In addition to presenting the exhibition devoted to the artist, the Musée will underscore the importance of Edmund Alleyn with a series of public conversations about the man and his work. This series will bring together different voices (artists, art historians, filmmakers, art critics) to discuss such topics as the impact Alleyn had on the people around him and his influence on contemporary Québec art.
These five conversations will each feature a pair of guest speakers and will be held on Wednesday evenings at 7 p.m. in the exhibition galleries. Admission to the conversations is included in the Musée ticket price and is free for MACarte holders.
Conversation 1: May 25
Jennifer Alleyn and Leslie Reid
Listen to the conversation (in French and English)
Conversation 2: June 8
Geneviève Cadieux and Pierre Dorion
Listen to the conversation (in French)
Conversation 3: June 15
Peter Gnass, Suzanne Pasquin and Denis Rousseau
Listen to the conversation (in French)
Conversation 4: August 24
Yvon Cozic and Michel Goulet
Listen to the conversation (in French)
Conversation 5: September 7
Vincent Bonin and Mark Lanctôt
Listen to the conversation (in French)
Participant Biographies
Conversation 1
Born in Switzerland, Jennifer Alleyn lives and works in Montréal. A graduate of Concordia University, where she earned a BFA in film, she began her career by taking part in the television show La Course Destination monde. In her films, which have won awards in Canada and abroad, she examines the role of art in society. Since 2008, she has devoted several years to making three films on painting. Her first feature-length film, L’atelier de mon père, released in 2008, offered a posthumous dialogue with the work of her father, painter Edmund Alleyn. The film won a Gémeaux award and was nominated for a Jutra award for best documentary, in addition to garnering the award for best Canadian film at the International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA). She returned to FIFA in 2011 with the award-winning film Dix fois Dix, about painter Otto Dix. That same year, she participated in the exhibition Big Bang, presented at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, with an installation produced in collaboration with Nancy Huston. She has just secured financing for a fiction feature film titled Impetus, which she will shoot in winter 2017.
Born in Ottawa en 1947, Leslie Reid earned a BA at Queen’s University and studied at the Byam Shaw School of Art, Chelsea College of Arts and Slade School of Fine Art in London. She was part of the landmark exhibition Some Canadian Women Artists (1975) organized by the National Gallery of Canada to mark the first International Women’s Year, and she also represented Canada at the Paris Biennale. Her work has been featured in a number of solo exhibitions, at the Canada House Gallery (London), Centre culturel canadien (Paris), Agnes Etherington Art Centre (Kingston) and Robert McLaughlin Gallery (Oshawa), among others. A retrospective of her work, curated by Diana Nemiroff, was presented at the Carleton University Art Gallery in fall 2011. Reid has also been the recipient of numerous grants and awards from the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, of which she has been a member since 1978. Her work is in a number of public and private collections across Canada. Reid is Professor Emerita in the University of Ottawa’s Department of Visual Arts and is represented by Galerie Laroche/Joncas in Montréal and Galerie St-Laurent + Hill in Ottawa.
Conversation 2
Geneviève Cadieux lives and works in Montréal. She has taken part in numerous group exhibitions since the 1980s, including the Biennale de Montréal, Bienal de São Paulo and Biennale of Sydney, as well as the 1990 Venice Biennale, where she represented Canada. In addition to these prestigious presentations, her works have been seen around the world in solo exhibitions and may also be found in a number of public and private collections. She is an associate professor in the photography program at Concordia University’s Faculty of Fine Arts. In 2011, she received the Governor General’s Award for Visual and Media Arts. Cadieux is represented by Galerie René Blouin in Montréal.
Born in Ottawa, Pierre Dorion lives and works in Montréal. He has a BFA from the University of Ottawa. Over the last thirty years, he has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions and taken part in various art events, including Aurora Borealis in 1985 and Les Cent jours d’art contemporain de Montréal in 1992. In 1997, he received the Prix Louis-Comtois awarded by the Ville de Montréal in collaboration with AGAC (Contemporary Art Galleries Association). He was the subject of an exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 2010, and the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal presented a retrospective of his work, curated by Mark Lanctôt, in 2012. His works are held in the collections of the major Québec and Canadian museums. He is represented by Galerie René Blouin in Montréal, Diaz Contemporary in Toronto and Jack Shainman Gallery in New York.
Born in Germany in 1936, Peter Gnass immigrated to Québec in 1957. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg and the École des beaux-arts de Montréal. A multidisciplinary artist (sculpture, drawing, photography), he taught for some twenty years at the University of Ottawa. His works may be found in numerous public collections, including those of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Musée de Joliette and Musée régional de Rimouski. He has exhibited in Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Denmark and the United States. A retrospective of his work was organized by the Galerie de l’UQAM in 2004. Gnass has produced many works of public art and, for the past three years, has used the Vieux Théâtre de Pierreville as studio and living space.
