Exhibiting: Saturday, March 7th to Sunday, March 29th, 2020
Opening Reception: Friday, March 6th at 6pm

Almost Invisible is an exhibition of contemporary photo-based artists in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The exhibition considers the materiality and fluctuation of photographic imaging within the apparatus and networks of expression and affect.

Participating artists include:

Robert Bean
Miriam Behman
Jacob Berney
Juana Cinalli
Emma Cole
Sinead Dempsey
Aislinn Duguid
Branden Dwyer
Mohammadhossein Khodabakhsh
Sami Lemperger
Graham Ross
Todd Talley
Mikayla Halliday

Exhibiting: Saturday, February 8th to Sunday, March 1st, 2020
Closing Reception: Friday, February 28th at 6pm
Artist Talk: Sunday, March 1st at 2pm

What I Tell the Sky, and What the Sky Tells Me is an exhibition of new large scale drawings. Garnett’s work often explores how space (both cosmological and architectural) is represented, occupied, felt, and fabricated. Though distinct works, the drawings in What I Tell the Sky, and What the Sky Tells Me, share questions about gravity: how it shapes cosmological space; how it effects structure and form at all scales; and how it feels in the body.

Organized by Peter Dykhuis
Exhibiting: Saturday, January 11th to Sunday, February 2nd 2020
Opening Reception: Friday, January 10th at 6pm
Studio Jam & Chit-Chat: Sunday, January 26th from 2-5pm

Images: Peter Dykhuis, planning grid and digital mapping, 1 of 15, for pending series titled The Powers That Be

In music culture, studio jams are experimental sessions where creative artists noodle about with new ideas. Some will evolve into songs and formalized compositions; others will never have a public face.

In this spirit, HERMES artists were asked to share any of the following about their future projects:

- their conceptual sketches
- studio paste-ups (digital or material)
- physical scraps that relate to process
- digital maps of production pathways
- video sketches
- or ???

This exhibition offers raw and unvarnished glimpses into the production process of artist’s studio practices that are usually hidden from public view – but essential for any project’s future development.

The participating artists are:

Robert Bean
Barbara Berry
Thierry Delva
Peter Dykhuis
Eryn Foster
Sara Hartland Rowe
Adriana Kuiper + Ryan Suter
Barbara Lounder
Frankie Macaulay
Dan O’Neill
Mathew Reichertz
Jessica Wiebe

To add further context, each artist will supply a few sentences regarding their practice and what is on display. And what is to follow.

In the spirit of the ‘studio jam’, the exhibiting artists will get together at 2:00 pm on Sunday afternoon 19 January to make new collaborative work and chat about connections between their practices. The public is welcome to attend and participate.

Exhibiting: Saturday, November 23rd - Sunday, December 15th, 2019
Opening Reception: Friday, November 22nd at 6pm
Artist Talk with Eryn Foster: Sunday, December 8th at 1pm

This exhibition merges elements of fiction, media art, material research and craft by presenting Heinsalu's new body of work, composed of ceramic slides, optical devices and silkscreen clay-prints. This iteration is a reflection on his recent study of various clay samples from North Carolina. While applying the methodologies developed to distill the native patterns and “language” embedded in the mineral matter, he employs mapping as a way to measure and read organic structures, to imagine a different scale of space and its topography.

I have been focusing on clay as a material, a source and an environment. My practice revolves around exploration and curiosity. It draws on the act of scanning and translating material samples into patterns and codes, into propositional lifeforms and relatable objectives. These interpretations in visual and conceptual forms have been conveyed in various recordings, installations, scans and microphotographs, fired ceramics, clay-light-boxes or ceramic-lens projections. I continue my quest, to observe and reveal the embodiment of life within clay, and to expand on the hypothesis of “silicon-based life.” – Juss Heinsalu

Juss Heinsalu is an Estonian artist-researcher living and working in Nova Scotia. Heinsalu received his MFA degree at NSCAD University in 2017. He previously studied at Estonian Academy of Arts and has participated in various residencies, projects and exhibitions across North-America and Europe.

Gallery Hours for this exhibition are: Friday, Saturdays and Sundays Noon-6pm, or by appointment.

