Erica Rutherford
Her Lives and Works book launch at CCAG—Aug 4
“The struggle to realize and to express my nature is my life’s meaning.”
—Erica Rutherford
Bookmark, Charlottetown’s independent bookstore, is partnering with the Confederation Centre Art Gallery (CCAG) to launch Erica Rutherford: Her Lives and Works. The event will take place at CCAG on August 4 at 7 pm. Pan Wendt, the book’s editor, will give a talk about Rutherford’s work. Admission is free, and all are welcome.
Erica Rutherford was a multidisciplinary Canadian artist and transgender pioneer. As an artist, actor, filmmaker, farmer, teacher, and writer, Rutherford’s remarkably multifaceted career took her across several countries and continents before she settled on Prince Edward Island in the 1970s. Here, she established herself as a painter and printmaker, using art to engage in a reflection on gender construction and agency.
This remarkable retrospective includes reproductions of paintings, prints, and drawings, as well as personal photographs. An interview with Rutherford’s widow, artist Gail Rutherford, accompanies critical essays by scholars and curators examining Rutherford’s stylistic evolution from dark semi-abstract collages to hard-edged Pop Art.
“In retrospect, Rutherford’s work represents a courageous and often solitary mission of working through questions that are only now part of the mainstream public discourse,” says Wendt.
Wendt is Curator at Confederation Centre Art Gallery. He curated the exhibition Erica Rutherford: Her Lives and Works, currently on view at the National Gallery of Canada.