CHARLOTTETOWN, P.E.I. — Mimi Stockland always considered herself to be a creative person.
But, it wasn’t until she moved to St. John’s, N.L., five year ago that Stockland truly felt things take off.
Now, her work is on display for all to see.
Stockland is one of the featured artists whose works are part of the new fall exhibition at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown. The exhibition, Give Me Shelter, profiles the work of 13 emerging St. John’s artists, all of it curated by Pan Wendt, the centre’s art gallery curator.
“It was a whole new world. I had a vague idea … but something just clicked,” Stockland said in an interview at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery on Thursday. “Five years ago I permanently moved to Newfoundland with the goal of joining the artistic community. I’ve always wanted to be an artist. I always liked making things.”
The Confederation Centre Art Gallery exhibition entitled, Give Me Shelter, features this oil on canvas from John McDonald, which is called Moving On, 2019. Courtesy of Emma Butler Gallery. – Contributed
Stockland found the East Coast artistic community not only welcoming but encouraging, support she did not feel while working as an artist in Montreal, Que., where she was based beforehand.
“My humour really just clicked with East Coast humour. I was understood; my jokes landed better.”
Stockland graduated from textile school in 2015 and decided to start putting her work out in the professional world and see what happened. She also established a professional art practice in St. John’s.
Her work in the fall exhibition at the centre is based on a mix of things she has created over the past five years, all displayed in a collage.
Pepa Chan, another St. John’s-based artist whose work is part of the exhibition, chose to focus on relationships and trauma.
Pepa Chan is one of the featured artists whose work is part of the new Confederation Centre Art Gallery exhibition, Give Me Shelter, which profiles the work of 13 emerging artists in St. John’s, N.L. The exhibition is curated by Pan Wendt, curator at the centre. – Dave Stewart
“It’s about making ourselves vulnerable when we are relating to others,” said Chan, who is originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina. “It’s about intimacy and the risk we take when we are connecting with others.”
Chan calls her exhibit, Brush. An televised image of someone having their long hair brushed plays in the background. But, there is also an image of a brush with burning matches in place of the normal bristles.
Part of Pepa Chan’s exhibit at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery features images of strands of hair. Chan is in the process of setting up her exhibit here. – Dave Stewart
Chan said that’s meant to signify that brushing can be cathartic to some people but symbolize trauma for others.
“There’s abandonment in my family and violence,” she said. “I lose a lot of hair and that’s related to stress and anxiety. I’m basically using hair brushing and losing hair as metaphors for all of those things.”
Wendt said Give Me Shelter is an exhibition that reflects the fact St. John’s is a cosmopolitan city.
“It really gives you a sense of the scene in St. John’s,” Wendt said. “You go there and you really feel that even though, when you go there, you get a real sense of (the city’s) heritage and its past. Give Me Shelter is a … place the artists feel very at home.”
The Confederation Centre Art Gallery exhibition includes the portrait series Tukien (Awaken), Reclaiming the Throne, from St. John’s, N.L.-based Mi’kmaw painter Nelson White. – Contributed
Fall exhibitions
Following are the fall exhibitions at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery:
St. John’s-based Mi’kmaw painter Nelson White’s portrait series Tukien (Awaken) celebrates Indigenous artists and activists.
Give Me Shelter features the work of 13 artists from St. John’s, N.L. They are Nicholas Aiden, Greg Bennett, Pepa Chan, Hazel Eckert, Jose Gonzalez, Ashley Hemmings, John McDonald, Jason Penney, Emily Pittman, Daniel Rumbolt, Mimi Stockland, April White and Olivia Wong.
Alexis Bellavance: ops, a video installation looking at the constant and regular breathing of the sea and sky by the Montreal-based artist.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