Conversation 3
Suzanne Pasquin lives and works in Montréal. She attended the École des beaux-arts de Montréal and taught in the Université du Québec à Montréal’s Department of Visual Arts for over eight years and in the University of Ottawa’s Department of Visual Arts from 1976 to 1999. Her work is held in a number of public and private collections, including those of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Canada Council Art Bank, Concordia University, Université de Montréal and Art Gallery of Peterborough.
Denis Rousseau lives and works in Montréal. Originally a sculptor, but also a video artist and photographer, he demonstrates a predilection for installation and kinetic art. He was a professor at the School of Visual and Media Arts, Université du Québec à Montréal, from 1991 to 2012, and also taught for some ten years at the University of Ottawa. His works have been shown in Canada, the United States, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. In collaboration with the Musée régional de Rimouski, a retrospective of his work was presented in 2005 in several galleries and museums across Québec. His works have also been seen in many exhibitions, including Les Cent jours d’art contemporain de Montréal and shows at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. His work is in a number of public and private collections, and he is represented by Joyce Yahouda Gallery in Montréal.
Conversation 4
Michel Goulet lives and works in Montréal. Well known for his definitive contribution to public art in Canada and abroad, he has produced more than fifty permanent works in the last thirty-five years, including seven in Belgium and France. He recently inaugurated a permanent installation, Les confidents, which he created for the garden of the Palais-Royal in Paris. He has been a continuous presence on the art scene for forty years and has been featured in numerous exhibitions in prestigious venues in Canada and abroad. His work may be found in major public and private collections. Goulet represented Canada at the 1988 Venice Biennale and won the 1990 Prix Paul-Émile-Borduas. In 2004, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal devoted a survey show to him, curated by Josée Bélisle. He received the Governor General’s Award in 2008 and was made a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 2009. He was recently awarded an honorary doctorate by the Université de Sherbrooke. His contribution to theatre and opera set design has also earned him many distinctions. Goulet is represented by Galerie Simon Blais in Montréal.
Cozic is a two-headed, four-handed artist made up of Monic Brassard (1944) and Yvon Cozic (1942), who live and work in Longueuil as well as Sainte-Anne de Larochelle. In addition to collaboratively producing works since the late 1960s, this duo created the Société du Noble Végétal in 1971 and, in 1991, the Société du Compas dans l’Oeil. Cozic is also one of the founding members of the group Média, gravures et multiples. Since 1968, Cozic has exhibited regularly in Canada and abroad. Among their many solo exhibitions are shows held at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (1970, 1976, 1978), Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris (1976), Musée régional de Rimouski (1990), Saidye Bronfman Centre (Montréal, 1991) and Plein Sud (Longueuil, 1998). Their works are found in a number of public collections, including those of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, National Gallery of Canada, Canada Council Art Bank and Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec. The duo is represented by Galerie Graff in Montréal and was awarded the Prix Paul-Émile Borduas in 2015.
Conversation 5
Writer and curator Vincent Bonin lives and works in Montréal. As curator, he organized Documentary Protocols (1967-1975), presented at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery in 2007 and 2008. He also co-curated the exhibition Traffic: Conceptual Art in Canada (1965-1980), which toured extensively in Canada and Europe from 2010 to 2014. In 2012, with Catherine J. Morris, he organized the exhibition Materializing “Six Years”: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. More recently, he curated D’un discours qui ne serait pas du semblant/Actors, Networks, Theories, presented at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery in 2014 and at Dazibao in 2015, and Voilà le meilleur portrait que, plus tard, j’ai réussi à faire de lui. Passages vers l’abstraction, a retrospective of the work of Geneviève Cadieux, at the Musée d’art de Joliette.
Curator of the exhibition Edmund Alleyn: In my studio I am many, Mark Lanctôt is working at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal since 2016. There he has organized solo shows by Yannick Pouliot, Tacita Dean, Marcel Dzama, Runa Islam, Daniel Young & Christian Giroux, Pierre Dorion, Michel de Broin, Jon Rafman and Ryan Gander, as well as an exhibition of works from the Musée’s Collection entitled …other spaces. He has co-curated a major retrospective of Canadian abstract artist Claude Tousignant’s work and was part of the curatorial team behind both editions of the Quebec Triennial and the 2014 edition of the Biennale de Montreal. His writings have appeared in Canadian Art and esse art + opinions, among other periodicals. He is developing an ongoing series of exhibitions and events in collaboration with Jonathan Middleton of the Or Gallery (Vancouver) entitled The Troubled Pastoral.
