Art Gallery of Guelph launches Winter Exhibition Season on Wednesday January 18 at 7 pm

This winter, the AGG presents a series of contemporary exhibitions and installations that engage and facilitate diverse cultural and creative experiences. The public reception takes place on Wednesday, January 18 ^th 7-9 pm, celebrating the opening of Contrarieties & Counterpoints: Recent Paintings by Melanie Authier, Colin Carney: Presence, and A Sense of Wonder.

Contrarieties & Counterpoints: Recent Paintings by Melanie Authier

Addressing competing histories of style, in Contrarieties & Counterpoints Melanie Authier combines hardedge and gestural abstraction to challenge and contradict assumptions associated with Western art traditions. Blending the gestural and geometric, each work layers acrylic, watercolour and ink to create “improbable environments” and visual spaces. Contrarieties & Counterpoints: Recent Paintings by Melanie

Authier is guest curated by Robert Enright and organized by the Thames Art Gallery in partnership with the Ottawa Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Guelph, Kenderdine Art Gallery, Galerie de I’UQAM, MSVU Art Gallery, and the Musée régional de Rimouski with funding from the Ontario Arts Council’s Ontario, National and International Touring programs. The AGG is also grateful for support of the Government of Canada.

Colin Carney: Presence

Presence features three new bodies of work by Guelph-based artist Colin Carney, incorporating large-scale photography, audio, and immersive video in a layered exploration of the poetics of space. Mapping a conceptual geography across three distinct gallery spaces, the exhibition examines the specificity of place and the inseparability of presence and memory. While Carney’s work has often been informed by his encounters with national and international locations, Presence activates the local landscape in a sustained investigation of the transformation of concrete places into subjective spaces: evolving amalgams of influences and impressions, past and present. Colin Carney: Presence is curated by Dawn Owen.

A Sense of Wonder

As part of the AGG’s cultivation of emerging creative practices, A Sense of Wonder extends the gallery beyond its walls through innovative approaches to diverse and inclusive community engagement. Focusing specifically on d/Deaf and disability arts through the convergence of art and social practice, A Sense of Wonder is led by interdisciplinary Guelph artist Dawn Matheson in collaboration with d/Deaf and hard of hearing youth from across southern Ontario. The project engages multimedia, performance, and video to provide access and insight into d/Deaf arts in an exploration of the presence of deafness over the absence of sound. Curated by Dawn Owen, A Sense of Wonder is organized by the AGG in partnership with Ed Video Media Arts Centre and with support from The Guelph Community Foundation: Musagetes Fund.