MEM Inauguration 2023

MEM – Center of Montreal Memories

September 28, 2023

The City of Montreal inaugurated the brand new MEM – Center des memories montrealaises, a museum dedicated to Montreal.

The new MEM continues the activities of the Montreal History Center (CHM) in an entirely new building in the heart of the Montreal's Quartier des spectacles, at the corner of Saint-Laurent Boulevard and Sainte-Catherine Street with a new address 1210 Blvd Saint-Laurent.

MEM's new 21,603 ft2 (2,007 m2) space highlights the riches and unique character of Montreal of yesterday and today. It preserves and displays many communities' stories that made it possible to write the great history of the city. Those individual stories preserved by the Montreal's many various communities were transformed by the museum along with the direct Montreal's inhabitants collaboration into audio and visual presentations. Visitors will discover previously untold stories, surprising testimonies, emblematic artifacts and everyday objects used in the past.

The MEM is inaugurating its new space in which the visitors will be able to find:

• Free public spaces which allow the discovery or rediscovery of the city's identity elements;
• A temporary exhibition: Détours - Urban encounters, produced in collaboration with URBANIA;
• A temporary (displayed for 3 months) citizen exhibition: Celebrating Le Chaînon: 90 years of dedication to women, created with the Le Chaînon Foundation;
• A cabaret offering a varied program;
• A boutique café specializing in the sale of products made in Montreal;
• Cultural activities, some of which take place outside the walls, such as citizen bicycles and the Dialogue with Chinatown exhibition;
• Educational activities for young people of all ages;
• Original and contemporary rental spaces;
• Spectacular views of the city.

The permanent Montreal exhibition will be inaugurated at a later date. It will explore the city's multiple identities through the eyes and words of its citizens, while highlighting Montreal's diversity.

Unusual spaces and rich programming

The MEM's public spaces are directly inspired by the nomenclature of everyday urban places, with among others a "public square", a "terrace", an "alley" and a "belvedere" with a spectacular view of the Esplanade Tranquille. Accessible free of charge, starting on October 6, 2023 and according to MEM opening hours, they will welcome all visitors.

However, the upcoming permanent exhibitions will require the purchase of a ticket.

The MEM is aimed at the entire Montreal population interested in discovering Montreal from various angles. The MEM's cultural programming celebrates the city, citizen participation and current events, while retaining a human character. Educational programs will be offered to primary and secondary school students to develop their sensitivity to openness and diversity and equip them to become curious about their city, its issues and its history. Tourists and other people passing through the metropolis will also be able to discover all in one place several identity features specific to Montreal.

A work of public art

Created by the artist Raphaëlle de Groot at the end of a participatory process that involved more than 350 people, the sculptural work inaugurated at the MEM, The constellations of the hippocampus (See two photos just above), is inspired by the functioning of memory. Its form evokes the mission of the museum as an organ contributing to a circuit of memory connected to the city and the people who inhabit it. It is installed in the MEM Cabaret and will be the subject of mediation activities in the years to come. As a part of the municipal public art collection, the installation was created with financial support from the Government of Quebec and the City of Montreal, as part of the Montreal Cultural Development Agreement.

MEM is an accessible and inclusive museum.

The spaces and contents of the MEM were developed with citizen accessibility and inclusion committees in order to allow as many people as possible to experience the museum.

MEM staff are trained to welcome all visitors, according to their specific needs.

Quotes

Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante:

“I am very proud to inaugurate the MEM – Montreal Memories Centre, which will offer the population and visitors an exceptional showcase to tell the history of the metropolis, in the heart of the Quartier des spectacles. Montreal is a city rich in its diversity, its excitement and its inhabitants, who directly contributed to the development of the project. It is a museum that will celebrate our history and that will always remain connected to the aspirations of the population.”

Ericka Alneus, the head of culture and heritage within the executive committee:

“It is with pleasure that I welcome this brand new addition to Montreal’s museums, which will quickly become an emblematic place in our metropolis. The MEM is a museum and civic space that celebrates Montrealers of yesterday and today by highlighting memories and testimonies. The institution collaborates with multiple passionate and committed citizen voices, with the aim of developing a cultural project reflecting the diverse realities of Montreal. The beauty of the place and the richness of the exhibitions will undoubtedly charm those who live in the city as much as the tourists and visitors who pass through.” 

