Illustration by Suvi Suitiala
The Espace Riopelle-Michael Audain Pavilion in Quebec City opens this fall.Musée national des beaux-arts/Supplied
There will also be a reinstallation of MNBAQ’s collection of modern art to put Riopelle in context, and a new presentation of Tribute to Rosa Luxemburg, the 1992 fresco the artist created in reaction to the death of his former companion, the American painter Joan Mitchell. An interactive exhibition, Art and Emotions, will investigate reactions to Riopelle’s work from both those who knew him and the public. Timed tickets for the Oct. 22-25 events, which also feature dance and musical performances, are available on the museum website.
The new pavilion is named for British Columbia art collector Michael Audain, who along with Quebec philanthropists André Desmarais, France Chrétien Desmarais and Pierre Lassonde, helped fund its construction. Audain, his wife, Yoshiko Karasawa, and Lassonde have also donated 60 works from their personal collections.
This untitled 2011 photograph (Grip) by Stan Douglas is part of the Michael and Inna O’Brian collection showing at the Griffin Art Projects in North Vancouver.Stan Douglas/Supplied
It’s an unusual cross-Canada collaboration that reveals the impact of collectors’ tastes and interests on major institutions. Back in Audain’s home province, Griffin Art Projects in North Vancouver specializes in exhibiting private collections. On Sept. 12, it opened Found in Translation: The Michael and Inna O’Brian Collection, featuring the historic and contemporary Indigenous art, and contemporary Canadian and international work, collected over 40 years by the O’Brians. (Michael O’Brian died in 2023.) The collection covers a century’s worth of work and includes such contemporary Indigenous artists as Shawn Hunt, Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun and Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas. It runs until Dec. 13.
The Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton figures this is a good moment to investigate the influence of the Automatistes, the seminal Montreal abstractionists of the 1940s and 50s led by Paul-Émile Borduas and including Riopelle. Les Automatistes and Automatic Painting in Alberta focuses on the movement’s core concept of spontaneity, letting the subconscious mind direct creativity to seek truth and liberation in the intuitive, the random and the serendipitous. The show features work by Quebec artists and automatic painting from the West. The ideas arrived in Alberta thanks to Jock Macdonald, later a member of the Painters Eleven, who was influenced by the British Surrealists and introduced automatic painting to Alberta artist Marion Nicoll in the 1940s. It runs from Oct. 31 to Jan. 24.
Curtis Talwst Santiago is showing his Infinity Series at Contemporary Calgary including this piece titled, A lineup for lineups must be Friday. Always that one barber on the damn phone! Bruh, can you please finish my fade!?, of 2022.Collection of Charlotte Wagner/Supplied
Black folk art and Caribbean culture form another powerful theme on the fall calendar. Contemporary Calgary is now showing the work of Curtis Talwst Santiago in an exhibition titled worlds, worlds, worlds. The Canadian artist, who lives in Germany, makes miniature dioramas showing scenes of life in the Caribbean diaspora. The Infinity Series, started in 2008, features tiny figures mounted in cardboard and cloth jewellery boxes, scenes of people waiting for a haircut or enjoying a dance party, with themes of migration and territorialism emerging from these seemingly toy-like creations. The exhibition runs until Jan. 3.
The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax is currently showing the work of Harold Cromwell with its first-ever solo show devoted to the neglected Black folk artist, who died in 2008. Cromwell was born in the Black Loyalist community of Weymouth Falls, N.S., in 1919, and developed a meticulous, highly detailed style, drawing in pen and ink on lowly materials such as cupboard doors, scraps of paper and paper plates. His subject was daily life in a rural community, including his youthful memories of the Depression years. On the Matter of Memory: The Drawings of Harold Cromwell continues to July 4.
The Beautyful Ones May Have Arrived (2023) by Njikeka Akunyili Crosby is included in Sunday Best at the Art Gallery of Ontario.Njideka Akunyili Crosby/Supplied
The Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto considers the role of self-fashioning in Black culture from the 1880s to the present with Sunday Best: The Power and The Glory of Black Style. Co-organized with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the exhibition includes fashion, visual art and video. It’s open to members Oct. 7 and the general public Oct. 13, and continuing to Feb. 28.