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CBC
08-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
One of Halifax's biggest art world talents finally gets their homecoming
It took a spot on the shortlist of Canada's biggest prize in visual art — and an international-headline-grabbing wildfire in Arizona — for Séamus Gallagher to finally get the hometown show they deserve. Originally from Moncton, but based in Halifax since the nascent days of their career, the self-described media artist is one of the biggest names in today's national visual arts scene — and has the resume to back it up. But when their show OH BABY opens at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia this month, it'll be the first time Halifax has hosted a solo exhibition of Gallagher's works since they mounted a one-week student show at NSCAD University. Due to Gallagher's stature, it feels fitting that their overdue hometown debut will be held at Atlantic Canada's largest gallery. They have already exhibited at the likes of Montreal's McCord Stewart Museum and MOCA Toronto. In their NSCAD University days, Gallagher won the school's prestigious Starfish Student Art Award for outstanding work. That's all before they landed on the Sobey Art Award shortlist in 2023 — a move that cemented their status as one of the most need-to-know names in Canadian art today. "People sort of address me as, like, 'Sobey Finalist' when introducing me, which is a funny little thing — my last name is Sobey Finalist," Gallagher says with a laugh. Though Gallagher's career has been on the up and up since its early days, the artist is fascinated with failure. "I am always interested in … what can come out of a sincere attempt of reaching some sort of form of visual language and just failing so spectacularly that something new is created." In the case of OH BABY, failure was a jumping-off point, where the "something new" that Gallagher references is a dream world (or a nightmare). The show's original inspiration — that headline-grabbing wildfire — was the accidental result of a 2017 gender reveal in Arizona. The speculative fiction aspect of the show comes into play here: Instead of being assigned a gender at birth, OH BABY imagines what it could mean to have a forest fire assigned at birth, while the climate continues to collapse. The wildfire that spawned OH BABY isn't an anomaly. "Other gender reveal parties have caused plane crashes and waterfalls being poisoned," Gallagher says, noting that destruction of the natural world at these gatherings has become a trend within itself. "Part of this exhibition includes some audio of an interview I did back in October with the inventor of gender reveal parties, who has since gone on record [that he regrets] starting the trend. But I wanted to have this origin, starting point, and map out how it went from this very quaint, little cake celebration to just gaudy explosions," says Gallagher. "I didn't want to leave it at mocking this trend, but sort of examining the starting point and how it got to where it is — and where it might be in the future." Of course, like all Gallagher shows, the conversation doesn't stop there. "The works in OH BABY draw connections between issues and concerns around gender, the environment and climate change, borders and technologies, to name some," says AGNS chief curator David Diviney, giving a list of exhibit themes that could double as newspaper subheadings. "I couldn't think of a more timely conversation." Diviney says he's been following Gallagher's work since 2018. "Since their days at NSCAD University, I've always marvelled at Séamus's unique ability to take a wide range of complex ideas and visual elements and bring them together in such a seamless way." Diviney sees OH BABY as Gallagher doubling down on what they do best. The show overflows with media that feels traditional to a gallery space — like photography, sculpture and video — as well as media that skews decidedly outsider-y, like drag and the aforementioned speculative fiction. But using unexpected art forms isn't the only way a Gallagher show is unique. There's also Gallagher's love of video game aesthetics — informing how many of the works in OH BABY look — and the artist's love of camp,which chafes against gallery convention. "I think on a visual level, camp is often quite gaudy [and] over-the-top, which are things that I'm very partial to," they say. "I always see it as this very sincere and scrappy attempt of an unattainable level of glamour. And through this failed attempt, there's a new visual language that comes out." It feels like a testament to Gallagher that, despite the length of time it takes to get an art exhibition from concept to reality — and despite the time it's taken to gain a national reputation and cement a hometown show — these inspirations have remained topical. "It's just been like a year of emails and JPEGs and different PDFs," says Gallagher, describing the path to OH BABY's opening as they begin the show's installation in the AGNS. "Bringing it all together physically into the space, it feels really exciting." The winding road home and the untangling of OH BABY's ideas feel like an equal unfurling. The show is "this messy carrier bag of various emotional tones and narratives and a few different stories," Gallager says. "I am trying to map them all out and see how they connect — and hopefully the audience will as well."
CBC
16-02-2025
- Health
- CBC
Honey, she blew up the cells: Electron microscopes harnessed for show now on display in P.E.I.
At first glance, some of Kim Morgan's artwork looks like a fantastical take on a science textbook. There are large black-and-white photographs of blood cells. An 11-foot long sculpture of a skin flake flutters gently. An enormous sphere, like a beach ball, has its surface printed with an abstract pattern that turns out to be magnified belly button lint. All were created using images generated by scanning electron microscopy, abbreviated as SEM. "Technology enables us to see things that we couldn't see before... That's an opportunity to connect us to our bodies, to expand our knowledge about science and medicine and each other," said Morgan, a visual artist and professor at NSCAD University in Halifax. "That's what ideally, I hope, people will get from this exhibition." The exhibition Blood and Breath, Skin and Dust, currently up at the Confederation Centre of the Arts in Charlottetown, captures a sense of extraterrestrial wonder centred within the human body. "When I looked directly underneath the microscope, it almost reminded me of the universe," Morgan said. I thought, I wonder if anybody else had seen blood like this? — Visual artist Kim Morgan Indeed, a galaxy made up of blood cells appears in the exhibition. Other portraits of blood cells appear almost like "creatures I might see in the ocean," said Morgan, who likened other cell images to flowers or stones. "I thought, I wonder if anybody else had seen blood like this? I mean, the average person," she said. From illness to art The leap from laboratory to gallery began more than a decade ago, when Morgan's mother was diagnosed with Stage 4 ovarian cancer. Morgan had used the human body in her art practice before, but the maze of medical appointments, blood transfusions and other procedures her mother went through sparked something in the artist's brain. "We had quite a dynamic relationship and I was wondering, could I see something about our relationship through, you know, blood ties, by looking at blood underneath the microscope," Morgan said. These questions led Morgan, who had no lab experience, to try to find a place where she could look at her own blood under a microscope. She ended up finding a scientific partner in Dalhousie University's medical school, where she participated in an artist-in-residence program and began learning how to use electron microscopes in 2014-15. Her first scans were of her own blood, before she moved on to samples from volunteers. While Morgan plays with size and shape — taking the scans and turning them into inflatable objects or giant, wall-covering images — she doesn't alter or augment what the microscope has magnified. "I have kept the scientific integrity. I haven't changed the data of the scans. That was also very important to me in this project," Morgan said. She did scan some of her mother's blood, although her mother passed away before getting to see it turned into art. "They were different than other blood cells. You know, they looked different to me," she said. "[They] reminded me of our relationship." Morgan also scanned a sample of her mother's ashes, creating an inflated sculpture she has floated through the atrium of Dalhousie's Killam Memorial Library — in part as a tribute to her mother, who was a scientist and researcher. "She would be very supportive and I think she would find it quite fun," she said. While blood and body particles may make some people squeamish, Morgan wants her magnified images to make viewers lean in and reconsider their perceptions. "I'm hoping that through the art, my art, people will shift their ideas about blood; that they will not be repulsed but curious," she said. Morgan's show, previously exhibited in St. John's and Halifax, is on display in Charlottetown until May 2.
