Selections from the Permanent Collection - Lapine and Various Other Artists 

December 5 to February 3, 2024

A selection of paintings from our permanent collection featuring André Lapine, George Thomson, Owen Staples and Herbert Palmer, are displayed with our new acquisitions.

Archie Stouffer Elementary School Exhibit

February 10 to March 30, 2024 (Reception to be held on February 10, 2024)

The first annual art show will feature artwork created by students in grades 4 – 8 from Archie Stouffer Elementary School that answers the question: What Minden means to them? 

Connection and Response - Bruce Cull

April 4 to June 8, 2024 (Reception to be held on April 6, 2024)

Artist Statement: Our collective experience over the last few years has reinforced for me, my long-held belief that the most important aspect of our lives is our sense of connection. We begin our lives connecting to our parents, our siblings and gradually extending those relationships outward to a greater world of friends, co-workers and others whom we encounter on this journey. Most of all, we reach for mutually nourishing intimacy in partner relationships and this connection of love brings us hope and strength. We are participants in and a part of the physical world we inhabit. Over time, we have lost that sense of connection. We have all too often let ourselves be severed from the world of which we are a part. My work expresses my fear of a lost connection with each other and our environment, and a hope that we will re-discover all our forms of connection with our response.  Many of the objects incorporated into my work have been salvaged from my land as I work at developing trails to criss-cross my property.

Artist Biography: Bruce is profoundly connected to the environment and to his historical roots. Raised in a small community in Northern Ontario, he pursued his studies at the Ontario College of Art and the University of Calgary.  Returning to Northern Ontario to raise his family and to practice his art, he has continued to grow as an artist and as a teacher. He participated in the Ontario Art Council Artist in the Schools programme and was the Curator/Director of the Temiskaming Art Gallery. Bruce has won several awards and has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Ontario, Alberta and New York.

Flower Orphanage - Michèle Karch-Ackerman

June 13 to August 17, 2024 (Reception to be held on June 15, 2024)

Artist Statement:  My newest exhibition is an elegiac symphony of femininity and flowers.  Inspired by memories of my own 92 year old mother, Madolin, wearing her nylon slip in the late 1960s and getting ready to go out on the town with my Dad, her Chanel #5, the flowers in my garden, the Virgin Mary and the rosary, Emily Dickinson’s hardbound ‘fascicle’ book of poems and my own six decades of life, this is an exhibition that unabashedly celebrates motherhood, daughterhood, wifehood, girlhood, womanhood and the threads that connect humanity to nature.

Artist Biography: Michèle is a nationally recognized contemporary artist whose installations are known for inspiring viewers with their provocative and touching subject matter. For over thirty years her artistic practice has involved the devotional act of sewing clothing. Michèle is an installation artist drawn to domestic, traditionally feminine, work: embroidery, needlepoint, knitting, dress and doll-making. Her work considers the dead, the forgotten and the hurting.  Throughout her career, Michèle’s work has been exhibited in over forty solo exhibitions at public galleries across Canada. A graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design, she is the recipient of numerous awards from the Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council and awarded residencies throughout Canada.  Michèle previously exhibited at the AJG with her exhibit The Foundling.

Burner Herzog - Gary Blundell and Victoria Ward

August 22 to November 23, 2024 (Reception to be held on August 24, 2024)

Joint Artist Statement: Near our home is an abandoned sawdust burner, the last one we have been told that still stands in Ontario. This abandoned burner is a ‘vestigial’ implement that the logging industry would have used regularly to incinerate the sawdust made from processing cut trees. We’ve often worked towards illuminating the idea that industry and landscape are intertwined. These abandoned industrial structures have long been a major subject matter of our art making. We believe the natural work is conceptual, it is ‘culture before water, wood, rock’ (Simon Schama) and Canada’s landscape is haunted with our industrial past. This haunting is where our work exists.

Artist Biographies:  Gary was born in London, England and immigrated to Canada in 1962. After graduating from University with a degree in the Earth Sciences, he traveled throughout Europe looking at art. He then began to paint. His work has been exhibited across Canada and in England. He was artist-in-residence at the Art House in Yorkshire, England, the Straumur Arts Commune in Iceland, the Norfolk Arts Centre in Simcoe, Ontario and at Pouch Cove in Newfoundland. His work can be found in collections throughout Canada, the USA and Europe.

Victoria was born in Oshawa, Ontario. As someone who came from theatre and created dynamic stories, making paintings based on the landscape was a very natural, artistic evolution for her. Her work has been exhibited across Canada and in England and she has been the recipient of multiple awards. Victoria also writes and contributes to catalogues, cultural journals and digital sites across Canada. She earned a BFA from York University.

Victoria and Gary live near Algonquin Park in a log cabin. They have exhibited at the AJG in the past.