Fairy Tails | Opening Exercises

The Owens Art Gallery, Mount Allison University, presents two new exhibitions
Vernissage: 17 January 2020 @ 7:00 pm

Janice Wright Cheney, Sighting the Lucivee: Welch, 2019, Pigment print on cotton rag, 20 x 30”. Courtesy of the artist.

Fairy Tails

Amalie Atkins, Aganetha Dyck, Diana Thorneycroft, Meryl McMaster, Sylvia Ptak, Vicky Sabourin, Anna Torma, Laura Vickerson, Janice Wright Cheney

10 January to 1 April 2020

Curated by Anne Koval

This group exhibition explores the wondrous in nature by reconsidering the role of animals in storytelling. These works present fantastical narratives in which animals preside over strange episodes: tales are rewritten or unwritten, travellers embark on uncertain journeys, danger lurks deep in the forest, a witch appears from nowhere, birds and beasts are spellbound, clothing is enchanted, and a shoe materializes, as if magically spun from gold. If animals are “good to think with,” as anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss once famously remarked, then folk and fairy tales have a long history of speaking through beasts, whose otherworldly transformations can express our innate or unconscious longings and desires.

Didier Morelli, 1.52 x 2.42 meters, 2019, digital intervention into a photograph of Alex Colville and his mural Athletes (1961)

Opening Exercises

A project by Didier Morelli, with contributions from Eunice Bélidor and Camille Georgeson-Usher

17 January to 1 April 2020

Curated by Emily Falvey

Art and sports are often considered so separate as to be almost opposed. In fact, they may easily complement each other in the creation of shared communities and spaces. In Opening Exercises, artist Didier Morelli sets out to explore this very connection. Using Alex Colville’s mural Athletes (1961) as a point of departure, the artist mines material from the Mount Allison University Archives, combining it with his own work and written contributions from curators Eunice Bélidor and Camille Georgeson-Usher, both of whom have relationships to distance running. The resultant installation proposes “a series of starting points moving out in various other directions,” and thus emphasizes unexpected connections and moments of collaboration as well as divergence.

Owens Art Gallery
Mount Allison University
61 York Street
Sackville, NB E4L 1E1

506 364 2574
owens@mta.ca
www.mta.ca/owens

Monday to Friday, 10:00 am to 5:00 pm
Saturday and Sunday, 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm
Admission is Free

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We would like to acknowledge, honour, and pay respect to the traditional owners and custodians (from all four directions) of the land on which we gather. It is upon the unceded, ancestral lands of the Mi’kmaq and Wolastoqiyik Nations that Mount Allison University is built. While this area is known as Sackville, NB, it is part of the greater territory of Mi’kma’ki. This territory is covered by the “Treaties of Peace and Friendship,” which the Mi’kmaq and Wolastoqiyik first signed with the British Crown in 1725.

The Owens Art Gallery acknowledges the generous support of all its funders, including Mount Allison University, the Canada Council for the Arts, the New Brunswick Department of Tourism, Heritage and Culture, the Town of Sackville New Brunswick, and the Friends of the Owens.

The Owens is partially accessible. The stairs from the entrance nearest the University Chapel have a handrail. There is also ramp access at this entrance; however, the ramp is steep. The stairs to the entrance off York Street do not have a handrail. The main floor of the Owens is wheelchair accessible. Our second-floor gallery and cisgender bathrooms are located in the basement and are not accessible. Two flights of stairs lead to each of these floors. The Owens welcomes guide dogs and other service animals. Large print copies of wall labels are available on Kindles for use in the galleries. There are two, reserved, accessible parking spaces on the York Street side of the Gallery and one in the circular driveway adjacent to the Gallery.