by BK Munn
Tonight is the launch of this major art show celebrating the width and breadth of contemporary Canadian cartooning. This Is Serious: Canadian Indie Comics is an exhibit at the Hamilton Art Gallery, curated by Joe Ollmann and Alana Traficante.
The show bills itself as “a survey of contemporary Canadian artists working in the expansive genre of cartooning and indie comics. On the international stage, the comic arts are highly regarded, but in Canada, it is arguable that cartoonists don’t receive the same level of art world recognition. Despite this, Canadians make considerable contributions to the greater field of international comics, and Toronto, Montreal, and Hamilton are all significant centres of comic art production.”
The curators are answering a perceived “void” in Canadian museums: “THIS IS SERIOUS takes the energy of underground artistic production and indie publishing as its impetus to make visible the breadth of activity by a diverse range of artists working in this genre, throughout Canada.”
The show features a who’s who of major cartoonists, past and present, and many will be on hand for this evening’s opening, 6pm to 10pm tonight. The show runs all year.
There will be a printed collection of work from the show from Conundrum Press as well, you can preorder it here.
Sami Alwani | Ho Che Anderson | Kate Beaton | Marc Bell | Blaine | Simon Bossé | David Boswell | Chester Brown | Nina Bunjevac | Jessica Campbell | Geneviève Castrée | Marta Chudolinska | David Collier | Katherine Collins | Michael DeForge | Julie Delporte | Aminder Dhaliwal | Julie Doucet | Pascal Girard | Gord Hill | Jesse Jacobs | Patrick Kyle | Ginette Lapalme | Ness Lee | Hartley Lin | Graeme MacKay | Billy Mavreas | Carel Moiseiwitsch | Sylvia Nickerson | Obom| Simon Orpana | Meredith Park | Cole Pauls | Michel Rabagliati | Rebecca Rosen | Gord Pullar | Seth | Walter Scott | James Simpkins | Fiona Smyth | Jillian Tamaki | Maurice Vellekoop | Kat Verhoeven | Eric Kostiuk Williams | Connor Willumsen | Jenn Woodall | Doug Wright.