Essay, Installation and Exhibition

Exhibiting: Saturday, October 12 - Sunday, November 10th
Performance: Saturday, November 9th

“Where do we come from, where are we, and where are we going? Where do we come from? It’s a key question. It has always been at the core of our civilizations. As for religion, the world of science today tends to separate science from religion and yet the fundamental questions pondered by man are of religious origin and motive. It’s a matter of discovering the origins of mankind, of our planet, the solar system. Finding out how a galaxy, a planet or a star is born. All these questions about our origins, we astronomers try to answer. We try to shed light on these difficult questions. We try to answer two questions, we do as best we can, and four more arise. That is the nature of science. Some say that we are not very efficient, that in answering two questions, we trigger four others. But that’s science, it’s never resolved. That’s what I like about it. The mystery of science is eternal. All of our life experiences, including this conversation happened in the past. Even if it is a matter of a millionths of a second. The camera I am looking at now is a few meters away and is therefore already several millionths of a second in the past in relation to the time on my watch. The signal takes time to arrive. The light reflected from the camera or from you, reaches me after a moment. A fleeting moment, as the speed of light is very fast. How long does it take for the moonlight to reach us? Just over a second. And sunlight? Eight minutes. So we don’t see things at the very instant we look at them? No, that’s a trap. The present doesn’t exist.”

Birthday cards from extended family, drawings from kindergarten, report cards detailing your short comings and how you distract the other kids, 100s of pieces of paper neatly stacked and placed in boxes, like a time capsule of the moments in your life. At some point in our adulthood we have had to deal with this personal archive. Too precious to discard, our families pass these keepsakes on to us. The thought of destroying them is too painful to bear, but the sheer quantity of these items is taking up valuable physical space that would be put to better use storing winter coats or the box of a new TV. The library of your experiences is in the way. And actually, most of these documents no longer correspond with any substantive memory of significance. They have been relegated a literal paper weight. A hangover from childhood. These documents are the evidence, first hand accounts, of your life. And yet they have become so far removed from their original context that you can no longer place them within the timeline of your life. For me, these papers are more than just an arbitrary object. Inscribed with meaning, these are the testimony of my existence, of my story, of my identity. And yet, conversely, they are scraps, the detritus of the actual memory, the truth was lost long ago. The ruthlessness of time have rendered these items to be less than useful. This archive has morphed and twisted over time, losing its ability to recall these moments with precision, ultimately becoming less than a memory. In the middle of the gallery I have placed several cardboard boxes. At first glance it looks as though it is nothing special. Average at best. Pedestrian. Everyday. But contained within these cardboard coffers are the keepsakes of my life, all thirty five years of it. A witness to my existence, these pages chronicle the path I have cut, the person I have become, and a reference perhaps of the person I will be.

"On October 19th, I will be for the first time in more than 20 years, emptying these boxes and addressing these documents. In an effort to rid myself of the dead weight, the performance will culminate with me destroying the contents. I am shedding".

-Natlaie Willow Boterman

WEATHER UPDATE: Please note that Hermes will be closed Saturday, September 7th due to the impending storm. The Public Walk has also been rescheduled for Sunday, September 22nd.

Exhibiting: Saturday, September 7th - Sunday, September 29th, 2019
Opening Reception: Friday, September 6th, 6-8pm
Public Walk: Sunday September 22nd, 1-3pm (Starting at 1pm on the corner of Quinpool Rd. at Vernon St., across from the Dilly Dally Café. Ending at approximately 3pm near Scotia Square.)

The departure point for this exhibition is a Halifax map stamped with the date May 16, 1973 by the Japanese artist On Kawara. Part of his “I Went” series, Kawara’s map is a record of his walks through Halifax during a visit to the city in 1973. In these new art works by Robert Bean and Barbara Lounder, numerous locations and their atmospheres are cited using photography, objects and maps. The exhibition is accompanied by a public walk and conversation that retrace Kawara’s map, on Sunday September 22. Please join us for a stroll in the Breathable starting at 1pm on Quinpool Road at Vernon Street, across from the Dilly Dally Café.

Exhibiting: August 3rd to August 31st, 2019
Opening Reception: Friday, August 2nd at 6pm
Artist Talk: Sunday, August 25th at 2pm

First a coffee. Then an early morning walk around central Halifax and the waterfront. To start the day. For exercise. To enjoy the rhythm of the waking city. Add a camera and a single role of film. 36 exposures. A chance to capture 36 individual images of each morning walk. The artist invites the viewer to share his walk with him, to see what he saw at the beginning of his day, and hopefully to experience some of the same joy the artist feels each and every time he takes a walk through Halifax.

