A pioneer of interdisciplinary practice in Canada, Dennis Tourbin produced a distinctive body of work integrating the written word with painting, drawing, video and performance. From the early 1970s until his death in 1998, Tourbin’s prescient work engaged with mass media, using mediated text and imagery in an exploration of language and meaning. Part documentarian and part storyteller, Tourbin employed the aesthetics of collage and a serial approach in the drawings and vivid paintings he called “visual poems”. Treating words as pictures to be viewed, and images as texts to be read, Tourbin responded to the increasing impact of the media on individual and collective consciousness.

Born in 1946 and raised in St. Catharines, Ontario, Dennis Tourbin was a poet and self-taught artist. His work has been widely exhibited in exhibitions throughout Canada and in Europe, and is held in major Canadian institutions including the National Gallery of Canada. He published numerous books of poetry and novels including The Port Dalhousie Stories (Coach House Press, 1987). A fervent arts activist, Tourbin played a vital role in artist-run culture in Ontario. Tourbin died in 1998 at the age of 51.

Author(s): Marcie Bronson, Guy Lachapelle, Diana Nemiroff, Judith Parker
Publisher(s): Rodman Hall Art Centre/Brock University, Carleton University Art Gallery, and the Art Gallery of Peterborough
Year: 2019

Bronson, Marcie, Guy Lachapelle, Diana Nemiroff, and Judith Parker, eds. Dennis Tourbin: The Language of Visual Poetry. St. Catharines, ON / Carleton, ON / Peterborough, ON: Rodman Hall Art Centre / Brock University / Carleton University Art Gallery / Art Gallery of Peterborough, 2019.

Still Move is the first monograph to focus on the performance work of artist Brendan Fernandes. For the last five years, Fernandes has explored how stillness and static movement can be powerful tools of resistance. Informed by his training in ballet and modern dance, Fernandes’ practice routinely explores the role of the body within social and political spaces, questioning and breaking down the notion of hegemony. For Fernandes, choreography serves as a remarkable tool for decoding and unpacking this complex conversation. Inspired by ballet movement vocabularies relating to labour and endurance, the work demonstrates the artist’s keen interest in responding to histories of avant-garde dance and its relationship to visual art. His work takes on numerous forms, building on an effort to negotiate a complex sense of both individual and cultural identities within performative acts.

Authors: Hendrik Folkerts, Dittmer Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Art Institute of Chicago and Jess Wilcox, Director of Exhibitions at Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island, New York, with contributions from Christina Cuthbertson, Shaun Dacey, Anik Glaude, Ryan Josey, Robin Metcalfe, Crystal Mowry, and Stuart Reid.
Publishers: Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery; Rodman Hall Art Centre/Brock University; Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery; Southern Alberta Art Gallery; and Varley Art Gallery of Markham.
Year: 2017

Folkerts, Hendrik and Jess Wilcox, eds. Brendan Fernandes: Still Move. London, UK: Black Dog, in partnership with Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver, BC), Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery (Kitchener, ON), Rodman Hall Art Centre / Brock University (St. Catharines, ON), Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery (Halifax, NS), Southern Alberta Art Gallery (Lethbridge, AB), and Varley Art Gallery of Markham (Markham, ON), 2016. 160 pp. ISBN 9781910433621.

Serbian-born Canadian artist Milutin Gubash has developed a diverse practice incorporating performance with video, photo and digital installations and focused on the investigation of his own personal, social, and cultural identity. This first monograph examines the overlap of history, humour and authenticity found in his multifaceted practice. Often cast as the lead alongside his family and friends, Gubash employs narrative to blur the boundaries between real, lived lives and the people that we wish we were. Major projects featured include Which Way to the Bastille?, which recounts the story of his father’s life in, and escape from, communist Yugoslavia. These Paintings explores the life of the artist under Communism. The hilarious Born Rich, Getting Poorer is a sitcom-style video series (complete with laugh track) starring Gubash as himself, the Buster Keatonish everyman who embarks on a hapless search for home and for roots, after the recent death of his father. Published to accompany a multi-venue ten year survey of Gubash’s work, the publication includes original essays and photographic documentation. Born in Novi Sad, Serbia and living in Montréal, Milutin Gubash has exhibited throughout Canada, the United States, and Europe since 2000. In English and French.

