To January 27 Hermes Gallery, 5682 North Street Artist talk: Sunday, January 13, 2pm When sourcing materials for her artwork, Arianne Pollet-Brannen always has a sympathetic eye. In repurposing objects such as old leather shoes, she reconstructs these discarded pieces into wearable art—somewhere between ball gowns and gladiator costumes. While the forms she creates are […]
Visual Art
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Vacant Faces’ window on the city
Ariel Twist and Brandon Hoax, Vacant Faces To January 2019 The Khyber Centre for the Arts, 1880 Hollis Street Christening the new Khyber Window gallery is Vacant Faces, a display of poetry by Cree writer Arielle Twist and sculptures by Haudenoshaunee and Onyota’a:ka artist Brandon Hoax. Though modest in size, the exhibition is eerie and […]
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Miss Chief and the Resilience
Kent Monkman is known for working on a monumental scale, and his recent work is as ambitious as ever. With the help of his Toronto studio, the Cree artist and his team of assistants (like a renaissance master and workshop) create stunning, giant canvases that reimagine the genre of history painting. History painting has less […]
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Visual arts review: James MacSwain, Ex Libris
To November 25 Hermes Gallery, 5682 North Street There is a children’s game called Exquisite Corpse, which is much less gruesome than the name suggests: A piece of paper is folded three times and players take turns drawing the head, torso and legs of a figure, to create a weird and funny Frankenstein’s monster. Though […]
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Visual arts review: David Urban, The Precious Book
To November 14 Studio 21, 5431 Doyle Street The colours in David Urban’s paintings are satisfyingly combative. Backgrounds of goldenrod and deep lavender house strange shapes in apricot orange, cornflower blue and turquoise—contrasting tones that Urban corrals into pleasing scenes. These backgrounds, while home to abstract bodies, tend to feel like a horizon line or […]
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Nocturne 2018: Reading the Truth and Reconciliation Report
Exhibit 215 Park at Hollis and Barrington Street It all started over a year ago, when an audience member stood up at a lecture by senator Murray Sinclair, former chair the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. “She asked ‘What can we do’” Kathrin Winkler recalls. “He said ‘Read the damn report!’” The phone line […]
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Nocturne 2018: Poemtree
Exhibit 307 5057 Salter Street Don’t alert the GMO activists just yet, but hundreds (possibly thousands) of poems can be seen growing from a huge weeping willow tree on the evening of Nocturne. Yes, you read that right—the Poemtree is here to give Haligonians a super-natural outlet to express themselves. Inspired by Japanese traditions of […]
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Nocturne 2018: Let Evening Come
Exhibit 505 Downtown Dartmouth Business Commission 163 Portland Street Dark and mysterious, peaceful and joyous: The evening holds a special place in all of our hearts. On the night of Nocturne, Let Evening Come invites you to explore the sentiments accompanying this magical time through music, drama and more. Inspired by Jane Kenyon’s poem of […]
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Nocturne 2018: Queer Songbook Orchestra
Exhibit 404 Portia White Atrium, Citadel High, 1855 Trollope Street A few years back, Shaun Brodie was freshly rejected from journalism school. He’d left his freelance life as a trumpeter—for the likes of The New Pornographers, Basia Bulat and Dan Mangan—but he still wanted to do a project that connected those interests, music and storytelling, […]
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Nocturne 2018: Fox Hatch
Exhibit 102 Paul O’Regan Hall, Halifax Central Library 5440 Spring Garden Road There are, perhaps, a million ways a story can be told, but for Laura Stinson, there’s no way like puppetry. “I fell in love with puppetry because it involves performance and dance and music and visual art all together, but the focus is […]
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L’nuwesimk: El-noo-wee-simk: Speaking Indian
Exhibit 201 Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre 2158 Gottingen Street (6pm) Burying grounds at Sinnot Hill Park, 31 Windmill Road, Dartmouth (8pm) Granville Court, Granville at Duke Street (10pm) For their Nocturne piece L’nuwesimk, the artists Ursula Johnson and Angella Parsons are proposing something very small and incredibly wide at once: At three sites in Halifax […]
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Nocturne 2018: Free Consultations
Exhibit 115 Victoria Park, Spring Garden Road at South Park Street The team at Dramatic Changes wants to create art and community at the same time. “We’ve been getting together once a week for three months to discuss what support could look like,” says co-founder Ross Unger of the group’s Nocturne project, Free Consultations. “We […]