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Mary Pratt: This Little Painting

Ongoing

12 March 2016 - 22 May 2016

Details

Start:
12 March 2016
End:
22 May 2016

Works by

Mary Pratt

Curated by

Jonathan Shaughnessy and Mireille Eagan
A small painting of red currant jelly in glasses on tinfoil glows with red and yellow hues. Surrounded by a light grey frame it contrasts against the dark grey gallery wall. To the right there are two columns of white text. In the centre of the room, there is a wooden bench.

Mary Pratt: This Little Painting

About this exhibition

This exhibition tells the story behind the work Red Currant Jelly, 1972 which Mary Pratt affectionately calls “this little painting”. Within the context of a selection of key early and more recent paintings, study materials, prints and a short film interview with Pratt produced by Toronto filmmaker Mark Bennett, the exhibition analyses Red Currant Jelly and its relationship to Pratt’s work and technique. Painted in a realist style strongly associated with Canada’s Atlantic provinces, Pratt’s paintings contemplate everyday rituals and the themes they invoke: sacrifice, love and familial duty, and the inevitable and ever-fleeting passage of time.

Co-curated by National Gallery of Canada Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, Jonathan Shaughnessy, and The Rooms Curator of Contemporary Art, Mireille Eagan.

Image gallery

A small metal slide projector sits on a plinth in a gallery. On the walls, four framed paintings are displayed. The paintings depict a sack of potatoes leaning on a table with a bunt cake and bowl of apples, a family dinner table, and two groups of pears on stands.

Publication

Foreward by Jonathan Shaughnessy and Mireille Eagan
Essay by Mary Pratt

Design by Robert Tombs
Published by Owens Art Gallery