Oluseye, Down Home, and Theaster Gates at Dalhousie Art Gallery, Halifax

By Liam O’Brien

Oluseye, Subject to the Tide (After David Hammons), 2024, twill, found object (photo: Brigitta Zhao)

Three exhibitions opened concurrently at the Dalhousie Art Gallery last Friday and, unlike most other contemporary art openings, this one began with a prayer. Reverend Allister Johnson, associate pastor of the Lucasville United Baptist Church, blessed the event, symbolically linking the three shows with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This spiritual prelude was fitting for faith courses through many of the works on display. Oluseye: by Faith and Grit features assemblage sculptures which intertwine (both figuratively and literally) labour, sport, and Canadiana through found objects. Down Home: Portraits of Resilience showcases local talent with paintings by contemporary artists of Afro-Canadian heritage. And the gallery’s projection room shows Theaster Gates’ gospel-infused video Billy Sings Amazing Grace, which is on loan from the National Gallery of Canada.

Oluseye, Muhammad Had A Dream, 2021-2024, boxing gloves, rubber, found objects (photo: LF documentation; courtesy: the artist and Daniel Faria Gallery)

by Faith and Grit occupies the gallery’s central space and is populated by the Nigerian-Canadian artist’s various assemblage sculptures made from “diasporic debris” – a term he uses to describe discarded and unnoticed objects laden with histories from the African diaspora. One wall-hung work combines farming tools joined at the bottom with hockey sticks to create a subtle intervention calling to mind the relationship between sport and agriculture. Two pieces sitting on the floor also reference sport and labour. A baseball glove holding a shell and sitting on a rock looks like it was found as-is on the bottom of the Bedford Basin (where some of this debris was indeed salvaged from). Nearby, a basket woven from tires sits on a cinderblock. It is dedicated to Edith Clayton, a master basket-weaver from Cherry Brook, NS, whose baskets combine traditional African weaving with Mi’kmaq dyes. If you look closely, a small cowrie shell has been woven into the tires, which hints to their importance in Nigerian culture. Two boxing gloves hang from the ceiling on long strands of found bike pedals. They look exhausted, dropped down the way a boxer’s arms might after a knockout, perhaps in a nod to George Dixon, Africville’s own boxing prodigy who became the first black athlete to win a world championship in any sport.

Justin Augustine, The Faith Catchers, 2000, oil on canvas (photo: Steve Farmer)

Down Home: Portraits of Resilience, curated by Fabiyino Germain-Bajowa, a student in the DAG’s curatorial mentorship program, stretches along the gallery’s corner walls, bringing together the work of nine contemporary artists of African Canadian descent. Saba Blyden-Taylor’s My Sun, a mesmerizing, delicious cosmic swirl (and the only abstract work in the show) neighbors Letitia Fraser’s portraits of children – sometimes cheery, other times pensive – painted on stretchers meticulously crafted from various textiles. They hang across from Preston Pavlis’s loosely painted portraits on chunky quilted textiles to create an engaging counterpoint connecting portrait and textile, subject and material. Nearby, Kayza DeGraff Ford’s Ritual series imbues sail-like canvas with imagery from Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet to enmeshed textile traditions with religious imagery. At the end of the room hangs Justin Augustine’s The Faith Catchers, which features two kids in stasis, taking a breath from a moment of play, standing strong and cautious.

Theaster Gates, Billy Sings Amazing Grace, 2013, colour video with sound (courtesy: White Cube)

Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates’ video features Billy Forston singing with Gates’s musical ensemble the Black Monks. Forston commences the piece with a rendition of Amazing Grace, a hymn written by John Newton, a former slave ship captain who turned abolitionist and became a clergyman after surviving a storm at sea. Gates then takes over, singing in runs backed by occasional percussion and vocals. The twelve-minute performance takes place in a darkened room illuminated with bright lights that give the performers a heavenly aura. The only video work in the gallery to incorporate music, it provides a transcendent coda to a maximalist collection that showcases an international superstar’s talent alongside local artists to reminds us of the commonalities in the artistic output of the African diaspora.

Oluseye: by Faith and Grit continues until April 27.
Down Home: Portraits of Resilience continues until April 27.
Theaster Gates: Billy Sings Amazing Grace continues until April 27.
Dalhousie Art Gallery: https://artgallery.dal.ca/
The gallery is accessible.

Liam O’Brien is an artist living in Kjipuktuk/Halifax. He is currently studying architecture at Dalhousie University.