02. Installation of Zbigniew Blazeje’s Audio-Kinetic Environment (Art Gallery of Toronto version of an exhibition presented at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts), 1966. Photograph from: artscanada, February 1967, issue no.105: the New Technology and the Arts, article: "The sensory dynamics of new technology" by Arnold Rockman, image reproduced on p.9.
03. Snapshots of expo67 site construction by Marilyn Manchen, 1966
04. Detail of image of Canada Pavilion model from the cover of the Official Souvenir Book for expo67, Benjamin News Company Ltd., Montreal, 1967
05. Image of highway “cloverleaf” from the article "Montreal Greets the World," Jules B. Billard, National Geographic, Volume 131, No.5, May 1967, page 615
06. Pierre Bouchard from The Conquering Canadiens: Stanley Cup Champions, Stan Fischler and Dan Baliotti, Prentice-Hall of Canada Ltd., 1971
March 14 – April 19, 2008
A collection-based exhibition curated by Andrew Hunter
The exhibition This is Montreal! features important modernist works from the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery collection (paintings, drawings and sculptures by Marcel Barbeau, Yves Gaucher, Denis Juneau, Guido Molinari, Françoise Sullivan and Claude Tousignant) and other rarely seen works from the 60s and 70s including a large fiber installation by Nancy Herbert. These works are players in an elaborate narrative that maps the Montréal of Andrew Hunter’s childhood dreams, experienced by him for the first time during the early 1970s as a futuristic, cosmopolitan utopia that stood in harsh contrast to his modest suburban home in Hamilton, Ontario. Working with a blurred model of the modern design museum, the trade-fair display and the World Fair, Hunter creates a visual and textual narrative of the city and its iconography through the interplay of the Gallery’s collection, along with photographs, furniture, film, magazines and tourist brochures from that period, as well as souvenirs from Expo ’67. This is Montréal! is a flawed, yet dynamically bold and convincing articulation of an idea of a place seen and imagined by an outsider.
An artist, writer and curator, Andrew Hunter has produced exhibitions, site projects, publications and writings for institutions across Canada including the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Vancouver Art Gallery. His approach is one that places a strong emphasis on popular narratives that complexify mainstream history and test received ideas. At the core of Hunter’s work has been the exploration of the holdings of public institutions (museums, art galleries, libraries and archives) as well as private collections, engaging these in various forms of narrative play. In the words of Hunter, This is Montréal! “… reflects an engagement with a desire to move beyond didactic or academic articulations of a collection to explore the failure of memory, embrace the creative possibilities of getting it wrong and accept that our ideas of the “real” are largely constructed and imaginary.”
Andrew Hunter is currently the Director of RENDER, a unique arts-based research, teaching and presentation center, located at the University of Waterloo.
The accompanying publication was made possible by the Samuel Schecter Exhibition Fund and is available for sale at the Gallery from March 13th.
The Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery’s contemporary exhibition program is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.