The TOM invites you to join us at the opening of our new shows on Sunday September 21 from 2-4pm.

Admission is by donation; all are welcome. These exhibitions run until January 11, 2015.

Two of these shows reflect the theme of Canadian Spirit 2014: If It Weren't for the War. From May through October 2014, the TOM and partner organizations, individuals and businesses have been collaborating to mark the significant anniversaries of the First and Second World Wars and in particular, the effect war had on the home front. Canadian Spirit is a collaborative, annual program initiated by the TOM in 2012.

New Exhibitions:

If It Weren't for the War

If It Weren't for the War brings together work by Allan Harding MacKay and Dick Averns (contemporary official war artists), Tim Whiten (a Vietnam Veteran) and Tina Poplawski (whose family was interned in Siberian gulags during the Second World War, suffering post traumatic stress that was visited upon subsequent generations in her family). Each of these artists will draw upon their personal experiences to create work responding to the theme.

The Art of Private Jukes

While overseas during the Great War, many soldiers documented their experiences in journals, letters home and in drawings. Private Jukes was one such young man. During his time of service he created hundreds of drawings, watercolours and pen and ink sketches depicting not only battle scenes and their aftermath but also moments of pastoral beauty that could still be found in the French countryside.

Autumn Colours

Selections from the Gallery's Collection

Of all the visual elements of art, colour has the most immediate impact on us. Our reaction to it is complex, and has been a subject of considerable study by artists and psychologists. This autumn, we showcase the artists' use of a single colour to create that big impact.

Ongoing:

Canadian Spirit: The Tom Thomson Experience

This exhibition gives visitors an educational and entertaining introduction into Tom Thomson's life, his connections with Owen Sound and Grey County, and the factors that led him to become one of Canada's greatest artists. The exhibition makes use of the Tom Thomson Gallery's important collection of objects, photos, documents and artworks by Thomson.

Artist profiles:
Dick Averns

Dick Averns' practice investigates the commodification of space. Language, media convergence and identity politics – major arbiters of spatial control – are explored via sculpture, performance, text-based works and photography.

Complementing his art production, Averns is both a critical and scholarly writer. Mental spaces are addressed on conflicted fronts: the overt and covert. In terms of overt conflict he writes on contemporary war art and has presented public lectures, chaired academic conference panels and published articles on this topic. Covert conflict is probed via applied research into mental health disorders. This has included the role of principal investigator for an interdisciplinary project investigating mental health, career choice and achievement in the workplace. Specifically, this work investigates how challenges associated with Tourette Syndrome may be channeled into positive career characteristics. He is also a professional panel chair and conference moderator.

Dick Averns was born in London UK. He currently maintains his practice in Calgary. He is represented by the Bjornson Kajiwara Gallery, Vancouver.

Allan Harding MacKay
Allan Harding MacKay has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally. Public collections including the Canada Council Art Bank, National Gallery of Canada, Canadian War Museum, Confederation Centre Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Art Gallery of Alberta and Kunstmuseum Bern Switzerland have acquired his works as well as corporations and private collections in Canada and Switzerland. At the invitation of the Canadian Department of Defence the artist served on two war artist assignments in Somalia (1993) and Afghanistan (2002). His experience in the realm of public art includes 4 commissions in Toronto and Kitchener, Ontario. He presently maintains a studio in Nelson, British Columbia.

Tina Poplawski

Tina Poplawski's work focuses on textured paintings, sculptural objects and paper works arranged into multi-faceted installations. She has been negotiating the cultural residue of war through her art practice for many years, leading her to a fascination with "debris" found in the botanical world. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Ontario, Quebec and New York. Two galleries in Toronto, the V. MacDonnell Gallery and Lehmann Leskiw Fine Art, have represented Poplawski. Her work is found in North American and European collections both corporate and private. She has been an instructor at the Toronto School of Art since 1993.

Tim Whiten
Tim Whiten is a highly prolific senior–career Canadian artist whose pursuits have long been rooted in the Transcendental. In over forty years of exhibiting, he has sought to navigate the territory of the human condition and its transformative potential. He perceives expressions of being in the world as markers in a series of passages, while considering mortality itself as a threshold. His longtime use of human skulls, hair, and animal remains reference the physical, while other natural materials such as talc, stone, and wood connect the body to the world through ritual.

His work has been featured in numerous international venues of merit, including exhibitions in Mexico, Brazil, Germany, the United States of America, and the Republic of China; and can be found in the collections of The National Gallery of Canada, The Art Gallery of Ontario, The Art Gallery of Hamilton, The M.H. De Young Museum of San Francisco, the Achenbach Foundation for the Graphic Arts, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and many others.

Admission is by donation thanks to the TOM's 2014 Admission Sponsor Cobble Beach.

Source - Tom Thomson Art Gallery