All photographs were taken using black and white film developed at home using Caffenol — a home-made coffee based developer.

About the artist: Harold Klee is a photographic artist working and living in Halifax. After a career as an IT professional, Harold earned his honours BFA in photography at NSCAD University in 2015. Although this exhibition consists of "straight photography," Harold often uses computer algorithms to modify his photographs. Some of his other photographs can be seen at hkleephoto.ca.

Please join us for an artist talk with Harold Klee on Sunday, August 25th, at 2pm.

Exhibiting: July 6th - 28th, 2019
Opening Reception: Friday, July 5th at 6pm
Artist Talk: Sunday, July 28th at 2pm

An installation of over 100 drawings that viewers are invited to engage with contemplatively and to ponder why we seek out such places, seek out art - and why we make it; and to reflect further on the vocabulary of transcendence and healing so often ascribed to our art experiences. These quiet works speak of stillness, of being fully here in the present and presence of grace - of life, still.

Please join us for an artist talk with Ian McKinnon on Sunday July 28th at 2pm.

Exhibiting: June 8th - 30th, 2019
Opening Reception: Friday, June 7th at 6pm
Artist Talk: Sunday, June 30th at 2pm with Peter Dykhuis

Repeat is part of an ongoing study of performed movement and pattern. The paintings in this exhibition directly reference techniques performed in the martial art of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Having trained in Jiu Jitsu over the past year, Wiebe has become more and more invested in how the body relates to itself, to others, and to the environment.

By using a variety of Jiu Jitsu positions, Wiebe creates figurative repeat patterns. The patterns allow her to isolate specific movements within a sequence. The isolated movement repeats across the painted surface and is further broken down using shape and colour to disrupt and camouflage the repeat pattern.

Jessica Lynn Wiebe is a Halifax based interdisciplinary artist. A former artillery soldier in the Canadian military, her artwork investigates the mechanisms of war, including the complex politics around gender, economy, architecture of war, and the human condition. Through the use of various media she makes work that creates dialogue by engaging and challenging deeply held beliefs and emotions about the military and war. Currently she is a participant of the Canadian Forces Artist Program (CFAP) 2018-2019 through the Canadian War Museum (CWM) in Ottawa.

There will be an artist talk at Hermes Gallery on Sunday June 16 at 2pm.

Exhibiting: May 4th - June 2nd, 2019
Opening Reception: Friday, May 3rd at 6pm

Fionnuala Reynolds first delved underwater to face her primal resistance to the unknown. What she found was, in fact, both dazzling and soothing. The light transmission and refraction, the altered sensory experience, and the exquisite sea organisms kept drawing her back to the ocean. Still Under explores and imparts the buoyant calm found in the shallows of the dynamic and precious Mesoamerican Barrier Reef.

About the Artist:
Fionnuala Reynolds is driven by her passion to examine the natural world, describing striking and curious elements in her surroundings with paint. She transfers her perception of the way natural light reflects in a particular atmosphere, at a particular moment, onto the canvas.

In Reynolds' previous collection, Head Underwater, she recreated experiences and imagery from snorkeling around the inlets in East Chester, Mahone Bay. Her newest body of work, Still Under, submerges the viewer into the Caribbean swells to experience the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef through her biophilic lens.

Reynolds' work has been exhibited in Calgary, Toronto, and Halifax. Her murals are displayed in private and public spaces throughout Nova Scotia, such as EDNA Restaurant and Oceanview Manor. A graduate of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Fionnuala creates at her studio in East Chester, using paint to explore light hitting life.

Exhibiting: April 6 - 28, 2019
Presented by Peter Dykhuis

Inspired by sacred geometry, Gower’s artwork celebrates slow work made by hand, while it counters visual skimming and encourages quiet reflection. Recognizing geometric perfection as the matrix of humanity, her artwork embraces a shared artistic legacy fluid across diverse cultures through mindfulness and mutual respect. Viewer response worldwide has confirmed the prevalent yet profound spiritual and emotional qualities of color, light, and pattern central to Gower’s art.

