There are north of 15 books on Nova Scotia folk artist Maud Lewis, from coffee table tomes to children’s books teaching counting via the repeated iconography of her paintings. Many focus on her biography, hitting the familiar notes of her late-life marriage and her solitary youth in Yarmouth. There’s even a niche-y, deep-dive into how […]
Visual Art
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Shakeup at Art Gallery of Nova Scotia as CEO Nancy Noble’s contract not renewed
Today, at 4:18pm on the Friday before a long weekend, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia released a statement that it is looking for a new CEO. The position was held by Nancy Noble, who previously served as the CEO of the Museum of Vancouver for over a decade before taking the AGNS job in […]
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John Devlin’s second act, from outsider to world star
John Devlin doesn’t draw for other people. He doesn’t draw for museums or galleries (even though, right now, his work is hanging in New York’s American Folk Art Museum, Berlin’s Galerie Parterre Berlin and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia). He doesn’t even do it for the agents in London and Paris who represent his […]
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Jack Bishop’s latest paintings need to be witnessed IRL
Jack Bishop ambles into Studio 21 right on time for his interview with The Coast, bringing his dog Ted along with a gentle move of the leash. He’s at the Doyle Street gallery to talk about his new collection of paintings–called Road Trip Playlist–because “it’s just easier for me to talk about the paintings when […]
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Two Halifax artists nominated for Canada’s prestigious New Generation Photography Award
Back in 2019–when our collective existential crises mightn’t have been new, but were certainly fresher than they are now–seeing a Séamus Gallagheroriginal in my Instagram feed was the sort of jolt to stop me mid-scroll, to make me sit up and actually look at what I was seeing. The 2018 Starfish Award winner and 2019 […]
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Look inside The Blue Building, Halifax’s newest gallery
A building can be a chrysalis, transforming its contents and inhabitants–and, through this, its community–as it morphs from one thing to another. The Blue Building art gallery opened to the public last week, and even from the outside one thing was imminently obvious: The new arts hub at 2482 Maynard Street (the project that houses The […]
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A year that’s worth a thousand words
It was the year that we were housebound—but, even more than that, screenbound: Living our lives through FaceTime and Zoom and the vicarious thrill of one another’s sourdough-studded selfies. As everything from theatre to live music made the pivot to online showings, it makes sense that fine art would also jump into our feeds like […]
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You’ve never UNSEEN one like this before
the UNSEEN LARGE app (download from App Store and Google Play) until Dec 12, free At this point, the palm of your hand is a window. Through it, you track your takeout and online shopping sprees as they hurdle along roadways to your door. You use it to swipe through potential movies—and potential dates. It […]
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For The Khyber, for us all
Emily Davidson sits, folded over on herself, in a corner on the third floor of 1588 Barrington Street. It’s not just any corner, of course. “This used to be the DJ booth back when it was the Turret Club,” the Turret Arts Space Society president says. Sunlight slides across a floor filled with memories as […]
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The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia chooses its winning design
When Joni Mitchell sang that “you don’t know what you got till it’s gone/Paved paradise, put up a parking lot,” she forgot one thing: Paradise could be rebuilt over that dead field of asphalt. Today, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia announced it’ll do just that as it unveiled its plans for the new Waterfront […]
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Nocturne 2020: Drying The Tears of a Butterfly
Touched By The Tears of a Butterfly Front courtyard, Halifax Central Library, 5440 Spring Garden Road Oct 12-17, 6pm-midnight Lindsay Dobbin still remembers the first time they saw work by groundbreaking media and botanical artist Mike MacDonald: “I had a dream of someone telling me I should pay attention to—or connect with—an artist who works […]
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Nocturne 2020: Mo Phùng’s memory Migration
Migration & (RE)Emergence: The Herring, Clouds And The Blue Sky nocturnehalifax.ca, re-emergingnow.ca Oct 12-17 Mo Phùng is now older than their parents were when they first stepped onto Nova Scotian soil. They don’t have the exact same clothing their mom and dad wore, making do with thrift store look-alikes. There are other divergences: The differences […]