 

To discover MEM and its programming click here. 

Click on Images to enlarge them.

All photos @ Nadia Slejskova

For this article's dedicated internet address, click on the title above the very first photo.

McCord Stewart 2023: Séamus Gallagher-MOMENTA

Mother Memory Cellophane by Séamus Gallagher

MOMENTA Biennale de l’image - 18th Edition

Masquerades: Drawn to Metamorphosis

A phantasmagoric theatre haunted by past visions of the future

September 8, 2023 - February 4, 2024

This Séamus Gallagher's MOMENTA installation was inspired by an event that took place at the 1939 New York World’s Fair entitled “World of Tomorrow" where DuPont company presented it's "Wonder World of Chemistry" exhibit with  a specific emphasis on introducing their new product nylon to the public. Their major attraction was a model called "Miss Chemistry" who wore nylon hosiery and demonstrated its durability and elasticity to the Fair's attendance.

With this installation, Séamus Gallagher presents an imagined phantasmagoric theatre that includes a video projection and a series of five lenticular photographs with the Miss Chemistry theme weaving through his entire work. His Miss Chemistry is a plastic embodiment of a woman that reflects the omnipresence of synthetic materials in our contemporary lives and projects that into the future.

Personifying this allegory, which symbolizes both stereotypical femininity and the period’s synthetic material culture, Séamus Gallagher invites the audience to reflect on this plastic embodiment of the woman of the future and the omnipresence of synthetic materials in our contemporary lives.

Séamus Gallagher explains:

“As microplastics become increasingly prominent in our body, the borders of ourselves and these materials get a bit looser, similar to how Miss Chemistry was viewed as the plastic woman of the future. We’re all a bit of Miss Chemistry now, so I wanted to use these ideas as a foundation for the show. In performing as this ghost of Miss Chemistry for the exhibition, I wanted to think about the ways in which we’re all haunted by these old futures of the past, and what responsibilities we might have to these ghosts.”

The year after the 1939 World’s Fair, a survey ranked Mother, Memory and Cellophane as the most beautiful words in the English language. In his work, Séamus Gallagher appropriates these words to create a mashup of stereotypical femininity and synthetic material culture in a drag reincarnation of Miss Chemistry—or, more specifically, her ghost.

Séamus Gallagher’s work explores the transformation of identities through the interweaving of physical, virtual and online worlds. He designs 3D models and materializes them in paper. The artist creates costumes and sets, as extravagant as precarious, and translates them into paper templates. 

Séamus Gallagher is a lens-based artist currently living in Kjipuktuk/Halifax, Nova Scotia. His work has been shown at the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, the Portrait Gallery of Canada, and the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, among others. He is a recipient of the Scotiabank 2022 New Generation Photography Award, the 2022 Nova Scotia Emerging Artist Recognition Award, and the 2019 BMO 1st Art Award, and a finalist for the 2023 Sobey Arts Award.

Click on Images to enlarge them

All photos @ Nadia Slejskova

For more information about current exhibitions and special evens associated with this exhibition, visit the McCord Stewart Museum website.

For this article's dedicated internet address, click on the title above the very first photo.

MMFA 2023: THE POP OF LIFE!

 

THE POP OF LIFE!
Pop Art in the Collection of the MMFA

August 31, 2023 - March 24, 2024

Exhibition Poe Pop of Life! is a rotational presentation of some 70 artworks from the Museum's collection – installations, works on paper, paintings, sculptures and prized decorative arts and design pieces – all of which are associated with this movement that had a commanding presence in the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing inspiration from popular culture and mass media, Pop art set in motion a veritable revolution that, to this day, challenges reified notions of what art can be.

The movement is characterized by bright colours, linearity, flatness, cropping, text, series and multiples, the Pop style explicitly evokes, among other things, the mass production associated with consumer culture. The infiltration of commercialism, technology and the media into the urban landscape is further reflected in Pop art's far-reaching subject matter, which encompasses everyday objects, brand-name products, current events, celebrities and a wide array of female archetypes, including comic-book heroines and housewives.