About the Artist: In 2017, Reni Gower received SECAC’s (Southeastern College Art Conference) Award for Outstanding Artistic Achievement. In 2014, she received the College Art Association’s Distinguished Teacher of Art Award, as well as distinguished teaching awards from Virginia Commonwealth University and VCUarts. Her art work is represented in many prestigious collections and has been exhibited at international and national venues for over 40 years. In addition to her painting practice, she curates award winning traveling exhibitions that include FABRICation, Geometric Aljamía: a Cultural Transliteration, and Pulped Under Pressure: The Art of Handmade Paper. After 37 years, Professor Gower retired from Virginia Commonwealth University in December 2018. She holds a MFA from Syracuse University, a MA from University of Minnesota-Duluth.

Please note, there are no opening or closing receptions for this exhibition. Visit Hermes Saturdays and Sundays from noon-6pm.

Exhibiting: March 2 - 31, 2019
Opening Reception: 6pm Friday, March 8th

Josh Winkler (Mahkato/Mankato, Minnesota); and Lindsay Dobbin (Kanien’kehá:ka /Acadian/Irish based in K’jipuktuk/Halifax) in collaboration with Elder Angie Joseph-Rear, Michelle Olson and Matthew Morgan (Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in citizens) and Sharon Maureen Vittrekwa (Tetlit Gwich’in citizen).

Curated by Michael McCormack.

INFO/FLOE is a project that brings together work from two methodologies of communicating with the land as archive; through listening and performance, and through synthetic reproduction of found objects. It considers the impermanence and malleability of information, language, experience and storytelling, through time-based, and print-based media. Josh Winkler, and Lindsay Dobbin have developed practices that deeply consider our relationships as stewards, protectors and active communicators with the natural environment.

This is the second iteration of this exhibition, involving a selection of works completed during the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture’s six-week Natural & Manufactured residency program in July/August of 2018. Winkler’s work emerged from a two-week hike through the Chilkoot Trail and further shorter hikes in and around Dawson City. Dobbin collaborated remotely from their home on the Bay of Fundy in Mi’kma’ki (the ancestral and unceded territory of Lnu’k or Mi’kmaq), with three Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in citizens – Elder Angie Joseph-Rear, Michelle Olson and Matthew Morgan – and one Tetlit Gwich’in citizen – Sharon Maureen Vittrekwa.

Involving participatory performance, sound, and installation, Dobbin’s work is ecocentric, using listening as wayfinding. Their work intends to deepen our relationship with the natural world, and bridge our relationships with the natural environment that have been fragmented and scattered through colonization and industrialization. Josh Winkler’s work involves in-depth research and consideration of materials that are found in the area of the Klondike, recorded and reproduced as manufactured objects. Winkler’s woodcut prints include detailed representations of the results of human interaction with the environment, and how it affects our physical relationship with the land.

Click here to see the exhibition essay by Michael McCormack. 

Hermes Gallery is located in Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of Lnu’k (the Mi’kmaq People). This territory is covered by the “Treaties of Peace and Friendship” which Mi’kmaq and Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) Peoples first signed with the British Crown in 1725. The treaties did not deal with surrender of lands and resources but in fact recognized Mi’kmaq and Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) title and established the rules for what was to be an ongoing relationship between nations.

We would like to extend our gratitude to the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation for their continuous stewardship of this land, and for welcoming this project through it’s developing stages on their traditional territory, and to the staff and volunteers of the Dänojà Zho Cultural Centre, The Klondike Institute of Art & Culture, Parks Canada, and CFYT 106.9 FM for their support.

Josh K. Winkler is a Minnesota artist working primarily with traditional and contemporary print media. Since receiving his MFA from the University of Minnesota in 2010, Josh has been creating works on paper, running a small gallery, building a stone cabin, and exhibiting work nationally and internationally. He is currently an Associate Professor of Printmaking at Minnesota State University in Mankato, Minnesota. Winkler’s work stems from an interest in how humans manipulate and label the land. How time, politics, and social change alter the context of both natural and inhabited locations. By combining personal experience with historical investigation, Winkler builds layered landscape narratives to reflect on an uncomfortable disconnect between contemporary Americans and the history of the land. He utilizes a range of drawing, printmaking, and sculptural processes to facilitate these ideas.

