Canadian Culture in the UK: A Year in Review, and What’s Next
2021 has been a great year for culture, as arts institutions and perennial events reawakened after a year's hiatus.
We have high hopes that creative collaborations between Canada and the UK will continue to abound next year. In fact, we already have a few events marked on our calendars that promise exactly this.
Some of our favourite events this year range from web-based theatre to contemporary painting, along with the many notable accolades awarded to Canadian artists and creatives.
One exhibition that kept cropping up in conversation was Canadian artist Allison Katz’s Tiled Artery which took place at Nottingham Contemporary this year. Making a name for herself with the employment of unconventional materials in painting whilst depicting imagery that verges on irony, she explores identity and expression through the use of recurring symbolism, such as roosters and cabbage. These motifs transform into a personal lexicon, expressing a visual language that is at once deeply individual and eerily familiar. If you missed the exhibition in 2021, you can catch a solo exhibition by this Canadian talent at Camden Art Centre in London from 14 January - 13 March 2021.
Allison Katz, Interior View II, “William N. Copley”, Milan, 2016-17, 2021 © Allison Katz; Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York
Jason Baerg was an artist I had the pleasure of speaking to this past year. His multi-disciplinary works draw on his knowledge of indigenous art and identity as a Cree-Metis artist, forging lines through tradition and innovation in a distinctly contemporary yet timeless manner. His current exhibition at the Canada House Gallery at Trafalgar Square in London is on view until 31 December 2021, so time is limited if you have not seen it yet. For more insight into this must-see exhibition, read our exhibition review.
Another immensely talented Canadian that I was afforded the opportunity to interview this year was award-winning composer Cecilia Livingstone. We spoke about her involvement with a live digital musical production inspired by the venerable Derek Jarman entitled “Garden of Vanished Pleasures”. The event, which took place exclusively online this past autumn, married Cecilia’s music with that of composer Donna McKevitt’s to create the sonic backbone to this production. In 2022, if you’re in or around Sussex towards the end of February, you’ll want to book tickets to Pay the Piper at Glyndebourne in Lewes, a new opera composed by four genius female composers, including Cecilia.
Portrait of Barbara Hannigan by Elmer de Haas
Other Canadian musical talents who will be taking the stage in 2022 can be found throughout the year at the Barbican in London, including Canadian conductor Jordan De Souza’s UK concert debut on 1 April with Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, and Canadian soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan’s Poulenc La voix humaine on 24 February. If these wonderfully contemporary orchestral sounds aren’t your jam, vocalist and songwriter Aoife O’Donovan will be performing with support from Canadian folk and country singer-songwriter Donovan Woods on 2 February at Milton Court Concert Hall, about a 5-minute walk from the main Barbican building. And if you lean more towards rock than country, beloved Canadian band Barenaked Ladies will be performing at the Royal Albert Hall on 28 March, a concert that was postponed from 2020.
2022 doesn’t just promise to bring music to look forward to. There are several contemporary art exhibitions on my radar that I can’t wait to attend. Topping that list is The 49th Parallel by Turner Prize recipient Lawrence Abu Hamdan, taking place at Spike Island in Bristol, opening in October. The exhibition is jointly commissioned by Spike Island, the Toronto Biennial, Mercer Union in Toronto, the Sharjah Art Foundation, and the Western Front in Vancouver, and it focuses on the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, a site of wavering borders that is between the jurisdictions of Canada and the USA.
Ally McIntyre, Fever Dreams, 2015. Acrylic and Oil on Canvas.
Another exhibition to put in your diary is the British Art Show, a touring exhibition now in its 9th edition. featuring some of the most important artists currently based in the UK. Among the artists in this iteration is one of my favourites, Sin Wai Kin fka Victoria Sin, who is originally from Toronto and who dances across the borders of identity as someone non-binary and mixed-race, employing storytelling methods that are not confined to a single medium. You’ll also want to catch Dog Day Circus by Canadian painter Ally McIntyre, from 18 December 2021 until 23 January 2022, whose distinctive style ranges from playfully humorous to staggeringly uncanny.