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Portrait exhibition focuses on the north

The exhibit, on display until November 24 at the new NOVAH gallery at 176 Lakeshore Drive in Ferris, also includes portraits reproduced in many different artistic mediums. Part of the appeal of the exhibit is that it is very much about traditional and contemporary practices as they are employed by the artist working within the genre of portraiture
Reno Halo
Self Portrait by North Bay's Reno Couchie now on display at 176 Lakeshore Drive. Submitted.

The beautiful lands to the north of Highway 17 are populated by some very fascinating characters.

The curators for "Portraits North of 17" ask the question, “why don't we create a portrait exhibition focusing on folks we've known or know and on artistic tradition of the “portrait?" 

Today their questions will be answered as these new paintings, collage works, and digital collages give a sense of place through the faces and deconstructed “portraits” of the people says a news release.

When co-curators, Bruce Cull and Dermot Wilson came up with this idea, they reached out to a very select group of artists working today in the communities of North Bay, Timmins, Kirkland Lake, and the Tri-towns. It was, in many ways, an artistic experiment that would challenge the chosen artists and would perhaps be important as an expression of what it is to be a Northerner, or perhaps more correctly, a Near-Northerner.

The result of this experiment is a wonderful selection of works depicting many different folks from many communities across northeastern Ontario. It includes eight self-portraits by the artists, portraits of friends and a northern Ontario “take” on the finest of all portrait artists, a selection of “collaborative portraits” and a nod by each artist to the greatest portrait painter of them all, Rembrandt van Rijn.

The exhibit, on display until November 24 at the new NOVAH gallery at 176 Lakeshore Drive in Ferris, also includes portraits reproduced in many different artistic mediums. Part of the appeal of the exhibit is that it is very much about traditional and contemporary practices as they are employed by the artist working within the genre of portraiture.

The eight artists participating in Portraits North of 17 include Catharine Cribbs, Reno Couchie, Cesar Forero, Sue Gamble, Bruce Cull, Tom Red, Margot Cormier Splane, and Iris Shields. Gamble and Forero are from the Kirkland Lake area. Cribbs and Cormier Splane are professional artists working in Timmins,. Cull and Shields live in the Tri-towns area and were really the progenitors of the show. Couchie and Red work out of North Bay.

This is the Nipissing Region Curatorial Collective's first attempt at organizing and producing a “Regional Touring Exhibition”.

"Portraits will travel to all four of the areas mentioned above over the course of two years and then on to galleries in southern Ontario. As an artists' collective that strives to support and create new curators for contemporary art in our region, our group sees this first tour as a template and example of how the group will be able to grow curators from across our region and connect our contemporary artists to galleries across the province," says curator Dermot Wilson.