KWAG Honoured at 2019 OAAG Awards

Curator Lisa Myers and KWAG were the proud recipients of the Award for Exhibition of the Year (Budget over $20,000 - Thematic) for Post Script at this week's 42nd Ontario Association of Art Galleries (OAAG) Awards. Award winners were recognized at a gala ceremony at the Harbourfront Centre Theatre in Toronto on Monday 25 November.

View of Lisa Myers as seen through the aperture of Rebecca Belmore's sculptural megaphone, lit violet by Susan Blight's installation

Post Script continued conversations started in Lisa Myers’ 2017 curatorial project, Carry Forward through artworks that access site and land through sound, language and materials. Beginning from a brief solo presentation of Rebecca Belmore’s influential artwork Ayum-ee-aawach Oomama-mowan: Speaking to Their Mother, this innovative exhibition introduced a new artist and artwork for each week of the exhibition’s run, allowing a dialogue to unfold gradually in the exhibition space between Belmore and artists Susan Blight, Melissa General and Luke Parnell.

This year’s recognition marks the second consecutive year that the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery has received one of OAAG’s coveted Exhibition Awards following last year’s win for Maggie Groat: Suns also Seasons. This year’s recognition builds upon KWAG’s growing record of success at the OAAG Awards, which also includes the 2016 Design Award: Exhibition Catalogue for Kathe Gray’s work on Jane Buyers: Gather… Arrange… Maintain, and the 2011 Exhibition Award for Ernest Daetwyler: Reality in Reverse (barn raising).        

“There are many remarkable exhibitions and programs being presented by public art galleries in Ontario, and being recognized by a jury of our peers with this award means a great deal to us,” says Shirley Madill, KWAG’s Executive Director. “Post Script was a powerful exhibition and I commend Guest Curator Lisa Myers and KWAG’s Senior Curator, Crystal Mowry, on all the hard work that was put into this project.”

Many congratulations to Lisa Myers, the exhibiting artists and our hard-working teams of art professionals here at KWAG who rallied around Lisa to make this innovative exhibition come together:

Post Script
Lisa Myers, Curator and Exhibition Designer
Crystal Mowry and Linda Perez, Exhibition Coordinators
Shannon Muegge, Barbara Hobot, Kate Carder Thompson, Linda Perez, Jennifer Bullock, and Sarah M. Beattie, Installation Team
Rebecca Belmore, Susan Blight, Melissa General, and Luke Parnell, Artists


Photo: Curator Lisa Myers as seen through the aperture of Rebecca Belmore's Ayum-ee-aawach Oomama-mowan: Speaking to Their Mother while discussing Susan Blight's We Will Be Heard at the Curator's Talk for Post Script. Photo © Scott Lee, 2018.