The Galerie de l’UQAM has been doing in-depth work on the art of Françoise Sullivan for many years. The public will certainly remember the exhibitions Œafrom Italyin September 2019, and Resplendent Trajectories, at the beginning of 2017, which was accompanied by a superbly produced catalogue. This exhibition, set up six years ago by Louise Déry, director of the Galerie de l’UQAM, allowed us to talk about the performative and conceptual works of Sullivan, many of which were unpublished and/or reconstituted on this occasion. The catalog also included numerous texts by Françoise Sullivan, several of which have never been published.
These days, the Galerie de l’UQAM is putting a version of its exhibition online an imaginary line, which took place between May and July 2021. And here again, a catalog brings together all the valuable research work carried out. In order to make this work available to a wider audience, the exhibition has been put on the web (sullivan-animaginaryline.ca) and will remain there until May 11, 2028. The site has many images, many videos and many relevant explanations… We also wonder why it could not stay online longer. Because of the rights costs for images?
The concept of virtual exhibitions is however totally commendable and finds a certain audience, among others among art history teachers and their students. Let’s remember how the virtual tour of the exhibition on Jean Paul Riopelle at the Museum of Fine Arts in 2021 was also a great success. In this year of Riopelle’s centenary, another signatory of Global denialit deserves to reappear on the Internet… Note that it is also possible, at all times, to consult online and download the monograph — produced by Annie Gérin — on Françoise Sullivan, by going to the website of the Art Canada Institute, a Toronto-based organization that has also done similar work on Alfred Pellan and Emily Carr, among others (aci-iac.ca/en/art-books/francoise-sullivan/)
This online presentation developed by the Galerie de l’UQAM focuses specifically on Sullivan’s production in the 1970s, a particularly fertile decade for the designer. She then produced works related to conceptual art, but also inspired by her encounter with artists of Arte povera. This research work gives increased coherence to a production which, as Déry writes, “cuts” with the rest of his work.
“The 1970s interested me because of the incompleteness or lack of several historical, geographical and artistic landmarks,” adds Pascale Déry. Sullivan did more than abstract painting — or even choreography — and was able to create outside of the legacy of Global denial. If there is a lesson to be learned from Global denial and of the artists who took part in it, it is precisely because art is freedom and that in Quebec, it cannot find itself locked into the creation associated with this 1948 manifesto.
Simon Blais Gallery
The Simon Blais Gallery, which has represented Sullivan for 18 years, will also be celebrating its 100e birthday with an 11e individual exhibition of the artist. About fifty pastels will be exhibited there, a form of art that she has been using since 1996. Martin Blais, son of Simon Blais, explains that “this is the largest exhibition that we have devoted to the work on pastel by Françoise Sullivan”, that the gallery had presented only a “small hanging of pastels in 2017”. He also tells us that we can find works by Sullivan in the exhibition dedicated to Riopelle at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, which will begin in October.
Simon Blais Gallery, until July 15
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
The Museum of Fine Arts had already mounted a retrospective of Sullivan’s work in 2003, curated by the current director, Stéphane Aquin. It is he again — in collaboration with Florence-Agathe Dubé-Moreau, guest curator — who represents his work, twenty years later. This new exhibition will certainly look back on the two new decades of his production, highlighting his multidisciplinary practice, but it will also include very recent pictorial works, a new corpus begun in 2022!
At the Carré d’art contemporain of the Museum of Fine Arts, from October 31, 2023 to February 18, 2024.