We’re all familiar with the official vision of our capital city, but what lies below the surface?
Our second informal HTA field trip will take place this Friday, October 2, when we’ll visit the Ottawa Art Gallery Annex at Ottawa City Hall to see the exhibition Official Ottawa: an Unofficial Portrait, by Tony Fouhse. This wonderful exhibition is a provocative and somewhat disturbing look at some of the things that make our city tick.
Ottawa is a city full of iconic places familiar from postcards, T-shirts, mousepads and mugs: the Parliament Buildings (especially the Peace Tower), the Supreme Court, the National Gallery, etc. But capital cities cannot live by icons alone. Every bit as central to the city’s function as a capital, but generally ignored or hidden from view, are spaces, places and people that are grittier, harder to love, and definitely don’t appear on mugs. These are the subjects of Tony Fouhse’s exhibition.
Fouhse says that the exhibition was inspired by the chilling events of last October22, when a gunman murdered an unarmed soldier before being killed in a shootout inside Centre Block. That tragedy led him to consider the ‘unofficial’ side to this bastion of officialdom. What, besides flags and monuments and towers and turrets, does it mean to be the national capital? His answer to that question provides an eye-opening and unsettling portrait of the city we live in.
Our field trip, like the one to the FH Evans exhibition, will be very informal – no paperwork, no registration, just show up and we’ll go through it together. I’ll look forward to seeing you there!
The Details:
HTA visit to Official Ottawa: an Unofficial Portrait by Tony Fouhse
Ottawa Art Gallery Annex at Ottawa City Hall, 110 Laurier Avenue West
Friday, October 2
6:00 PM
Admission free, all are welcome
Please meet me in the exhibition space