21 January – 23 April
Vernissage: 20 January @ 7:00 pm
Curated by Emily Falvey and Felicity Tayler

A sense of the impossibility of something just being what it is…
—Fernando Pessoa, 1932

John Murchie’s art explores the relationship between order and accident. By focusing on simple actions, such as drawing a line, applying paint, or selecting colours, he seeks chaos in constraint and humour in seriousness. Straight lines end up crooked, evenly applied layers of paint become strange formations, crossword puzzles reveal modernist abstractions. À rebours (Against the Grain) spans fifty years of Murchie’s artistic practice, which found its direction in the 1970s, when he was Director of the Library at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.

Murchie is also widely known for his generous mentorship and support of artists and cultural producers at all stages of their careers, his tireless work building artists’ networks, and his significant contributions to artist-run culture in Canada. These contributions have led many artists to express their respect and admiration for him through their work. This exhibition is accompanied by a small selection of these homages done by artists Erin Brubacher, John Haney, Micah Lexier, Deborah Margo, Graeme Patterson, Felicity Tayler, and Tara K. Wells.