Photo credit Guy L'Heureux

Tout à la fois, Maison des Arts de Laval, Salle Alfred Pellan until July 14.

Tout à la fois, a site-specific installation by Toronto-based artist Libby Hague encourages us to ponder, question, celebrate, and wonder at our place in the world. Consisting of a series of vignettes, Hague creates an imaginary world weaving a narrative that takes us with her on a journey, reflecting the tumultous and often threatening world we inhabit and the relationships we create, confront, and nurture within it. Hague acknowledes the grim realities of the current state of the world where violence lurks and uncertainty is ever present. This world, even in a depicted imaginary state, is filled with contradiction. Hague takes us to a place where darkness is juxtaposed against and alongside hope, colour, and celebration. Using wood-block prints as the central unifying element, Hague’s world is filled with puppets created out of found objects, city-scapes constructed out of painted cardboard, and figures reminding us of our human capacity for destruction, joy, and most of all resilience.

This is an exhibition that is impossible to grasp all at once. In this way, it echoes the physical, social, political, and emotional worlds that surround us. However, it is through Hague’s ability to take us with her on a journey of visual storytelling filled with colour, texture, and movement, that we are invited and encouraged to contemplate the harsh realities of the current situation and dream for a hopeful future.

Angela Brayham, curator

Photo credit Guy L'Heureux

Thank you to the wonderful team at Salle Alfred Pellan, Jasmine Colizza, Gallery Director, my curator, Angela Brayham, and those with whom I worked most closely - Mathieu Baril, Christine Michaud, Liliane Audet, Genevieve Collin, Xavier Ford-Legrand, Lyndon Polan, Mathieu Lacroix et Guillaume Emond. You are all talented and dedicated and I couldn’t have done it without you.
I also want to thank the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. We can't do much without you either!

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