Past Exhibitions

John Will / Greed’l Get You

Greed’l Get You, a new exhibition of text-based work by Calgary artist John Will, continues an investigation into his fascination with his own origins in the world as an individual and an artist. Will is known as a trickster but it is beneath this dimension of his work that the viewer finds the depth of the message in his pictorial epistles.

Over the course of his career, Will has worked intuitively in his creation of satirical and dark texted-based paintings and works on paper. Through a process of collecting fragments of language, he stitches together statements and sentences that are the inspiration for the work. The pieces in Greed’l Get You were selected from his “Book of Wont” where Will has been cataloguing his artwork since 2015. There are over 838 works in this series, 198 of which are included in the exhibition, as well as transcribed in the book itself. These works brought together at Jarvis Hall Gallery become a narrative, not only tracing aspects of Will’s life but also the life we all live in 21st century Western culture. This lends the exhibition a strong critique of the ethos of our current reality.

–Maeve Hanna (art writer)

10 July – 29 August, 2020

Greed'l Get You / Viewing Room John's Artist Page Double Insight / Studio Tour

Mark Dicey / Rhythm Section

Rhythm Section, a new exhibition of paintings by Calgary artist Mark Dicey explores the artist’s continued interest in abstraction and rhythms of everyday life. Having begun his dedicated studio and painting practice after graduating from the Alberta College of Art and Design, Dicey has established himself as an integral presence in the Calgary art world. His work is strongly rooted in abstraction while also being directed by what Dicey refers to as “ritualistic actions of the studio”: activities that are a part of the artist’s daily life. It is in these moments that Dicey finds rhythm, a constant in all our lives and one that plays a central role in his artistic process.

“The work selected for Rhythm Section was created over an intensive six month period, the end of which corresponded with the arrival and devastation of Covid-19. In the exhibition, the viewer is presented with a new and thrilling body of work but also a renewed place from which to look at the world, one populated by the real and imagined representations of life that Dicey brings forward.

Creating from his one car garage turned studio space, Dicey has taken up the role of the flâneur – observing, visually digesting and creating an understanding from his own unique vocabulary. For amongst the large washes of warm yellows, the shocks of greens, blues, pinks and the curving lines, the viewer will discover that the painter is a poet: his words brushstrokes, his line breaks blocks of colour.

Dicey as the poet of painting offers a place for reading our present from his rhythmic and colourful perspective.”

-Maeve Hanna

7 May – 27 June, 2020

Rhythm Section / Viewing Room Mark's Artist Page Double Insight / Studio Tour

Bill Rodgers / A Separate and Pleasant View

A Separate and Pleasant View is a series of works that explores aspects of the looking glass. More specifically, it considers the nature of reflection as image or an aid to image or object. The social history of private reflection, as in aspects of race, class, belief, and gender, is also part of this project and partially informs the process. Reflection is held in two categories according to writer Rebecca Shrum : reliable and unreliable. In The Looking Glass, mirrors and identity in early America, she defines reliable as a reflection in a glass surface with silver backing, and unreliable as to any other reflective surface. The former is known as a looking glass, the latter a mirror. Shrum’s historical distinction follows the development of reflection as a matter of technical advancement and evolving social norms.

6 March – 10 April, 2020

A Separate and Pleasant View / Viewing Room Double Insight / Studio Tour Bill's Artist Page

Kablusiak / Akunnirun Kuupak

This exhibition of photographs quintessentially shows Kablusiaks use of humour as a coping mechanism to address cultural displacement.

Kablusiak is an Inuvialuk artist and curator based in Mohkinstsis and holds a BFA in Drawing from the Alberta University of the Arts. Awards include the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Young Artist Prize (2017), Primary Colours Emerging Artist Award (2018) and most notably the 2019 Sobey Art Award short list, representing the Prairies and the North. A multi-disciplinary artist, they imbue a variety of mediums with their trademark ironic humour to address cultural displacement. The light-hearted nature of their practice extends gestures of empathy and solidarity; these interests invite a reconsideration of the perceptions of contemporary Indigeneity. Kablusiak, along with three Inuit curators, will be creating the inaugural exhibition of the new Inuit Art Centre in 2020. Recent exhibitions include akunnirun kuupak at the Art Gallery of Alberta, Among All These Tundras, Leonard & Bina Art Gallery, Montreal, and Qiniqtuaq at the Esker Foundation, Calgary. Kablusiak’s work can be found in the collections of the Indigenous Art Centre, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Art Gallery of Alberta, the Banff Centre for the Arts, and numerous other private collections.

30 January – February 29, 2020

Kablusiak's Artist Page

soft bodied oddities / Laura Findlay & Corri-Lynn Tetz

Featuring powerful new work by Laura Findlay & Corri-Lynn Tetz in the exhibition Soft Bodied Oddities. Findlay & Tetz each begin their process for the painted image form a different point of departure. Broadly, the exhibition explores the theme of empowerment: on the one hand through the re-embodiment of the female form within a painted context, while on the other the radical movement through understanding and learning about loss.

For Corri-Lynn Tetz, the paintings explore the empowerment of women in their own skin, owning their sexuality. The source imagery for this series originates with pornographic magazines from the 1980s. As the figures appear to dematerialize on the substrate of the canvas, they are imbued with a power as they reconfigure the gaze that was cast upon them.