joshkwinkler.com

Lindsay Dobbin is a Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) – Acadian – Irish artist, musician, curator and educator who lives and works on the Bay of Fundy in Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of Lnu’k (Mi’kmaq). Born in and belonging to the Kennebecasis River Valley in New Brunswick, Dobbin has lived throughout the Maritimes as well as the Yukon Territory. Dobbin’s place-responsive practice includes music, media art, performance, sculpture, installation, social practices and writing, and is invested in and influenced by Indigenous epistemologies and cultural practices, such as drumming. Through placing listening, collaboration and improvisation at the centre of the creative process, Dobbin’s practice explores the connection between the environment and the body, and engages in a sensorial intimacy with the living land.

lindsaydobbin.com

In Residence: February 2 - 24, 2019
Closing Reception: Friday, February 22nd at 6pm

Throughout the month of February, Hermes Gallery is hosting an artist residency with Frankie Macaulay. Macaulay will use the space to begin creating a new series of architectural paper constructions.

Viewers are welcome to visit during regular open hours and also invited to attend a closing reception at the end of the month on Friday, February 22nd starting at 6pm for a showcase of works in progress.

Frankie Macaulay is a visual artist based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Macaulay graduated with honours from NSCAD University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Major in Photography.

Exhibiting: January 5 - 27, 2019
Opening Reception: Friday, January 4 at 6pm
Artist Talk: Sunday, January 13th at 2pm

"Invention is the shaping spirit that re-forms fragments into new wholes"
- Jeanette Winterson from Art Objects - Imagination and Reality

Combined funding from Arts Nova Scotia in 2017 with a creation-production and a presentation grant specifically to install this project in the emergency communications hub at QE 2, enabled Arianne to claim, renovate and restyle the common function of medical materials, repurposing gloves and isolation gowns, tourniquets and sutures and in this arrangement for Hermes, complimented by pencil portraits of department personnel reproduced and toner transferred to hospital bed sheets. Pollet-Brannen gently, mindfully, elevates these new wholes into measures of time ordered into quiet containment fields arranged with caring attention, offering balanced, contemplative verses.

So there was every reason why these works should be temporarily removed from emergency medicine for presentation at Hermes, as a welcome compliment to her established profile, deciding together that this work would engage a wider appreciation of her most recent achievement. The pertinent stories carried into the gallery suggest Arianne has intentionally arranged reflective, counter balances in framed partitions, setting a sympathetic order to her working encounters.

- Dan O'Neill, curator

"Art does indeed matter, and will have its effect, especially for those working within the confines of an emergency department where tragedy, immediacy and urgency are part of the full operation of everyday life."
- Arianne Pollet-Brannen

Exhibiting: December 1 - 23, 2018
Artists’ Yak-Yak: Sunday, December 16th at 4pm with seasonal treats and eggnog

Featuring the work from Robert Bean, Barbara Berry. Thierry Delva, Peter Dykhuis, Eryn Foster, Sara Hartland-Rowe, Andrew Hunt, Chad Jagoe, Barbara Lounder, Frankie Macaulay, James MacSwain, Mathew Reichertz, Fionnuala Reynolds, Becky Welter-Nolan and Jessica Wiebe.

Exhibiting: November 3 - 25, 2018
Opening Reception: Friday, November 2nd at 6pm

James MacSwain's Ex Libris is an exploration of the era of books. Before the internet all knowledge was transmitted through the printed word. In this era of instant communication books will become objects, not only in the realm of antique collectables, but of derision. The book will survive like newspapers, magazines and the theatre only if the upcoming generations are moved to examine what will be lost. And what will be lost? The psychological meaning between the logos and the page; the actual heft and weight of a book, may have a comeback as more and more our digital privacy and alienation from our physicality become pronounced. As well the book may survive as artists in a DIY frenzy, such as myself, create the book as a sensual object to be contemplated in a number of formats such as the accordion and starbooks on display.

Exhibiting: October 6 - 28, 2018
Opening Reception: Friday, October 5th at 6pm

Pushing It
Becky Welter-Nolan

Pushing It is a performative project by Becky Welter-Nolan featuring a roughly 200lb quilted soft-sculpture “boulder” entitled Rocky III, pushed uphill in true Sisyphean style. Testing the body and space through physical exertion, tension, and force, the work critiques labour and the narrative of success, navigating between endurance and
futility.

Revolution Revolution
Gillian Dykeman

Revolution Revolution is a new performance and video work by Gillian Dykeman that activates the latent radical potential of the human energy amassed through engaging fitness. Operating as a home stationary bike workout, Revolution Revolution delivers fitness instruction in tandem with revolutionary rhetoric.

