EXPANSE – Visual Arts News – Spring 2019

Kym Greeley, I’m Only Dreaming, acrylic on canvas with screenprint, 36” x 48”, 2018.

COVER PROFILE: Kym Greeley’s Highway Sightlines by Jennifer McVeigh

EXPANSE

In Shannon Webb-Campbell’s first issue as Editor, artists ask us to pay witness, and explore connections to territory—to land and responsibility. To listen, and to learn.

Exclusive to this issue of Visual Arts News is Mi’kmaq poet Michelle Sylliboy’s Ancient Messages—fusing the written Mi’kmaq Komqwejwi’kasikl language and photography. #callresponse is a provocative exhibition that isn’t merely a reaction to reconciliation, or a catalogue of resistance, it’s an on-going project which represents the fullness, vitality, and abundance of powerful Indigenous artists. Mi’kmaq artist Nelson White’s work honours ancestral truths, kinship, and combats colonial attitudes of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Ned Pratt both rebels against and honours his artistic parents Christopher Pratt, and the late Mary Pratt, exploring presence and tension. Like Pratt, cover artist Kym Greeley’s paintings illustrate a different side of Newfoundland and Labrador—showing how the relationship to the island changed when the government paved the Trans-Canada Highway. Visionary of Fogo Island Arts, Zita Cobb, asks “What does art have to do with the price of fish?” focusing on society’s current crisis of belonging.

Woven throughout this issue are themes that speak to the expansiveness of community, re-telling and re-imagining relationships, and how art revisions dominate colonial attitudes and narratives.

Highlights include:

Review: #callresponse: conversation & action by Kathleen Higgins
Feature: When Small Things Matter: Ned and Mary Pratt by Mireille Eagan
Poetry: Michelle Sylliboy’s Ancient Messages, Mi’kmaq Komqwejwi’kasikl (hieroglyphic) poetry
Feature: The Most Important Thing—Art and the Rural Renewal of Fogo Island by Jolee Smith
Profile: Nelson White—Kinship and Reclamation Beyond the Artist Residency by Kate Lahey
Q & A: Oracles, Questions & Translation with Olivia Boudreau & Penelope Smart
Review: Stephanie Rybczyn & Sarah Lloyd’s Liminal Fleshold: A Net for Wonder & Oneness by Gillian Dykeman
Profile: Kent Monkman’s Shimmering Resilience by Shannon Webb-Campbell

Fogo Island, The Inn.

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ABOUT VISUAL ARTS NEWS
Every issue of Visual Arts News includes engaging exhibition reviews, artist profiles and in-depth features on issues facing arts professionals across Atlantic Canada. As one of the oldest cultural publications in Canada, it is a well-trusted source of information for readers with a passion for its thriving visual arts scene.