New concourse exhibition features seven groups of works, extending the viewer’s engagement with artist’s process and subjects

(Charlottetown, P.E.I.) – The tradition of artists working in serial – a sequence of pieces – is the focus of a new exhibition at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery (CCAG) that features seven groups of work. Curated from the Gallery’s permanent collection this exhibition, entitled Serial Arrangements, includes three monoprints from the Waterworks series by Stacey Spiegel, who equated the printmaking to a “mapping of fluidity.” The association is underscored by the inclusion of sections of metal printing plates showing traces of maps or charts.

The Long Series of paintings on paper by Stephen B. MacInnis is represented by 50 exhibits—seven in frames, a milestone text piece made on completion of the first 500 works in this ongoing series, and the storage container holding the remaining stack of 42 works.

In a nearby display case, Dominique Cruchet’s exhibited album, Panmure Island Pow Wow Portraits, 1997, contains 12 gelatin silver prints. These photographs can be compared to three late 17^th century German woodcuts depicting Indigenous figures in America, attributed to G.M. Funcken. The earlier prints are whimsical and the latter realistic portraits

Next case over, Bruce Campbell used serial imagery in the four canvases that comprise Every True Islander, 1987, in response to the heated debate over a fixed link joining Prince Edward Island to the mainland in advance of the 1988 plebiscite. His imagery is based on a stamp used in the latter half of the 1880s to promote a south shore tunnel as the means to provide a continuous communication link with the mainland.

“The analogy of ongoing or continuous communication links seems apt for all of these serial works,” offers Gallery Director and exhibition curator, Kevin Rice, “as they mark points in time and history while alluding to the artist’s extended thinking on environmental elements, creativity, portraiture, distance, and time.”

Brian Groombridge’s curious work, Comets Tell of Great Distances Traveled, is in five parts, presenting the viewer with a single date per sheet. The font used for each year is particular to the date recorded while the title hints at the fact that these dates are the years when Halley’s Comet was observed from Earth.

Photographer Shari Hatt, meanwhile, has made numerous series of pet dog portraits and the selection featured is her 1999 series. These pieces all have a bright green backdrop, square format, and white frames across 50 portraits, leaving the close-up framing of each dog’s face to reveal their engaging “personalities.”

Serial Arrangements is now on display, showing until March 10, 2019 in the Fred S. and Ogden Martin Concourse Gallery display cases at Confederation Centre. For more, visit: https://old.confederationcentre.com/whats-on/serial-arrangements/

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Featured image cutline: Stacey Spiegel, Waterworks no. 2, 1992, Waterworks no. 3, 1992, Waterworks no. 5, 1992, monoprints on paper with unique metal printing plates, Gift of the artist, Toronto, 2007, CAG 2007.12.1-3.