Retelling Anne
October 15, 2008 to February 1, 2009
The exhibition Retelling Anne is a contemporary (re)interpretation by six women artists in response to Lucy Maud Montgomery’s remarkable book Anne of Green Gables. The artists—Margaret Flood, Emily Gove, Bonnie Lewis, Amanda McCavour, Sasha Pierce, and Cybèle
Young—engage and challenge narrative through a range of media including installation, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, textile, and moving image. Retelling Anne is curated by Dawn Owen and presented by the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre in conversation with Searching for Home: The Lives of Lucy Maud
Montgomery. Retelling Anne ignites the tension between the imagined and the real posited in the Searching for Home exhibition.
Retelling Anne is inspired by, and takes as its point of departure, Montgomery’s best known coming-of-age story. Comprising new and recent work, the exhibition brings together for the first time the work of these six artists. Retelling Anne invited the artists to engage and react against visual narrative, in dialogue with one another, to speak back to and contemporize Montgomery’s voice.
Guelph artist Margaret Flood creates sculpture, installation, and book works. She is an MFA candidate at the University of Guelph. Photographer Emily Gove was the National Winner of the 2006 BMO Financial Group 1st Art! invitational competition. She is currently an MFA candidate at York University (Toronto). Painter Bonnie Lewis had a background in early childhood education and psychology before attending the Ontario College of Art. Lewis is represented by the
Edward Day Gallery in Toronto. Textile artist Amanda McCavour is an artist-in-residence at the Harbourfront Centre. Her life-size figure drawings, woven from thread and mounted to the wall with straight pins, have been shown in various solo and group shows. Guelph-born painter Sasha Pierce studied at the University of Guelph (BA) and at the University of Waterloo (MFA). She is represented by Greener Pastures Contemporary Art (Toronto). Sculptor/printmaker Cybèle Young is represented by Edward Day Gallery and Open Studio (Toronto), Newzones Gallery of Contemporary Art (Calgary), Gallery Jones (Vancouver), Forum Gallery
(NY), Bentley Gallery (Phoenix), and Rebecca Hossack Gallery (London, England).
Opening Reception: Friday, October 24 at 7 pm
Images:
Top: Cybèle Young, We haven’t been there before, 2005 (Japanese paper, framed)
Centre: Bonnie Lewis, Nasty Girls (Pearl), 1999 (mixed media)
Bottom: Sasha Pierce, Deckle Edge, 2007 (oil on canvas)