Replete with the formal language of advertising and comic books, the exhibited works lay out various themes central to Pop art, such as consumerism, the sexual objectification of women's bodies, the space age, a fascination with science and technology, an explosion of new materials designed for mass consumption (in particular, plastic) and political engagement in the time of the Vietnam War and Quebec's Quiet Revolution.

The exhibition brings together works that have rarely or never been shown as well as iconic pieces from the Museum's collection, made by some 30 artists and designers from Canada (Pierre Ayot, Gilles Boisvert, Chantal duPont, Michel Leclair, Guy Montpetit, Joyce Wieland), North America (Félix Beltrán, David Gilhooly, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann) and Europe (Guido Drocco, Peter Klasen, Sue Palmer, Verner Panton, Eduardo Paolozzi, Pierre Paulin, Eddie Squires), to name but a few.

Mary-Dailey Desmarais, Chief Curator of the MMFA, stated: 

"Since its presentation of the exhibition Eleven Pop Artists: The New Image in 1966, the Museum has continued to exhibit and acquire works by artists who shaped this movement. The themes they depict still resonate today. Presented this fall in juxtaposition with the major exhibition Marisol: A Retrospective, which is devoted to a little-known icon of Pop art, The Pop of Life! highlights a selection of bold and seductive works from our vast collection."

Iris Amizlev, Curator – Community Engagement and Projects, MMFA, and curator of the exhibition, explains:

"This exhibition offers depictions laced with humour and critical commentary of the real and sometimes frivolous world, alongside works reflecting the social, historical and political events that defined the 1950s to the 1970s."

Click on images to enlarge them.

All photos @ Nadia Slejskova

For this article's dedicated internet address, click on the title above the very first photo.

Visit the the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts website to check on the opening hours and to purchase your ticket online.

World Press Photo 2023

The World Press Photo 2023

Montreal 16th Edition

August 30 - October 15, 2023

The World Press Photo Montreal exhibition returns to Bonsecours Market with a  2 weeks extension. After the success of its 15th edition last year, with a significant increase in attendance, the team has decided to offer the public a two-week extension to improve the visiting experience and to welcome new visitors and school groups in October.

Presented in Montreal since 2005, the World Press Photo Montreal exhibition is one of the most popular worldwide.

Founded in 1955, the World Press Photo Foundation is an independent, non-profit organization with its headquarters in Amsterdam. The foundation is committed to supporting and advancing high standards of photojournalism and documentary storytelling worldwide. Each year, the exhibition travels to more than 100 cities in 45 countries and is seen by more than 4 million visitors. The World Press Photo receives support from the Dutch Postcode Lottery and PwC (Pricewaterhouse Coopers). The World Press Photo Montreal exhibition receives support from ICI RDI, La Presse, and the SDC Vieux-Montréal.

Often compared to the Oscars of photography, the World Press Photo is the most prestigious international contest of professional photography. This year’s prize winning photographs were selected through nearly 60,000 submissions by 3,752 photojournalists hailing from 127 countries.

Each of these stories draws attention to some of the most pressing issues facing the world today – from the devastating documentation of the war in Ukraine and historic protests in Iran, to the realities in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, and the many faces of the climate crisis in countries ranging from Morocco to Australia to Peru to Kazakhstan.

An independent jury of regional and global experts selected the regional entries for 2023. Divided into four categories (Singles, Stories, Long-Term Projects, and Open Format), the prize-winning photographs will be announced in Amsterdam on April 20.

Twenty-four winners and six honorable mentions cover stories from the front lines of conflict, culture, identity, migration, memories of lost past and glimpses of near and distant futures.

The exhibition also brings into focus the issues of sustainable energy and various ecologically feasible means of producing it. 

And it also also focuses on such issues as the year-round sustainable and non-polluting food production.

The second floor of the exhibition features works by the local photographers which are quite remarkable and address important issues not only local but also the world-wide.

Click on Images to enlarge them

All photos @ Nadia Slejskova

Visit the World Press Photo Montreal 2023 website

For more information, follow the World Press Photo on Facebook and Twitter.