Authors: Sylvain Campeau, Sandra Dyck, Annie Gauthier, Katarina Gubash, Marie-Claude Landry, Shirley Madill, Crystal Mowry, and Mathilde Roman
Publishers: Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, Carleton University Art Gallery, Musée d’art de Joliette, Rodman Hall Art Centre, and Southern Alberta Art Gallery
Year: 2013

Campeau, Sylvain, Sandra Dyck, Annie Gauthier, Katarina Gubash, Marie-Claude Landry, Shirley Madill, Crystal Mowry, and Mathilde Roman, eds. Milutin Gubash. Kitchener, ON / Ottawa, ON / Joliette, QB / St. Catharines ON / Lethbridge, AB: Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery / Carleton University Art Gallery / Musée de Joliette / Rodman Hall Art Centre / Brock University / Southern Alberta Art Gallery, 2013.

Known for her sculptural work depicting things both monstrous and wondrous, Catherine Heard’s Theatrum Mundi (November 8, 2008 – January 3, 2010) recalled the European tradition of the wunderkammer. Transforming the rear bay window wells of Rodman Hall’s historic mansion into her own cabinet of curiosities, Heard displayed her personal collection of artworks, objects, and oddities, adding to and rearranging her collection throughout the exhibition.

Drawing on the aesthetic of Heard’s installation, the publication designed by Jenn Hunt and Tom Creighton of factor[e] design initiative includes an artist’s multiple and features essays by J. Keri Cronin and Rebecca Ward.

Author(s): J. Keri Cronin and Rebecca Ward
Publisher(s): Rodman Hall Art Centre/Brock University
Year: 2011

Cronin, Keri J. and Rebecca Ward, eds. Catherine Heard: Theatrum Mundi. St. Catharines, ON: Rodman Hall Art Centre / Brock University, 2011. 32 pp. ISBN 9780986495540

During its cross-Canada tour, David Hoffos’s Scenes from the House Dream exhibition includes venues such as The National Gallery of Canada, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art and Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Alberta College of Art and Design. This publication displays Hoffos’s art practice from the last five years culminating in the masterpiece Scenes from the House Dream. It includes essays by Shirley Madill, David Garneau, Nancy Tousley and Chester Pelkey. The exhibition and publication has been organized by the Rodman Hall Art Centre/Brock University, with the assistance of the Southern Alberta Art Gallery and TrepanierBaer Gallery. The financial assistance of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts is gratefully acknowledged.

Author(s): David Garneau, Nancy Tousley, Shirley Madill & Chester Pelkey
Publisher(s): Rodman Hall Art Centre/Brock University
Year: 2010

Garneau, David, Nancy Tousley, Shirley Madill and Chester Pelkey, eds. David Hoffos: Scenes from the House Dream. St. Catharines, ON: Rodman Hall Art Centre / Brock University, 2009. 146 pp. ISBN 9780969120698

Using layered groups of transparent drawings suspended in museum-style cases, Spriggs creates what he calls Spatial Image Sculpture. These optical illusions of deep space, reminiscent of holograms, read as parallel spatial theatre. This deconstruction of form highlights the mechanics of vision at a time when cinema and digital imaging have come to offer alternative visual landscapes.

Author(s): Gordon Hatt & Charles Stankievech
Publisher(s): Rodman Hall Art Centre/Brock University & Southern Alberta Art Gallery
Year: 2008

Hatt, Gordon and Charles Stankievech, eds. David Spriggs: Archeology of Space. Lethbridge, Alberta / St. Catharines, ON: Southern Alberta Art Gallery / Rodman Hall Art Centre / Brock University, 2008. 63 pp. ISBN 9781894699440.

