Exhibition opens: Sept. 20 and runs until Dec. 6, 2024.
Experience the unique and thought-provoking work of visual artist Terry Graff in this national touring exhibition. The exhibition showcases over 400 paintings, collages, assemblages and sculptures with a persistent avian motif in an elaborate techno-fantasy that focuses on Graff’s life-long exploration of the relationship between nature and technology.
Terry Graff’s artistic output over the past 50 years remains connected to his early experiences as a child. Originating in this naive confrontation of the world, his birds are a mnemonic provocation, mined from subconscious impressions, an attempt to put the pieces together. Over these years he has incorporated a vast range of media - not only the usual artists’ tools like paint, brushes and pencils, but all the detritus of the everyday world, discarded then found, re-envisioned and reassembled.
Rather like a mad scientist, Graff is drawn to create - to breathe life into the dead and lifeless objects he picks up along the way. He layers, pummels, rivets, scars, burns and beats fantastical new creations into being. Each piece is a product of the artist’s mind forged from the power of his own hand. Each is a visual feast, a dystopian and terrible beauty, created to shine light on the deeper sociological and existential implications of our present reality.
Graff’s vast body of work has been presented regionally, nationally and internationally to both critical and popular acclaim. Along with his studio practice in Island View, New Brunswick, Graff has had a distinguished career as a curator, an art educator, an art writer and as a gallery director. He has served as director of four public art galleries in four different provinces (Beaverbrook Art Gallery, NB; Mendel Art Gallery, SK; Rodman Hall Art Centre, ON; and the Confederation Centre Art Gallery, PEI), as well as director of the artist-run Struts Gallery. He has curated over 200 exhibitions and authored numerous articles, catalogues and books on both contemporary and historical art.
As an art educator, Graff served as Education Curator for the Art Gallery of Windsor, taught visual arts as a high school art teacher in Ontario and New Brunswick, and developed a special program for gifted children designed to encourage and expand creative thinking. In addition, he has been an advisor for several postgraduate art students, and taught drawing and sculpture at Mount Allison University and Contemporary Management in Arts and Culture for the University of New Brunswick. He has been a tireless advocate for the importance of art in people’s lives and as an essential ingredient for the health and well-being of communities.
The UNB Art Centre in Fredericton is the final destination for Avian Cyborgs, having previously been shown at the Art Gallery of Sudbury in Ontario, the Woodstock Art Gallery in Ontario and the Cape Breton University Art Gallery in Sydney, Nova Scotia. In conjunction with the exhibition is a copiously illustrated, multi-authored, 200-page book about Graff’s art published by Xeno-Optic Research Lab and Press of St. Thomas University, Fredericton, N.B.
Memorial Hall | 9 Bailey Drive | UNB Fredericton campus
For more information, call 506-453-4623.
Monday to Friday: 9 a.m. - 4 p.m.
Free admission | Everyone welcome
Details of work: Krieg Vogel | 2016 Mixed media | 40.64 X 50.80 cm
