Betty Goodwin's Notebook.Craig Boyko / AGO
Works by three of the most significant female artists of the post-war period are to be displayed this fall in a special linked exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Toronto will be the only Canadian venue for At Work, a major exploration of the processes and practices of German-born Eva Hesse, Montreal's Betty Goodwin and Agnes Martin, the Saskatchewan-born painter who lived most of her life in the U.S. All three artists are now dead - Hesse in 1970, Goodwin in 2008, Martin in 2004. Their show will open Sept. 22 at the AGO and run through Jan. 2, 2011.
The Hesse portion of the exhibition, organized by Edinburgh's Fruitmarket Gallery, brings together 50 of the sculptor's small test pieces or prototypes, most of which have never been seen before in Canada. Hesse, who died at 34, had a career lasting a little over 10 years, with only one solo show during her lifetime, but she has since been the subject of many posthumous exhibitions. Her work is distinguished by its eclecticism and its use of varied materials - masonite, latex, cloth, wire, fibreglass - in installations positioned on floors or mounted on walls.
AGO assistant curator Georgiana Uhlyarik is overseeing the Goodwin presentation. It will feature more than 100 sketchbooks by the late installation artist, painter, sculptor and printmaker along with several finished works from the AGO's permanent collection, generally regarded as the largest public repository of the Goodwin oeuvre. Touch screens are to be installed, displaying "interactive pages" that will allow visitors to experience Goodwin's process from start to finish.
The Martin show, curated by AGO associate curator Michelle Jacques, is being billed as the first comprehensive presentation of her paintings shown in Canada. Centrepiece of the exhibition is The Islands, a single work in 12 parts that Martin completed at her New Mexico studio in 1979 and is now part of the permanent collection of New York's Whitney Museum of American Art. The suite's paintings - all acrylics on canvas, each six-feet square, overlaid with Martin's signature grid of subtle graphite lines - will be accompanied by Martins from the AGO's own permanent collection.
The AGO is also hosting a series of talks on each artist. Kitty Scott, director of visual arts at the Banff Centre, will speak on Goodwin, U.S. artist Richard Tuttle will talk about his friend, Agnes Martin, while noted American critic and curator Lucy Lippard discusses Hesse. More details on the talks will be announced at www.ago.net/talks.