Dancing with Tantalus exhibition, School of Art Gallery, 2021. Image courtesy of School of Art Gallery.
The School of Art Gallery re-opens by appointment
The School of Art Gallery is excited to announce the gallery is now open to the public!
Visits are by appointment only.
Current gallery hours are Monday–Friday, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
- Visitors must wear a 3-ply mask and maintain physical distancing in all spaces.
- Hand sanitizing stations have been placed at the entrance of the gallery.
- Please self-assess your health before visiting the gallery. Are you exhibiting any symptoms of COVID-19 (cough, difficulty breathing, headache, body aches, sore throat, loss of taste and smell, fever, and chills)? Have you been in contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19? If you are exhibiting any of these symptoms or have been exposed, please do not visit the gallery and reschedule for a later date.
- Please be respectful of our staff and each other. We are here to ensure a safe space for everyone.
- Review all UM COVID-19 protocols and recovery plan here.
To book an appointment, contact:
C.W. Brooks, SoA Gallery Registrar/Preparator at 204-474-8980 or C.W.Brooks@umanitoba.ca.
Thank you!
On Display:
Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill, “Bundle #4” (detail), 2014, blanket, paint, rope, tobacco.
Dancing with Tantalus
Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill, Katie Lyle, and Ella Dawn McGeough
Curated by Lillian O’Brien Davis
January 21 to March 13, 2021
Contact is a many layered metaphor; both touch and its absence have consequences that can extend indefinitely. I look at my hands. They feel huge, like mitts that will cover, crush, or make a mess. I am frightened that the marks they make will last too long, be too big, cause unpredictable outcomes. When I do make contact, the effects are not immediate—this delay temporarily alleviates my fears. However, all marks, all instances of contact, eventually appear. While contact may signal a crisis, its lack also torments, like the aching feeling when something lies just out of grasp.
Consider the Greek myth of Tantalus, who stole ambrosia, nectar, and the gods’ secrets of immortality for his people. As punishment for his crime, Tantalus was made to stand in a clear pool where water receded before he could drink, underneath trees laden with fruit that forever escaped his grasp. Touching leaves traces, often more lasting than originally imagined, but the absence of touch builds both anticipation and desire.
Featuring work by Ella Dawn McGeough, Katie Lyle and Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill, Dancing with Tantalus engages qualities of contact—between people, surfaces, and objects—to examine haptic intimacy and explore the causal relationship between artworks and the many structures that make contact with them—physically, intellectually, emotionally, institutionally, and historically.
READ – Exhibition essay: Clean Hands by Lillian O’Brien Davis, curator.
Jon Sasaki, A Rest, 2018, video, 10:21. Adapted from a choreographed solo performed by James Phillips commissioned by Toronto Dance Theatre, 2016 and produced for video with the assistance of the Art Museum, University of Toronto. Cinematography: Lee Henderson. Image: courtesy of the artist.
Jon Sasaki: A Rest
Curated by Blair Fornwald, Director/Curator
January 21 to March 13, 2021
This split-screen video pairs archival images of Depression-era dance marathon competitors who have fallen asleep, or are resting in the arms of their partners with footage of solo contemporary dancer James Phillips, who attempts to hold the resting partner’s poses without anyone to lean on. Phillips’ body strains to hold these unsupported resting poses and finally collapses. Although Sasaki’s work predates the COVID-19 pandemic, it accrues additional poignancy and meaning when viewed through the inevitable lens of the current health and economic crisis. As we collectively struggle to adapt to these ever-changing and extraordinary circumstances, and as so many of us ache for community and human contact, we might ask ourselves: who supports us? Who are we supporting? And how long can we keep going?
Jon Sasaki is a Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist who explores many concurrent streams of inquiry that often intertwine in surprising ways. Frequently charting territory between logic and absurdity, his practice brings performance, video, object and installation into a framework where expectation and outcome rarely align. His work has been exhibited throughout Canada and internationally. He is represented by Clint Roenisch Gallery in Toronto.
Upcoming – Virtual Exhibition:
PAWS, Animal Crossing: New Horizons Screenshot, designed by Battleax Bunny
PAWS: Protest, Activism, Whimsy and Self Care in Animal Crossing
Kayelynn Kennedy, Adelle Lin, and Hoku Kanoe Schurz
Curated by Ciel Noel
Designed by Battleax Bunny
March 5 to May 7, 2021
Online via Animal Crossing
During a chaotic and unpredictable time, many people have turned to the Nintendo Game Animal Crossing: New Horizons as a haven. Through decorating, forming relationships with animal residents, and custom designing outfits, Animal Crossing islands have been used to gather, share, inspire, and restore. They are refuges during a deadly pandemic, but they have also become the battlegrounds for activists who have put their lives on the line. Surprising many, this charming game has become the catalyst for government censorship, charity drives, political campaigning, and growing quiet warnings to keep politics “out of the game”.
From Hong Kong to Black Lives Matter to razor blades and mayonnaise, the creative and complex Animal Crossing: New Horizon community grapples with questions every person who has fought for a cause has to ask themselves: when do I choose activism and when do I choose self-care?
Driven by the tension between safety and courage, PAWS looks at how a slow, sweet game of social relationships, crafting, and exploration became the stage for global tensions and tensions of the heart.
About School of Art Gallery
The School of Art Gallery has been serving the School of Art, the University of Manitoba, and broader communities since it was established in 1965 as Gallery One One One. Since 2012, it has been prominently situated as the physical and philosophical gateway to the ARTlab, a state-of-the-art facility which conceptually frames the Gallery as a site of both research and presentation.
Exhibitions and collecting activities comprise the core of the School of Art Gallery’s activities, with outreach programming and publishing emanating from, and supporting exhibition research and collection development. Through its work, the Gallery aims to represent a diverse range of practices and perspectives, contextualizing contemporary and historical work to facilitate critical engagement with art and its many discourses. The School of Art Gallery supports the mission of the School by fostering creativity, supporting research, and encouraging critical thinking among undergraduate and graduate students alike.
The School of Art Gallery is generously supported by the University of Manitoba, the School of Art’s faculty and staff, national and provincial funding agencies, donors, and volunteers.
School of Art Gallery
255 ARTlab
180 Dafoe Road
Winnipeg, MB, R3T2N2
umanitoba.ca/schools/art/gallery
For hi-res images and other press inquiries, please contact: School of Art Communications and Events Coordinator Cailyn Harrison, cailyn.harrison@umanitoba.ca.
The University of Manitoba campuses are located on original lands of Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.
We respect the Treaties that were made on these territories, we acknowledge the harms and mistakes of the past, and we dedicate ourselves to move forward in partnership with Indigenous communities in a spirit of reconciliation and collaboration.