FrAmEd: John Hall and Ron Moppett

As part of the ADAC Calgary Gallery Hop, FrAmEd is opening Saturday, September 9th concurrently at Loch Gallery and TrépanierBaer Gallery. Artists will be in attendance. 
 

Exhibition tour with the artists and curator Nancy Tousley
TrépanierBaer at 1:00 pm
 

Exhibition tour with the artists and curator Mary-Beth Laviolette
Loch Gallery at 2:00 pm

Independent curator and writer Mary-Beth Laviolette and John Hall will lead us through the history of the Rose Museum and the impact that he and Ron Moppett have each had on the arts in Alberta. Based in Canmore, Mary-Beth is the author of three books on Alberta art and several catalogues about the visual arts. With a broad knowledge of Canadian art, much of her practice is focused on the art of Alberta where she has lived and worked for four decades. Mary-Beth has a strong interest in both historic and contemporary art including fine craft and other forms of visual culture. 
 

We are pleased to present FrAmEd: John Hall and Ron Moppett in partnership with TrépanierBaer Gallery. The exhibition will be held at both galleries from September 9 to October 7, 2023, and will feature a series of new paintings made collaboratively by John Hall and Ron Moppett. Also included will be artworks from their first of many collaborative projects—the ground-breaking 1974 Rose Museum exhibition. Additionally, the exhibition will feature recent works by both artists, and paintings dating to the early years of their careers. 


Hall and Moppett met in the mid 1960s when they were classmates at the Alberta College of Art. In the early 1970s, Hall and Moppett each noticed how common the rose was in everyday life and both began using it in their work. From symbolism in historical art, to references in contemporary advertising and pop culture, right down to Hall’s Calgary address at the time (on Rosetree Road in Rosemont), the rose was everywhere. In 1972 they founded the International Society of Rose Painters, and the idea of the Rose Museum was born. The two-member society collected as many objets de rose as possible and mounted an exhibition at the Glenbow-Alberta Institute. It became a uniquely collaborative project; after the exhibition opened people continued to contribute, ultimately assembling over 1,000 rose-themed items.

Following a national tour the Rose Museum closed, but their collaborations did not cease. In 1975, Hall and Moppett curated a retrospective exhibition at the Edmonton Art Gallery for the influential Alberta artist Marion Nicoll who had taught them both at the Alberta College of Art. In 1978, Moppett curated the touring exhibition John Hall: Paintings and Auxiliary Works 1969 – 78 which was shown at the National Gallery of Canada.

Fifty years later the pair are back at it with FrAmEd, a series of trompe l’oeil paintings—a trick of the eye—causing viewers to think they are seeing a three-dimensional object. John Hall’s own Framed series goes back to 2016 when he began creating hyper-realistic paintings of artworks in frames, with the intention of tricking viewers into believing that they were looking at a painting in a real, three-dimensional frame.

The FrAmEd collaboration has both artists painting the same canvas—one painting a trompe l’oeil frame while the other paints the picture, and vice versa.

Using collage as the basic compositional strategy, the paintings depict colourful and sometimes hyperreal images of objects from daily life. Many of the objects harken back to the Rose Museum and wind through the intervening decades with a string of autobiographical narrative that ties the various elements in the series together. There is a playful and comedic quality to each of these skillfully executed paintings that invite viewers to delight in the pleasure of ambiguity.

Both Moppett and Hall have sustained long, and successful careers spanning over fifty years and both have made resonant contributions to the cultural life of the region and the country. FrAmEd: John Hall and Ron Moppett will shine a well-deserved spotlight on these two formidable artists who hold an important place in the history in the visual arts community in the city of Calgary, and across Canada.