Co-published by Rodman Hall Art Centre/Brock University, The Reach Gallery Museum Abbotsford, and The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, the catalogue documents an exhibition that brought together monumental works from Dhaliwal’s oeuvre of the last twenty years to contextualize her recent work addressing the legacy of the Partition of India. Working in sculpture, installation, video, photography, and painting, Dhaliwal weaves compelling narratives that explore issues of culture, migration, and identity. Through lush, visually stunning imagery and poetic language she finds reparation for the past, responding to colonial histories with a critical approach that maintains reverence for wonder and imagination so that, as Dhaliwal describes, she may return beauty to the world.

Designed by Lauren Wickware, the publication features texts by Marcie Bronson, Richard Fung, Linda Jansma, Anne Koval, Deborah Root, Laura Schneider, and MJ Thompson; and photography by Toni Hafkenscheid.

Sarindar Dhaliwal: The Radcliffe Line and Other Geographies is published with the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

Author(s): Marcie Bronson, Richard Fung, Linda Jansma, Anne Koval, Deborah Root, Laura Schneider and MJ Thompson
Publisher(s): Rodman Hall Art Centre/Brock University, The Reach Gallery Museum Abbotsford, and The Robert McLaughlin Gallery
Year: 2017

Bronson, Marcie, Richard Fung, Linda Jansma, Anne Koval, Deborah Root, Laura Schneider, and MJ Thompson, eds. Sarindar Dhaliwal: The Radcliffe Line and Other Geographies. St. Catharines, ON / Abbotsford, BC / Oshawa, ON: Rodman Hall Art Centre / Brock University / The Reach Gallery Museum / The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, 2017.

Support from The Canada Council for the Arts allowed Rodman Hall to produce an artist’s bookwork documenting Ravine World, a drawing project created by Olia Mishchenko for the Project Space at Rodman Hall Art Centre. Designed by the artist in collaboration with Rob Gray of DesignWorks Studio, Ravine Worldconsists of a set of map-size reproductions of eight drawings of ravines (30 x 18”, folded to 15 x 18”) housed in a portfolio containing accompanying texts: a foreword by Curator Stuart Reid and an essay on Ravine World by guest writer Kenneth Hayes. The drawing reproductions are configured so they can be unfolded and assembled in various ways.

Author(s): Olia Mishchenko, Stuart Reid, Kenneth Hayes and Kathy Daymond
Publisher(s): Rodman Hall Art Centre/Brock University
Year: 2014

Mischenko, Olia, Stuart Reid, Kenneth Hayes, and Kathy Daymond, eds. Olia Mischenko: Ravine World. St. Catharines, ON: Rodman Hall Art Centre / Brock University, 2014. 9 folios. ISBN 9871928018025

Using photography, film, and CGI, the Toronto-based media artist explores how we see the world, and how our perception of reality can shift through various applications of what we record. In the central work discussed here four screens lean against the wall with images, both black and white and CGI, flowing one into the other. By conjoining images, the artist is attempting to create a hybrid space – asking the viewer to focus their attention on the nature of the images themselves. In a related work, Jones produces stereograms – images that allow us to see in three dimensions without the use of external visual aids. Published in collaboration with Rodman Hall Art Centre, Thames Art Gallery and The Reach Gallery Museum.

Author(s): Linda Jansma, Chris Gehman and Stuart Reid
Publisher(s): The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Rodman Hall Art Centre, Thames Art Gallery and The Reach Gallery Museum
Year: 2012

Jansma, Linda, Chris Gehman, and Stuart Reid, eds. Simone Jones: All That Is Solid. Oshawa, ON / St. Catharines, ON / Abbotsford, BC: The Robert McLaughlin Gallery / Rodman Hall Art Centre / Brock University / The Reach Gallery Museum, 2012.

