The exhibition at the McMichael includes more than 100 photographs taken by John Macfie (1925–2018), a settler trapline manager who worked in Northern Ontario in those decades. He recorded life in Anishinaabe, Cree, and Anisininew communities far north of Lake Superior, in the territory along James and Hudson Bay.

Employed by the Ontario Department of Land and Forests, Macfie spent more than a decade traveling across lakes, rivers, forests, and tundra, becoming familiar with both the land and the Indigenous communities, capturing with his camera the activities, warmth, and resilience of the people he met.

Curated  by nîpisîhkopâwiyiniw (Willow Cree) author Paul Seesequasis at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, the exhibition is titled People of the Watershed: Photographs by John Macfie.

The exhibition is part of the Contact Photography Festival (the Macfie exhibition runs May 11-Nov 17 at The McMichael in Kleinberg, Ontario)

Archives of Ontario fonds description of John Macfie’s 1390 photographs, negatives and slides.

Banza’s imagined topographies suggest river systems and agricultural zones tainted by the waste of the mining industry, as well as mass burial sites that can be detected on Google Earth and other surveillance platforms.

Moridja Kitenge Banza: Topographies is presented at the McMichael as a contemporary response to Cobalt: A Mining Town and the Canadian Imagination. While earlier generations of Canadian artists have depicted the mining industry as picturesque and even sublime, Banza’s work considers the environmental and social impact resource extraction has on communities around the world.

Moridja Kitenge Banza’s website, here.

Moridja Kitenge Banza: Topographies at the McMichael, here.

Artist Page at Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, Montreal, here.

Image at top of post: Moridja Kitenge Banza (b. 1980), Chiromancie #14 n°1, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 152.4 x 106.7 cm, private collection. Photo courtesy of the artist and Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, Montreal © Moridja Kitenge Banza

The internationally celebrated Canadian artist Marcel Dzama opens his first major exhibition in this country in nearly a decade at the McMichael Canadian Collection, running Dec. 9 through June 9, 2024.

The exhibition – Ghosts of Canoe Lake – contains a new body of work inspired by Dzama’s interest in Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven. (The revered Canadian artist Tom Thomson died mysteriously on Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park in 1917).

Dzama was born in Winnipeg and rose to prominence from the late 1990s for his delicate and fantastical drawings made with ink, watercolour paint and root beer. Based now in Brooklyn, his practice also includes performance, sculpture, and video.

Much more on Marcel Dzama at David Zwirner gallery, here.

About the exhibition at The McMichael, here.

Marcel Dzama on Instagram, here.

The McMichael Canadian Art Collection never lacks imagination for its exhibitions. The latest is a full court press art exploration of Cobalt, Ontario, which emerged in 1904 as a mining hub, boasting rich deposits of silver, cobalt, ore, and nickel.

The exhibition Cobalt: A Mining Town and the Canadian Imagination focuses on a northern community that once drew global attention, luring miners, scientists, scholars, and artists. (Exhibition runs Nov. 18 to April 21, 2024)

The exhibition focuses on the artistry of those who documented Cobalt and its silver mines during the interwar years and after the resource boom subsided. Among these artists were influential Canadian modern painters, including Yvonne McKague Housser, Bess Larkin Housser Harris (above), Isabel McLaughlin, Frederick Banting, A.Y. Jackson, and Franklin Carmichael.

“Some celebrated Cobalt as a symbol of industry and enterprise, others focused on the town’s grit and dishevelment. Our exhibition and publication delve into this dynamic relationship, shedding new light on the settlers’ connection with the natural landscape,” the McMichael says.

McMichael Canadian Art Collection exhibition page, here.

Credits for the Franklin Carmichael painting, top of post: A Northern Silver Mine, 1930, oil on canvas, 101.5 x 121.2 cm, Gift of Mrs. A.J. Latner, McMichael Canadian Art Collection. See also a previous Art Junkie post on Group of Seven artist Franklin Carmichael and other members of the group (here).