- Garry Neill Kennedy, The Colours of Citizen Arar, 2007, installation view
Last week the shortlist for the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia Masterworks Arts Award was announced. Selected by an arms-length jury of artists from across Nova Scotia, the creators of the winning work receive $25,000, which, by the way, is more than the median income for artists in Canada.
- Steve Farmer
- Susan Feindel, It will smell like the breath of a new born baby (anonymous, aboard C.C.G.S. Hudson, 2001) #3 (detail), 2004.
There are five finalists competing for the award, to be presented at the Creative Nova Scotia Conference in Yarmouth on October 24. The mediums all differ and the themes are varying—-from the personal, the political and the natural—-but this list represents artists at the top of their game. “CSDC 3-8 (Compound Spiral Double Cone, No. 3, 8 Sided)” is John Macnab’s gracefully simple 7.6-metre-long double spiral wood sculpture. Suspended horizontally, the red spruce was turned on 7.6-metre-long lathe that Macnab invented. Jennifer Overton’s play God’s Middle Name, based on her book, explores the challenges of mothering an autistic child, using various theatrical genres. Neil Forrest’s large, multi-part ceramic sculpture “Mandible” combines his explorations into craft theory with biomorphic forms like hiving. See Below, Susan Feindel’s series of black-and-white painted canvases, are based on sonar imagery of the ocean floor. Finally, you may remember The Colours of Citizen Arar, Garry Neill Kennedy’s wall painting at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, which employed large bands of colours and Kennedy’s “Superstar Shadow” font to recall the torture of Maher Arar during his interrogation in Syria.
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This article appears in Sep 24-30, 2009.