Laura Findlay moves through a divergent form of empowerment. A personal narrative emerges through the viewer’s careful study of the work. Findlay examines an embedded sensibility concerning the radical side of loss through this series of portraits of flowers. Her work, the palette and aesthetic dark, comments subtly on this theme. The flowers pictured are presented as a bouquet of oddities: the pistils of a selection of flowers appear mutated, affected by what is called “Fascination” – a condition which “makes the flower tip elongated and ribbon like.” Visages appear and recede; flowers fall from the heavens or stand tall against a sun streaked sky. They do not act as we expect flowers to, as women do not act as society expects them to: mourning is not a private endeavour and this series welcomes this act into the public sphere.

Together the work in Soft Bodied Oddities demands that the viewer reconsider the roles women have been obliged to place themselves in throughout their lives.

22 November – 18 January, 2020

Laura Findlay's Artist Page Corri-Lynn Tetz's Artist Page

Billy McCarroll / AFTERMATH

“Aftermath” refers to the influence of the 1913 Armory Exhibition in New York of modern art from Europe. The phrase was taken from the two volume publication on American Art by Barbara Rose and the effect it would have on contemporary are in America. Both volumes were used in the making of the collages from text and images as a starting point for recent paintings. Through a series of layers, shapes and forms are added and subtracted and thru sanding and transparent applications reveal a step by step progress.

Billy J McCarroll is a senior Canadian painter who has lived and worked in Lethbridge Alberta since 1971. He was director of the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery from 1972 to 1982, and was a member among the first faculty in the Department of Fine Arts at the University. Billy has exhibited widely across Canada and the United States and his work can be found in collections of the University of Lethbridge, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, the Glenbow Museum, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Banff Centre for the Arts, & many more.

October 18 – November 16 / 2019

Billy McCarroll's Artist Page

Art Toronto

JARVIS HALL GALLERY is pleased to be presenting at the 20th edition of Art Toronto, Canada’s international fair for modern & contemporary art. Visit us in Booth C44 between October 25 – 27th, 2019 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Art Toronto Opening Night will take place on October 24th as a benefit for the Art Gallery of Ontario. Click here for tickets.

This year we will be showcasing as select group of work by a variety of our gallery artists; Robin Arseneault, Mark Dicey, Kablusiak, Tyler Los-Jones, Yvonne Mullock, Corri-Lynn Tetz, Larissa Tiggelers, & John Will. Be sure to stop by & visit us in our booth as a number of these artists will be onsite throughout the fair.

October 25 – 27, 2019

Sondra Meszaro / Camoufleurs

In this exhibition, Sondra Meszaros continues her ongoing exploration of counter-narratives of female sexuality and representation through an expanded practice of collage as a vehicle to slow down images. Reworking erotic photographic images from instructional manuals for lighting, drawing, stock erotica and 1950’s nature imagery, Meszaros uncovers dynamics of power and inequality in the history of image-making. Working with pages ripped from books, Meszaros dismantles, disrupts, and renegotiates original images by remounting, cutting, blocking, tearing, and hinging them together. This new work takes inspiration from the histories surrounding the Women’s Reserve Camouflage Corps which was a specialized unit of women artists formed during WW1 to WW2 that designed and tested camouflage techniques for the military. This group of radical women used their creativity and crafting skills to develop designs and disruptive patterns that mimicked the landscape to provide additional protection by bamboozling enemies. Meszaros explores her interpretation of how the rules of Dazzle Camouflage can be used as a technique to visually confuse through weird shapes, repetitive patterns, and restrained use of black and white.

September 6 – October 5, 2019

Sondra Meszaro's Artist Page

together but apart / Summer Group Exhibition

together but apart highlights a number of new works by a variety of artists JHG has the privilege to work with. Though the work in this exhibition is visually harmonious, it shows a diversity of creative choices conceptually, in both form and content. This is our presentation of current themes being explored by this array of artists we think you should know; Robin Arseneault, Laura Findlay, Larissa Tiggelers, Patrick Dunford, Janine Hall, Corri-Lynn Tetz, Mark Dicey, Rachel MacFarlane, Jeff Nachtigall, Marigold Santos, Yvonne Mullock, John Will & more.

July 26 – August 31, 2019

Martin Bennett / WHEN I CAN NO LONGER LAY WASTE TO WHAT IS ALREADY RUINED: PART ONE – THESE THINGS HAPPEN

This is Martin’s first solo exhibition in Calgary since January 2011. Therefore we hope you will join us in celebrating this evening & this pivotal body of work. A special thank you to Martin for his contribution of the booklet & poster that is to accompany this exhibition.

May 3 – June 15, 2019

Martin Bennett's Artist Page

the softest hard / Group Show

Including works by Amanda McCavour / Yvonne Mullock / Marigold Santos

March 29 – April 27, 2019

Also, Again, Too / Group Show

Including works by Robin Arseneault / Mark Dicey / Larissa Tiggelers / John Will / Tyler Los-Jones / Patrick Dunford / Corri-Lynn Tetz / Bill Rodgers / Sondra Meszaros / Rachel MacFarlane & more

March 2 – 23, 2019