Gathie Falk: Revelations, published on the occasion of the retrospective exhibition curated by Sarah Milroy, investigates the career of a legendary Canadian artist.
Now in her nineties, Gathie Falk was born in 1928 in Brandon, Manitoba, settling finally in Vancouver, where she established herself as one of Canada’s most visionary and experimental artists. Flying horses, rows of potted conifers festooned with blossoms and ribbons, floating cabbages, piles of glossy apples, gentlemen’s brogues presented in reliquary style, expanses of water, or burgeoning flower beds exploding with color—these have been the manifestations of Falk’s rampant imagination as she has explored the disciplines of painting, ceramic, performance art and installation over the span of a half century. In all her works, effulgence and order are held in a dynamic tension as she works through her generative themes and variations.
A trailblazer on all fronts, she has brought a rich sensibility to bear on her observations of the everyday, perceptions often tinged with the surreal and the uncanny. From her fruit piles to the landmark performances of her early career, to her extended pursuit of themes with variations in her painting practice —expanses of water dazzling with light, riotous flower borders set against cement sidewalks, night skies pierced by starlight or obscured by clouds—she finds the wondrous in the routine world around her, pursuing her work with a modesty and diligence that reflects her Russian Mennonite heritage.
The publication includes an introduction by McMichael Chief Curator Sarah Milroy, lead essay by Vancouver curator and writer Daina Augaitis (who examines her performance and installation works in a national and international context), and a host of other artists and writers, rising to the occasion of this career-spanning survey. This catalogue summarizes an extraordinary career, with full page images of her artworks and rarely seen archival photos of the artist’s studio, performance works, and Falk herself.
For more than sixty years, Falk has generated work of extraordinary thematic integrity and material invention. This publication will illuminate those connections across disciplines, while also tracing the artist’s journey from youth to old age—from the lushness of the fruit piles, with their sensuous surfaces and dazzling colors, to the sepulchral hush of the night skies.
Author Biography:
Jocelyn Anderson, Deputy Director, Art Canada Institute, Toronto, is an art historian whose recent research focuses on art and the British Empire, particularly art in Canada in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her work on images of the British Empire has been published in British Art Studies and the Oxford Art Journal, and she is the author of William Brymner: Life and Work (Art Canada Institute, 2020). Anderson has a PhD from the University of London (Courtauld Institute of Art). Daina Augaitis, was Chief Curator/Associate Director from 1996 to 2017 at the Vancouver Art Gallery where she worked with a team of curators to conceive and develop the Gallery’s exhibitions, publications, collections and public programs. Among the over 30 exhibitions she curated or co-curated were these solo projects of Rebecca Belmore, Douglas Coupland, Stan Douglas, Charles Edenshaw, Geoffrey Farmer, Kimsooja, Muntadas, Brian Jungen, Ian Wallace, Gillian Wearing and Zhu Jinshi.
John Geoghegan is a writer and curator based in Toronto. His primary areas of interest are Canadian women artists, portraiture, and Inuit art. He is co-curator of the exhibitions Moving Side and Forward: A Journey through the Collection of York University for the Varley Art Gallery, Markham, Ontario, and Looking Down from Up for Gallery 44, Toronto. Geoghegan is the former Senior Editor of Inuit Art Quarterly. Sarah Milroy is Chief Curator of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario. The former editor and publisher of Canadian Art magazine, she served as lead art critic of The Globe and Mail from 2001 to 2011. In 2014, she and Ian A.C. Dejardin curated From the Forest to the Sea: Emily Carr in British Columbia, at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, UK, followed by Vanessa Bell (2017) and David Milne: Modern Painting (2018). Milroy and Dejardin also curated the McMichael’s exhibition Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald: Into the Light (2019). Milroy was the curator of Uninvited: Canadian Women Artists in the Modern Moment (2021–22) at the McMichael. Nancy Tousley is an art critic, arts journalist and independent curator. She was art critic of the Calgary Herald for more than thirty years and a contributing editor of Canadian Art. She has organized exhibitions and written numerous catalogue essays for public art galleries across Canada. In 2002 she was recognized for outstanding achievement in arts journalism by the Canadian Museums Association and in 2011 was given a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts for her contributions to contemporary Canadian art. Most recently, she was a contributor to the monograph Vikky Alexander: Extreme Beauty and co-editor and essayist for A Sublime Vernacular: The Landscape Painting of Levine Flexhaug, both published by Figure 1 Publishing. She lives in Calgary, Alberta.
