury will select a grand prize winner and you can cast your vote in the gallery for the Viewer's Choice Award.

For hundreds of years, letterpress printers have created broadsides to let the world know about the events of our time, commemorating these moments with handcrafted words and images pressed into paper. Put up quickly in the places where people walk and gather – their visually bold and easily accessible messages do one thing simply – spread the word. The al- Mutanabbi Street Broadsides are a collection of 130 letterpress poster artworks commemorating the March 5, 2007 bombing of Baghdad’s al-Mutanabbi Street. Named after a famed 10th century classical Arab poet, al-Mutanabbi, the street is a legendary location in Baghdad, a place where books have been sold for centuries and the historic center of Baghdad’s intellectual and literary community.

In partnership with The Book Arts Association of Newfoundland and Labrador, this exhibition that will travel from the United States to Canada and Europe before culminating at an exhibition in Baghdad, Iraq. 

Image Credit: Elena Popova Let Me Know the Way mixed media on paper 40cm x 60cm 2010 from Elena Popova: Still Vortices.  

- Desiderius Erasmus

 - Niccolo Machiavelli