Exhibiting: August 1 - 26
Closing Reception: Friday, August 24 from 4-6pm
Organized by René Boudreau, Hyla Silburt, Barbara Lounder and Peter Dykhuis

The artwork will also be on display for Park Days in Mulgrave Park on August 25 and 26.

From August 1-17, Summer Camp leaders from Mulgrave Park are using the HERMES space as a drop in destination during summer outings where their camper kids can map out where they have been, and make drawings of what they have seen and done. This will culminate in a public display and reception on Friday August 24, from 4-6 pm.

The Mulgrave Park Caring and Learning Centre was opened in 2007 by a group of concerned community members who wanted a place for people to go when they needed services and information they could not otherwise obtain. The Centre has grown to be a community hub that serves people, brings services and collaborations into the neighbourhood, and allows for children to develop through programming for parents. The Centre has a community garden, lots of social and cultural activities, and residents of all ages enjoy some great fun during the many annual celebrations. Please join us in celebrating the art made by children in the 2018 Summer Camp program.

Exhibiting: July 18 – 28, 2018
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 21, 2 - 4pm in Toronto, Ontario (401 Richmond Street West)

The Red Head Gallery in Toronto, Ontario, is pleased to present Magnetic Attraction: Modules and Components, an exhibition exchange with Hermes Gallery.

This exhibition features artwork that consists of modular components and serial objects that create single works of art or generate conversations between multiple pieces/units. At stake: how is the conceptual ‘whole’ of the installed work much larger than just the sum of its material parts?

Based in Toronto at the 401 Richmond Building, The Red Head Gallery is a professional artists’ collective comprised of seventeen members. The Red Head Gallery proposed an exchange exhibition with Hermes Gallery because the two collectives share member connections: Peter Dykhuis, Hermes member and co-director, was a member of Red Head for many years, and Leah Garnett is a current member of both collectives. In November 2017, Red Head members Jim Bourke, Jack Butler, Tonia Di Risio, Teri Donovan, Leah Garnett, Phillip Hare, Gillian Iles, Margie Kelk, Ian Mackay, Lois Schklar, Christina Sealey, Peggy Taylor Reid, Sally Thurlow, and Elaine Whittaker exhibited big / SMALL at Hermes Gallery.

For more information on The Red Head Gallery, please visit: redheadgallery.org

Opening Reception: Sunday, July 8 at 6pm
On View July 12 - 29, 2018
Artist Present 12 - 6pm, Thursday - Saturday, July 12 - 28 (except July 21)

Artist-in-residence Angella Parsons presents a solo exhibition of drawing and sculpture: Heart Matter(s) chronicling her experience of being hit by a car as a pedestrian on the corner of North and Agricola Streets in Halifax in December 2013 and her subsequent healing journey. Adjacent to the street corner where the accident occurred, Hermes Art Gallery and Co-operative provides a site specific component to the work.

Parsons' multifaceted interdisciplinary practice carries over into her writing where she employs a multi-genre approach to what she describes as Life Writing. During the residency, Parsons will be developing her manuscript: The Glass Is Half Full  - A story about the power we have as human beings to overcome our own suffering through connecting intimately with others.

“My goal has been to use pivotal times during my recovery to introduce gratitude as a kind of super power that we all possess. Early on in my recovery I was amazed by how small acts of kindness reshaped my perspective in profoundly impactful ways.”
– Angella Parsons

The public is invited to drop in to the gallery starting July 12th where she will be in residence on Thursday, Friday and Saturdays from 12-6pm to July 28. 

Opening Reception: Friday, 1 June 2018 at 6pm. 
Exhibiting: 2 - 24 June, 2018

Curated by Becky Welter-Nolan

In these paired solo exhibitions, emerging artists Kaashif Ghanie and Nicholas Rosin exhibit new bodies of work created during a nine-month artist residency at the Centre for Craft Nova Scotia. With different approaches both artists address issues affecting their daily lives, materializing their conflicts with a challenging society in vessel forms.

Adaption is Kaashif Ghanie’s latest body of ceramic vessels presenting an interpretation of the lived experience of Islamophobia. Ghanie magnifies traditional Islamic pottery forms and adapts their surfaces to embody the systemic discrimination against Muslims in Canada. Drawing on personal histories, these mutations and surface treatments contrast the themes of sacredness in Islam and the current sociopolitical climate impacting the Muslim community.

