Contemporary Canadian art exhibition opens at Museum

[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/goodwin.jpg” caption=”Betty Goodwin, The Colour of White, 2000, oil stick, charcoal and graphite on translucent mylar film; tarpaulin and rope, 155.6 x 179 cm. Collection of McMaster University.”]Significant additions to the University's growing collection of contemporary Canadian art will be displayed at the McMaster Museum of Art from May 8 to June 14, including works by five Canadian artists: John Abrams, Ted Bieler, Ed Burtynsky, Betty Goodwin and Angela Grauerholz. The exhibition includes paintings, prints and photographs.

Toronto-based painter John Abrams (b. 1959) began exhibiting in 1983 and has shown extensively in Canada, including a 2008 exhibition at the McMaster Museum of Art and the United States. Abrams donated a triptych from his Canadian History Trilogy to McMaster. The other two works in the series reside in the collections of the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

His work is in the public collections of the O'Hare Airport, the National Gallery of Canada, The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, The Agnes Etherington Art Centre and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, among others, and in numerous private national and international collections.

Ted Bieler, (b. 1938) sculptor and professor emeritus, Department of Visual Arts, York University, has extensive exhibition credits throughout North America. His commissioned works include sculptures for Expo '67 in Montreal and for public spaces throughout Ontario, notably Tetra in Kingston, and Canyons in the Wilson subway station and Triad on Front Street at University Avenue in Toronto.

His monumental outdoor sculpture Wave Breaking can be seen on the grounds of the Canadian chancery building in Tokyo. His most recent commission, Tower Song, is installed at the Windsor Sculpture Garden.

Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky (b. 1955) has made it his life's work to document humanity's impact on the planet. His riveting photographs, as beautiful as they are horrifying, capture views of the Earth — from mountains of tires to rivers of bright orange waste from a nickel mine — altered by mankind.

Burtynsky's photographs are included in the collections of many major museums, including Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Betty Goodwin (b. 1923, Montreal) is a renowned Canadian printmaker, sculptor, painter and installation artist who tends to work in series. She began her career as a visual artist in the late 1940s and began to exhibit her work in the early 1960s.

Concerned with the human condition, Goodwin's art resonates with the importance of our human ties and common experience. The subject matter of her works revolve around the human body. Goodwin was chosen to represent Canada at the Venice Biennial in 1995 and has had major solo exhibitions at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.

Her work has been acknowledged by a multitude of prizes, such as the Prix Paul-Emile Borduas by the Government of Quebec in 1986, the Gershon Iskowitz Prize in 1995 and the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2003.

The Montreal photographer Angela Grauerholz (b. 1952) has had a long and distinguished career. Her focus in recent works, including the M.M.A. 2008 acquisition purchased through the generous assistance of the Walter & Duncan Gordon Foundation, is the dynamics of objects within their surroundings: the pattern of a drape matching nearby wallpaper, the ambiguous silhouette of touching chairs, the arrangement of tables in a room.

She is a co-founder of Artexte, a contemporary art information centre located in Montreal and has had numerous international solo exhibitions. She has also participated in such international events as the Biennale de Montreal in 2002, Carnegie International in Pittsburgh in 1995, Documenta IX in Kassel in 1992 and the Biennale of Sydney in 1990.