The McMaster Museum of Art reopens this winter with the promise of four exciting new exhibitions rooted in our local and campus community. Celebrate these familiar faces and their quintessential works at the Opening Reception event on Thursday, January 26th, 5:30 – 8:30 PM.

Salients: Chris Myhr

December 20, 2022 – March 24, 2023

Salients is a solo exhibition of work by Hamilton-based artist and researcher Chris Myhr. The exhibition collects several bodies of work that encapsulate explorations over the last decade into the complex intersection of water, the ecosystem, and materiality. Using photography, audio, and methodologies akin to scientific research, the artist investigates artifacts and sediment sourced from the Atlantic Ocean, the Athabasca River, and Lakes Erie and Ontario. The installation is a contemplative rumination on the tendency of matter to persist over time, and the ways in which humanity’s indelible imprint on aquatic ecosystems blurs delineations between past, present, and future.

Fugue

January 10 – March 24, 2023

Artists: Shake-n-Make (Claudia B. Manley and Liss Platt) in collaboration with Adriana Kuiper

Fugue is a sculptural installation that materializes the artists’ shared and individual experiences of living through the COVID-19 global pandemic. Comprised of an 18’ x 6’ quilt top and photo-collages with embedded flash fiction and embodying the relentless duration and repetitious labour of the pandemic, Fugue invites audiences to reflect on the landscape of their own pandemic experience and on the ways they comforted themselves through this challenging time.

The Contemporaries: This Must Be The Place

January 17 – April 6, 2023

Artists: Ferdinando Bilanzola (1956-2001), Judi Burgess, Raffaele Caterini, Paul Cvetich, John Kinsella, Janice Kovar, Paul Ropel-Morski and Lisa Wöhrle are The Contemporaries.

All McMaster University art graduates, they formed the artist collective “The Contemporaries” in the late 1980s and exhibited extensively in the Hamilton region until the mid 90s. The Contemporaries: This Must Be The Place brings the artists back together in an exhibition that focuses on their current practices, while also taking a look back at the early days. The connections that drew The Contemporaries together – deep ties of friendship, art and their shared history with McMaster and Hamilton – have remained intact throughout the years.

The Haunted Scanner

January 17 – April 6, 2023

Artists: Sally McKay and Von Bark

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanners are high-tech medical instruments that use nuclear physics to aid in medical diagnosis and neuroscientific research. MRI scanners manipulate the tissues of subjects’ brains at the subatomic level to reveal anatomical structures or, as in the case of FMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging), they map activity taking place in selected regions of the brain. The Haunted Scanner, however, is made of chipboard, wood scraps, and consumer electronics. It’s weather-beaten and forlorn, and yet, it still seems to function, in a way. It can’t quite scan your brain, but maybe it can offer glimpses into some kind of murky inner world.

JOIN US

Opening Reception: Thursday, January 26th, 5:30 – 8:30 PM

Salients: Chris Myhr Artist Talk: Thursday, February 9th, 12:30 – 1:20 PM

The Contemporaries: This Must Be The Place Artist Talk: Wednesday, February 15th, 12:30 – 1:20 PM

Fugue Artist Talk: Thursday, March 2^nd, 12:30 – 1:20 PM

The Haunted Scanner Talk: Wednesday, March 15^th, 12:30 – 1:20 PM