Executed in Graeme Patterson’s signature style, Grudge Match imagines a freestyle wrestling match between the artist and his long-lost childhood friend, Yuki. Best friends at the age of 5, Patterson lost touch with Yuki once his friend returned to Japan four years later. Through sculptural installation and stop-motion video, puppets of Patterson and Yuki as teenagers engage in a fictional match in a high school gymnasium. A conflation of personal experience and emotional memory, the installation recreates and plays with Patterson’s memories of his first best friend, exploring boyhood rivalry and the bonds of friendship.

Author(s): Shirley Madill
Publisher(s): Rodman Hall Art Centre/Brock University
Year: 2011

Madill, Shirley, ed. Graeme Patterson: Grudge Match. St. Catharines, ON: Rodman Hall Art Centre / Brock University, 2011. CD. ISBN 9780986495526

Based in Victoria, BC, Luanne Martineau’s hybrid felted wool sculptures blur the boundaries between high modernist art and craft. With cultural references ranging from R. Crumb to Modernist masters, Martineau engages in a long tradition of merging social satire with contemporary art and creates powerful confrontations between the attractive, the familiar and the grotesque. Includes essays by Lesley Johnstone, Dan Adler & Shirley Madill. Published by the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal.

Author(s): Lesley Johnstone, Dan Adler & Shirley Madill
Publisher(s): Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal
Year: 2010

Johnstone, Lesley, Dan Adler, and Shirley Madill, eds. Luanne Martineau. Montréal: Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, 2010.

Susan Bozic’s work recalls the performance-based photography of Cindy Sherman and Jeff Wall while taking as its subject the social construction of romance. Bozic’s character’s dates a male mannequin and, through her photographs, we follow the couple from courtship and meeting the family to intimacy. Bozic reflects on consumer society’s pursuit of happiness and the good life while referencing the internet dating phenomenon by staging dates with someone a little bit “different.” Her project merges the optimism of movie-star promotional photographs with questions about both the tradition of courtship and its current state. Two essays elucidate her practice.

Author(s): Gordon Hatt & Bill Jeffries
Publisher(s): Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Rodman Hall Art Centre/Brock University & Simon Fraser University Gallery
Year: 2008

Hatt, Gordon and Bill Jeffries, eds. Susan Bosik: The Dating Portfolio. Lethbridge, AB / St. Catharines, ON / Vancouver, BC: Southern Alberta Art Gallery / Rodman Hall Art Centre / Brock University / Simon Fraser University Gallery, 2008.

This publication was co-published by Rodman Hall Art Centre/Brock University, St. Catharines, and Art Lab, Western University, London. The book features texts by curator Stuart Reid, Patrick Mahon and renown water specialist Robert Sandford. The book also includes conversations between participating artists Nadine Bariteau, Raymond Boisjoly, Elizabeth Chitty, Soheila Esfahani, Gautam Garoo, Patrick Mahon, Colin Miner, Lucy & Jorge Orta, and Gu Xiong around several topics related to the theme of water. The book was designed by Rob Gray of Designworks Studios in Toronto, and beautifully documents the major exhibition project that was mounted in St. Catharines during summer 2014.

Contemporary art can raise awareness of pertinent issues. Although access to fresh water is an essential human right, the resource has become a valuable global commodity. Our era, marked by rapid climate change, destructive hydro-climactic weather events, loss of polar ice and rising global sea levels, is witness to shifting shorelines, borders, migration patterns and lines of economic and cultural exchange.

Author(s): Stuart Reid, Patrick Mahon and Robert Sandford
Publisher(s): Rodman Hall Art Centre, Brock University & Art Lab, Western University, London
Year: 2017

Reid, Stuart, Patrick Mahon and Robert Sandford, eds. The Source: Rethinking Water Through Contemporary Art. St. Catharines, ON / London, ON: Rodman Hall Art Centre / Brock University / Art Lab, Western University, 2017.

Settlement is an artist’s garden and sculptural installation that has been installed since October 12, 2012, on the grounds on the banks of Twelve Mile Creek in St. Catharines. The project was commissioned for the site and mounted in conjunction with the Niagara Region’s celebration of its Cultural Capitals of Canada designation in 2012 and the bicentennial of the War of 1812. This popular work has already become an important landmark for visitors and a catalyst for community storytelling in Niagara.

