Owens Art Gallery

Last month the Owens Art Gallery launched a new section of their website, detailing all of the publications produced or available from the gallery. 

Mount Alison University’s sole imprint, the Owens’ publishing program has been active since the 1960s.

Available titles include works by or about Anna Torma, Derek Sullivan, Leah Garnett, Rita McKeough,Erik Edson, Ray Fenwick, Daniel Barrow, Andrea Morton, Garry Neill Kennedy, David Hoffos, Diane Borsato, Thaddeus Holownia, George Bures Miller, Jim Dine, Alex Coville, and myself. 

Alongside numerous monographs, the Owens has also published group exhibition catalogues, including the fascinating Warps, Heddles, Shuttles and Sheds: The Art and History of Weaving at Mount Allison University, which I reviewed here, and The Closer Things Are, here. For the latter, I collaborated with Micah Lexier on newspaper interventions that were published locally on the day the exhibition opened in the various towns it traveled to. 

The online catalogue was made  possible thanks to the work of J.E.A. Crake ArtsWork Publications Archive and Distribution Assistant Caitlin Gallant (2025), and 2023 Bourne Internship Community Engagement and Access Assistants Ranz Bontogon (2024) and Sophie Giese (2023).

View the publications here:

https://owensartgallery.com/publications/

This afternoon, the gallery launches a new publication by Thaddeus Holownia and Harry Thurston, 

 at 4:00 pm. Of A Feather is the their third collaborative book project, featuring twenty-one photographs of birds by Holownia, and poetry by Thurston. 

Dave Dyment | Untitled [Fan Labour #2]

Dave Dyment

Untitled [Fan Labour #2], 2015 

Graphite on vellum 

41 x 33 x 4 cm.

Edition of 8 signed and numbered copies, each unique

From a series of works involving convoluted and complex ‘conspiracy theory’ readings of popular films, this piece is currently part of The Sweetest Little Thing, an annual auction and event to raise funds for the two galleries in town. The Owens Art Gallery is the country’s oldest University gallery and Struts is an Artist-Run-Centre with a reputation for punching above it’s weight bringing artists to town as part of it’s renowned residency program. 

The auction’s MO is smaller, affordable artworks and this year includes work by many artists who have featured on this site, see hashtags below. 

Anna Torma | OLIVE

Anna Torma

OLIVE

Sackville, Canada: Nothing Else Press. 2023

105 x 105 cm.

Edition of 50 signed copies

We’ve long admired Anna Torma’s work (and were able to buy a very small piece a couple of years ago) but only met her earlier this year, in Fredericton where her and Roula presented works in a group show together. Here and her partner live about 20 minutes away, in a beautiful purpose-built home that privileges their separate studio spaces. 

The wool and silk shawl we produced with her turned out great. Wear it around your neck or pin it to the wall. Info below. 

Anna Torma is a storyteller, stitching fantastical narratives into large, skillful and elaborately embroidered textile works. Torma employs imagery referencing history, daily life, animals, mythological creatures, fruit, flora and fauna, which form a rich visual lexicon that is playful and sensual, with sometimes dark undertones.

For OLIVE,  Torma excerpts a detail from one of her sprawling woven tales, in order to highlight the "supporting actors" and "background scenery" that are often overlooked. Here, "olive" is invited to take centre stage, a detail that would otherwise be relegated to the role of minor character.

Anna Torma is a Hungarian born, New Brunswick based artist. She translates contemporary content through traditional hand embroidery which she considers as a “mother tongue”, having learned to sew and embroider as a child from her mother and grandmothers. Working on a large scale, she composes wall hangings, which are rooted in this heritage, but are equally related to other visual art mediums like painting and drawing.  

Anna Torma received the prestigious Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts. She is a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, recipient of the New Brunswick Lieutenant-Governor's Award for Excellence in the Visual Arts and of the Strathbutler Award from the Sheila Hugh Mackay Foundation. For over 40 years,Torma has exhibited her art in Canada and abroad. Many of her works are held in public and private collections around the world. In 2018, Calgary's Esker Foundation presented a major exhibition of the artist's work entitled Book of Abandoned Details. That same year, her work was featured in the exhibition Fait Main/Hand, at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec. In 2020 a large-scale solo exhibition titled Permanent Danger was mounted at the Textile Museum of Canada, Toronto. She has a full-career retrospective at the Beaverbrook Gallery, Fredericton. www.annatorma.com

OLIVE is available for $125 CDN at the Nothing Else Press Website, here, or at the Pop-Up Shop today at MKG127, from noon to six.