Kaashif (Kaas) Ghanie is a First-Generation Muslim Guyanese Canadian from London, ON based in Halifax, NS. His ceramic work engages viewers in the sociopolitical issues surrounding Muslim culture. After receiving a BFA from NSCAD University in 2015 he was an artist-in-residence in the Centre for Craft's airCRAFT program and summer residencies. He has exhibited his work at the Mary E. Black Gallery, the Craig Gallery, and the Anna Leonowens in Halifax, and has participated in Nocturne Art at Night and Antigonight festivals.

Intrigued by ironies in social norms and the impact of status anxiety in our modern world, Nicholas Rosin's practice reflects on society through a satirical lens. In Disposable Income, he questions our daily consumption and habits in a series of disposable vessels created in silver and brass. These anti-amulets illustrate the absurdity of our unconscious obsessions with these objects through Rosin's signature hand-engraved characters. With witty irony Rosin's language both critiques and empathizes with the subtle addictions many of us rely on to cope with the daily grind.

Nicholas (Nick) Rosin is an emerging metalsmith and engraver based in Halifax, NS. While earning his BFA in jewellery design and metalsmithing at NSCAD University (2015), Rosin studied hand-engraving abroad in Pforzheim, Germany, making it the primary focus of his work. Rosin has exhibited at the Mary E Black Gallery and Seeds Gallery in Halifax, and Ornamentum Gallery, NY. He is a current artist-in-residence, studio technician, course instructor, and gallery coordinator at the Centre for Craft Nova Scotia.

Closing Reception: Friday, 25 April 2018 at 6pm.
The artist will be present 12-6pm Saturdays and Sundays and by chance.

Sponsored by Becky Welter-Nolan

Behind Closed Doors is an artist residency and exhibition at Hermes Gallery by artist Erica Flake. Throughout the month of May, Hermes Gallery will be hosting an artist residency where Flake will be drawing, mapping, and creating three-dimensional photographs based on specific spaces in relation to her artistic practice.

Concurrently, Flake will exhibit a collection of urban exploration and relating food-based works from past photographic series including Sweet Tooth (2018), Crossing Over (2017), and Traces of Humanity Reprise (2015). A closing reception at the end of the month will showcase works in progress created throughout the residency.

Erica Flake is a visual artist based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Flake graduated from NSCAD university with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with a Major in Photography as well as a Bachelor of Arts degree with a Major in Art History.

Closing reception Friday, April 27th @ 6pm
Macaulay will be at the gallery from 12 - 6pm Saturdays and Sundays and by chance.

How to Fold is an artist residency at Hermes Gallery by new member Frankie Macaulay.

Throughout the month of April, Hermes Gallery is hosting an artist residency where Macaulay will be focusing on sculptural developments and material explorations with paper.

Concurrently, Macaulay will exhibit a collection of photographic and sculptural works relating to nature and architecture including Uprooted (2017), Construction Paper (2016), Tree Versus (2015 - 2017), Paper Bark (2014) and Urban Paper (2014 - 2016).

A closing reception at the end of the month on Friday, April 27th starting at 6pm will showcase studies created during the residency.

Frankie Macaulay is a visual artist based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Macaulay graduated with honours from NSCAD University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Major in Photography.

Friday 2 March, reception @ 6 PM

Sunday 11 March, discussion with the artists @ 2 PM

In drawings, images, words, and objects, Bean and Lounder present their observations of the natural history and the culture of walking in the Lake District of Cumbria, England. Being-in-the-Breathable is a multi-part collaboration considering air as our last Commons; where we breathe, gasp and expire together. In 2017, the artists presented Being-in-the-Breathable: An Annotated Walk at the Contexte Festival of Ephemeral Art in Sokolwsko, Poland. The current exhibition at Hermes is part 2 in this series, and brings together creative research, walking and art making undertaken by Bean and Lounder in the Lake District, intermittently since 1999.

Reception Friday 2 February @ 6 PM

Organized by Dan O'Neill

Every student I have ever worked with at NSCAD University is always moving toward embracing higher levels of studio independence often enrolling in Advanced, Studio and Independent studies in the later years of their visual art program. This choice is meant to test self-appointed challenges and to further develop their conceptual bearing, with multiple opportunities offered to every student to advance the space and time required to extend research, theory and practice, and to illuminate unlit recesses of production that encompass their highest aspirations to succeed. I believe that these areas of study are always focused on preparation for studio practice, post graduation.