In Settlement, Mary Anne Barkhouse examines issues of sovereignty and confederacy from an indigenous ecological vantage point. As an aboriginal woman, Barkhouse is mindful of the history of conflict imprinted on this region of Ontario. Many of the conflicts and alliances between First Nations and settling cultures that played out two hundred years ago are still unresolved today.

Rob Gray of DesignWorks Studios designed the publication. Michelle Lavallee, Associate Curator of the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina and an important Aboriginal curator in Canada, wrote an interview with the artist. Danny Custodio was official photographer.

Author(s): Mary Anne Barkhouse, Michelle Lavallee and Stuart Reid
Publisher(s): Rodman Hall Art Centre, Brock University
Year: 2014

Barkhouse, Mary Anne, Stuart Reid, and Michelle Lavallee, eds. Mary Anne Barkhouse: Settlement / Regency. St. Catharines, ON: Rodman Hall Art Centre / Brock University, 2014. 106 pp. ISBN 9781928018001.

Documenting the Rodman Hall’s 2008 retrospective of Anderson’s work, the fully-illustrated 36-page catalogue features essays by Carolyn Wren and John B. Boyle.

Author(s): Carolyn Wren and John B. Boyle
Publisher(s): Rodman Hall Art Centre/Brock University
Year: 2012

Wren, Carolyn and John B. Boyle, eds. Tobey C. Anderson: Trinities: 33 Years of Painting. St. Catharines, ON: Rodman Hall Art Centre / Brock University, 2012. 36 pp. ISBN 9780986495564

A Week At A Glance is a one-year project by Micah Lexier made specifically for Rodman Hall Art Centre. Beginning on the first Monday of 2011, four objects are displayed in the gallery’s project space, which has been converted, per Lexier’s specifications, into a custom-built vitrine. Each Monday, one object is removed and replaced by another object drawn from Lexier’s personal collection of everyday items. After fifty-two objects have cycled through the installation, three of the four objects presented during the first week are reintroduced, one per week, during the last three weeks of the installation. The project concludes on the first Sunday of 2012 with a display that is one move away from the first, creating a complete loop that brings the project back to its beginning.

This bookwork is a size-as reproduction of all fifty-two one-week displays. The size of the book relates to the display surface in the vitrine, and each week is represented by three consecutive double-page spreads. The book was designed as a stand-in for the exhibition, but it also stands alone.

Author(s): Marcie Bronson & Micah Lexier
Publisher(s): Rodman Hall Art Centre/Brock University
Year: 2011

Bronson, Marcie and Micah Lexier, eds. Micah Lexier: A Week at a Glance. St. Catharines, ON: Rodman Hall Art Centre / Brock University, 2011. N.p. ISBN 9780986495533

Samuel Roy-Bois’s Polarizer, in conjunction with The Robert McLaugin Gallery and Southern Alberta Art Gallery, presents this collaborative exhibition between the three galleries and includes a conversation between the artist and Ryan Doherty, curator of the Southern Alberta Art Gallery.

Author(s): Ryan Doherty & Samuel Roy-Bois
Publisher(s): Southern Alberta Art Gallery, The Robert McLaughlin Gallery & Rodman Hall Art Centre/Brock University
Year: 2009

Doherty, Ryan and Samuel Roy-Bois, eds. Samuel Roy-Bois: Polarizer. Oshawa, ON / St. Catharines, ON: The Robert McLaughlin Gallery / Rodman Hall Art Centre / Brock University, 2009. 89 pp. No ISBN

Author(s): Gordon Hatt & Steven Matijcio
Publisher(s): Rodman Hall Art Centre/Brock University
Year: 2006

Hatt, Gordon and Steven Majticio, eds. Diana Thorneycroft: The Doll Mouth Series. St. Catharines, ON: Rodman Hall Art Centre / Brock University, 2006.