The Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery is excited to have a new exhibition in the gallery this fall focusing on the expansive career of Regina artist Marsha Kennedy.
Marsha Kennedy: Embodied Ecologies will feature an array of work from the entire span of Kennedy’s four-decade career in the arts, as a retrospective look at her work.
“She has had a huge impact on a lot of Saskatchewan artists, especially in southern Saskatchewan and in the Regina and Moose Jaw area, and especially for painters because that is her main discipline,” said gallery curator Jennifer McRorie. “So it’s an honour to do an overview of her practice over the years.”
Kennedy has been an instructor at the University of Regina for over 30 years and a member of the art community for even longer, and so the show will be including pieces of work from as far back in her career as 1981 and as recent as this past year.
“There’s a range of works, from printmaking, painting, sculpting and installation, and also photographic prints and digital prints,” said McRorie. “There’s a real variety in this exhibition, and I think people will find it really intriguing and the work really engaging.”
The pieces included in the show have come from both public and private sources, with some provided from the MJMAG’s own collection as well as the Esplanade Arts & Heritage Centre in Medicine Hat, Alta., the Vernon Public Art Gallery in Vernon B.C. and from private collections.
Much of Kennedy’s work is connected by the theme of nature and environmental drive, said McRorie, which is the most interesting thing about viewing Kennedy’s retrospective together in the gallery.
“Even though her work changes through all the different medium approaches that she’s working in, there’s sort of a connecting element, through all her bodies of work and that is her environmental drive to try and connect back to nature,” said McRorie. “Her work is really encouraging us to rethink how we live in a sustainable way and in a very nurturing relationship with nature.”
Embodying Ecologies will open to the public with three opening dates on Oct. 9 at 7 p.m., Oct. 17 at 10 a.m. and Oct. 24 at 10 a.m., which is a new approach to exhibition debuts from the MJMAG that will allow the gallery to follow COVID-19 guidelines.
Hosting multiple dates for the show’s opening is meant to help keep the number of people gathered in the gallery to the limit of 20, and guests are asked to register for one of the dates in order to attend.
Masks will be required inside the building, as is the MJMAG’s current policy, and attendees will have to undergo some health screening upon entering the gallery. There will also be a more structured viewing of the exhibit, to control traffic throughout the gallery, and an opportunity to speak with the artist in the MJMAG’s theatre.
Despite the more complicated safety measures in place, McRorie and the MJMAG are excited to be able to host an in-person event for the fall exhibition.
“I was a little concerned that with COVID-19, we may not be able to have openings but because it’s a retrospective, you really want to celebrate the career of an artist,” said McRorie. “We just want people to be as comfortable as possible and safe, and still be able to come and see the show.”
The Marsha Kennedy: Embodying Ecologies exhibit will also be made available to view virtually on the MJMAG’s website, for those interested in seeing and reading the text panels of the show at home, and the gallery will be hosting a virtual In Conversation with Marsha Kennedy event on Oct. 15 to talk about Kennedy's career.
