Exhibition runs July 28—August 22, 2018

This exhibition is part of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts Travelling Exhibition Program.

Curated by Todd Schaber

The exhibition, White Nurse, presents a series of 20 artworks that portray Blair Brennan’s battle and rehabilitation from the addiction to prescription pain medication.

The coloured ink and burned paper artworks feature words and phrases emphasizing key emotions, concepts and realities associated with addiction. The inner world and the inner struggle is clearly, and at the same time vaguely, put to paper. The series’ specific use of burned paper as a mark-making tool is fitting because, unlike a pencil that can be erased from paper, it creates a lasting and permanent impression.

Brennan has been making branding irons since 1987. Brennan’s steel branding irons are in every way similar to the sort of branding iron that would be used on livestock and Regina-based artist and critical art writer David Garneau has called Brennan an “Edmonton-based neo-beat poet disguised as a blue-collar industrial artist who brands walls, books, leather and paper with the world’s subtexts.”

Brennan’s sculptures, installations and drawings have been exhibited nationally in numerous group and solo exhibitions. Brennan has contributed articles to a number of printed and digital arts, and cultural publications. His work was recently included in a three-person exhibition in Athens, Greece, the first substantial exhibition of his work internationally.