Japan and its history — at home and in Canada — star in Ottawa’s fall calendar of art, with three exhibitions at two institutions. War, and its abettor xenophobia, will cast a shadow over all.
The largest of three exhibitions will be Hanran: 20th-Century Japanese Photography, which opens Oct. 11 at the National Gallery of Canada. More than 200 works from 28 photographers will call attention ”to the costs of nuclear warfare and Japan’s extraordinary recovery.”
The word hanran comes from the Japanese word for “flooding, overflow or deluge,” the gallery’s notes say, and it seems an apt descriptor for the years covered by the exhibition, from the 1930s to the 1990s.
The period straddles the rise of Shinko Shashin, the avant-garde “new photography” that gained a foothold among Japanese artists in the 1930s, and was perfectly timed to chronicle the country’s cataclysmic years during and around the Second World War.
“Waves of photographic activity ebb and flow between realism and fabrication, tradition and modernity,” the exhibition notes say. As the nation struggled, suffered and regrew, the new photographers documented how society and people changed. Meanwhile, “Japanese industry developed some of the best camera equipment and film in the world.”
Hanran was originally exhibited at the Yokohama Museum of Art, where National Gallery interim chief curator Ann Thomas selected the images to be displayed in Ottawa. In a release, Thomas speaks of “the extensive range of styles and approaches to photography in this one exhibition; there’s modernist collage, documentary photojournalism, and radical practices, where it becomes even more political from the social and aesthetic points of view.”
Hanran continues until March 22. See more details and images at gallery.ca.
Two shows at Carleton University Gallery
Two exhibitions now open at the Carleton University Art Gallery speak to the dismal experience of Japanese-Canadians who were interned in camps in Canada during the Second World War.
In the exhibition Sites of Memory: Legacies of the Japanese Canadian Internment, Canadian artists Emma Nishimura, Cindy Mochizuki and Norman Takeuchi “negotiate the complexity of reflecting on this traumatic history,” says the exhibition note, “while articulating a delicate balance between remembering and forgetting.”
The works from Takeuchi, the Ottawa artist, are large paper kimonos that tell stories of internment camps in Canada. The kimono that represents the prison camp Angler, with a large red spot on its back, tells a tale that may horrify Canadians who would believe our country is above ruthlessness. Angler, Takeuchi says, “became infamous for the red circles that were sewn onto the backs of jackets that were issued to the prisoners. Although the circles looked like the rising sun, they were actually targets for the guards to aim at, should anyone decide to escape. No one did.”
The second exhibition is Inheriting Redress: The Ottawa Japanese Community Association Archive. The collection “brings together archival documents, memorabilia, photographs and other objects held by the Ottawa Japanese Community Association and individual community members who were active in the redress campaign in the 1980s,” say the notes, in reference to the Canadian government’s formal acknowledgement of the internment of its Japanese citizens during the war.
‘It’s unfortunately an extremely relevant topic of conversation, given what’s going on in the world,” says Emily Putnam, who curated or co-curated both exhibitions at CUAG. Political calls in the United States for a ban on Muslim visitors and the forced separation of refugee families are “strikingly similar” to the conversation that led to the internment of Japanese Canadians, Putnam says.
Both exhibitions continue to Jan. 26. cuag.ca.
Indigenous art at the OAG
The Ottawa Art Gallery has another significant exhibition of Indigenous art in Inaabiwin, with works by Scott Benesiinaabandan, Hannah Claus, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Meryl McMaster and Greg Staats, with “a poetic response” by Billy-Ray Belcourt.
The exhibition will explore Indigenous relations with “memory, body, land, material objects and identity,” the gallery says. “…Each artist opens doorways into thinking about the relationships that exist within and around us.”
Inaabiwin opens Oct. 4 and continues to Jan. 19. In the Anishinaabemowin language, the word inaabiwin means “movement of light,” and describes lightning. The title is apt, as Inaabiwin takes place in conjunction with Àbadakone — or “Continuous Fire” — the major exhibition of contemporary Indigenous art from around the world that opens Nov. 8 at the National Gallery. oaggao.ca
City acquisitions on display
The City of Ottawa acquires a lot of art — through purchase, donation or commission — and the past year’s new works will be on display in two exhibitions at City Hall.
Signal: 2019 Additions to the City of Ottawa Art Collection opens Nov. 21 (to Jan. 12) at Karsh-Masson Gallery, and includes donations and the city’s commissions. The “direct purchase” exhibition opens Dec. 12 (to Jan. 12) at the adjacent City Hall Art Gallery.
The annual exhibition(s) are always a mish-mash of subject, media and style, as there’s no guiding theme to bind them together. This year, they include 78 works purchased by the city — from 45 artists, 17 of whom are new to the city’s collection. There are 23 donations and 25 commissions, most notably the art commissioned for the city’s 13 new LRT stations.
The LRT commissions — including Jyhling Lee’s National Garden in stainless steel at Tremblay Station, and Derek Root’s Gradient Space in glass at Tunney’s Station — will be unveiled as the line is completed, and will be represented in the exhibition with photographs and, perhaps, artists’ sketches and small models. (The URLs for the galleries are too long to include here, and a quick Google search is better.)
From fantastical to subdued
Ottawa’s Drew Mosley creates fantastical paintings of woodland creatures, and his new work will be featured Nov. 2 to 23 at Wall Space Gallery, 358 Richmond Rd., next to Mountain Equipment Co-op.
Mosley, a carpenter by trade, is self-taught and his work is often seen in murals around central Ottawa. Wall Space will host a reception with the artist from 5 to 7 p.m. on Nov. 2.
Also at Wall Space will be new paintings from Ottawa’s David Lidbetter, from Nov. 30 to Dec. 14. Expect to see “intrepid and transient landscapes that celebrate Canada’s beauty.”
Lidbetter’s work is moody, sometimes austere, as he strips the land of garish colours seen in tourist-friendly landscapes in favour of subdued, earthy tones. An artist’s reception will take place from 5 to 7 p.m. on Nov. 30. wallspacegallery.ca
Other shows
Sivarulrasa Gallery: 34 Mill Street, Almonte presents Canadiana II — works by Nova Scotia’s Susan Tooke, Ontario’s Jane Irwin and Alberta’s Gillian Willans. Oct. 11 to Nov. 17. Vernissage from 3 to 6 p.m. on Oct. 19. sivarulrasa.com
Studio Sixty Six: The Onlookers, new paintings by Andrew Beck, Nov. 1 to 17. Opening reception from 6 to 9 p.m., Nov. 1. studiosixtysix.caom
Galerie Jean-Claude Bergeron: J’habite ma propre demeure, new works by Suzanne Joubert of Montreal, a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Art takes place from Oct. 3 to 27.
galeriejeanclaudebergeron.ca.
Peter Simpson is an Ottawa writer and regular contributor to ArtsFile.