Brent Garbett and I embarked on such a plan of action he wanted to embrace, when we agreed to an Independent study across the summer of 2016. Discussion was the mainstay of our week-to-week meetings, and I was also privileged enough to frequently observe him in action as we advanced the customary to and fro of our exchanges, both exploratory and beneficial. Garbett's devotion to his explorations, undertaken post graduation, certainly confirms his dedication and intent, and the results of his most recent accomplishments are here presented at HERMES for the benefit of the Halifax community.

Dan O'Neill

It's important for me to offer a responsive, personal experience for the viewer. Much of my work for painting is observationally based, a continuing record of capturing urban settings, those places I consider familiar territory with Halifax and Guelph being the most recent sources for this record keeping. Yet over the last two years, I've worked to break away from certain painting processes that I had previously developed, explored and extended, that I felt were beginning to become slightly restricted in being able to reveal the breadth of new approaches to examining familiar subject matter that I thought I could accomplish.

Drawing has been the activity that has best helped me address this challenge, allowing me to work more spontaneously and unconstrained. I use little preliminary planning and no form of external reference outside of memory and intuitive response. This activity allowed me to come into contact with understanding how to generate a more spontaneous and abstracted image, while also sustaining an uncomplicated approach, which I could now attend to in realizing the next stage for my painting. 

 So now I set about painting with renewed exuberance and an appreciation of having uncovered approaches and confidence with my practice of drawing and painting that now comfortably orbit and inform one another. These recent works then are the result of having made a step toward a more energized, less constrained and perhaps, a little more truthful agreement with myself to proceed.

Brent Garbett

Reception: Friday 5 January @ 6 PM

6 - 28 January

Saturday and Sunday, 12 - 6 PM

For this exhibition at Hermes, Adriana Kuiper and Ryan Suter take a sidestep from their public site specific installation to highlight new studio experiments. Working with improvised, handmade quilts, sound blankets, collected objects, video and sound the artists present various tests with these objects in an organized tableau.

Opening Reception: Friday, December 1st at 6pm


Featuring the work of:

Robert Bean
Barbara Berry
Peter Dykhuis
Leah Garnett
Sara Hartland-Rowe
Andrew Hunt
Adriana Kuiper
Barbara Lounder
Frankie Macaulay
Fionnuala Reynolds
Ryan Suter

4 – 26 NOVEMBER 2017

SATURDAY + SUNDAY 12 – 6 PM

RECEPTION: FRIDAY 3 NOVEMBER @ 6 PM

Based in Toronto at the 401 Richmond Building, The Red Head Gallery is a professional artists’ collective comprised of 17 members. Though primarily dedicated to exhibiting members’ works at The Red Head Gallery, the collective periodically creates a travelling group show to exhibit members’ work beyond the Greater Toronto Area, and to forge connections with other artist run collectives.

This show, big / SMALL, is such an endeavor. The Red Head Gallery proposed an exchange exhibition with HERMES Gallery because the two collectives share member connections: Peter Dykhuis, HERMES member and co-director, was a member of Red Head for many years, and Leah Garnett is a current member of both collectives. Furthermore, as a collective celebrating its 27th anniversary in 2017, Red Head was excited about working with a new collective.  Red Head is thankful for the opportunity to exhibit big / SMALL and to introduce its members to the Maritimes; and we greatly look forward to hosting a group exhibition of HERMES members in July 2018.

big / SMALL evolved from a physical constraint into a thematic framework. The collective needed to develop a show that could ship at minimal cost, a fact that restricted the weight and size of all 14 works in big / SMALL. Bound by a size limitation, each member used this condition to consider big / SMALL as a conceptual exploration. This “assignment” resulted in diverse solutions that reflect the collective’s range of practices and experiences.

big / SMALL includes works by: Jim Bourke, Jack Butler, Tonia Di Risio, Teri Donovan, Leah Garnett, Phillip Hare, Gillian Iles, Margie Kelk, Ian Mackay, Lois Schklar, Christina Sealey, Peggy Taylor Reid, Sally Thurlow, and Elaine Whittaker.

For more information on The Red Head Gallery, please visit our website: http://www.redheadgallery.org/