Visual Arts News - Spring 2025

In this issue

Our first issue of 2025 takes readers down memory lane with Hallie Watson’s Farm Walk to remember simpler times of being on the land, and also explores a refashioned sense of rural nostalgia with TRUCK Art Collective, which has produces work highlighting their love of blue-collared aesthetics and tailgating. The work goes deeper; it is about class-consciousness through embodied truck-culture drag.
An illustrated story by Brandon Hicks about the colourful Église Sainte-Cécile, the “Candy Church” on New Brunswick’s Lamėque Island, and a national touring exhibition of Prince Edward Island’s Erica Rutherford’s: Her Lives and Works, honouring the late transgender artist whose work explores themes of home, persona and gender.
Graeme Patterson’s Strange Birds, at the Dalhousie Art Gallery, explores eco-anxiety, a chronic fear of environmental doom. Instead of dwelling on extreme weather events, the artist has created two protagonists, the heron and the Space Disco starlings for viewers to engage with the fears.
In lapjiw Mikmite’lmulten – We will always remember, an exhibition at St.FX Art Gallery that features photos, artworks, artifacts, and videos by various artists remembering the life of Donald Marshall Jr., a Mi’kmaq man from Membertou First Nation who was wrongfully convicted of murder, a crime he didn’t commit.
Curator Mark V. Campbell, a DJ, scholar, and founder of Northside Hip-Hop Archive, brings together fourteen artists from across Canada to explore hip hop in Still Tho, a historical response to erasure and displacement.
In Ktaqmkuk, (Newfoundland), joyfulness and imagination are central to a way of life. Visiting Tekweywinen tel weljesultiek (be with us in our joy), curated by Jenelle Duval, at the Rooms Art Gallery in St. John’s, and a visit to Fogo Island’s biannual gathering Shore Time brought a slew of artists, writers, ecologists, and visionaries to envision possible futures on an island off an island, a place far away from faraway.

Visual Arts News Magazine Description:

Visual Arts News is dedicated to visual art in Atlantic Canada; every issue includes engaging exhibition reviews, artist profiles and in-depth features on issues facing art professionals across the province. As one of the oldest publications in Atlantic Canada, it is a well-trusted source of information for readers with a passion for its thriving visual arts scene. Written in a clear and sophisticated style by some of the most talented arts writers, Visual Arts News reflects the diversity of from our geographic and cultural communities.