June Leaf in Mabou Since 1969
Opening: Saturday, September 3, 2022
Until: Thursday, November 10, 2022
Opening reception: Saturday, September 3, 2022 from 3:00pm - 5:00pm
Photo by Emily Falencki
June Leaf in Mabou Since 1969, an exhibition of never before seen works by the Artist June Leaf.
June Leaf along with her partner Robert Frank moved to Mabou, Nova Scotia in 1969. They bought a house in the Mabou Coal Mines and quickly made it their primary residence. Leaf often speaks to the influence Cape Breton had, and still has on her life and her art practice. Leaf sees the world through people, her work is figuratively based always and it is the people of Cape Breton and the relationships that she built here that forever altered her life’s work.
In this exhibition you will see a selection of drawings chosen from her storage files but the core of the exhibition is of the portraits she made of the people around her. The portraits started as a desire to draw everyone in Mabou who had met Andrea, Robert’s daughter, before she died tragically in a plane crash when she was just 20 years old. Then they turned to portraits of the many people in Cape Breton who became friends and they continue to this day, with the most recent double portrait from July 22, 2022.
The drawings, beginning with the first piece she made in Mabou, First Water Faucet, give insight to the research and process to her extremely proficient career. You will see an early landscape from the Coal Mines which appears again and again in Leaf’s work. You will see a version of Robert Entered the Room, one of which was showed at The Whitney museum in 2016.
The primary study drawings for her well known Glasses sculpture will be on view, as well as many never seen before sculptures. June has been incredibly generous in opening her home and her work in preparation for this exhibition. She has a deep desire to show what Cape Breton has meant to her very prolific and influential career for over fifty years.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
June Leaf (b. Chicago, 1929) lives and works in New York City and Mabou, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. For over seven decades, Leaf has explored the human figure, landscape, and mechanical systems in her narrative drawings and paintings and hand-made, kinetic sculpture.
In her legendary studios, June Leaf works inventively and agilely with a prolific range of material, juxtaposing and layering each composition and often working simultaneously on paper, on canvas, and with metal.
June Leaf’s work has been exhibited and collected worldwide since 1948 when she was invited to participate in that year’s Annual Exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, and the inaugural Exhibition Momentum organized in response to it. Leaf’s work may currently be seen in My Name is Maryan, a solo exhibition dedicated to the 20th century artist at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, curated by Alison Gingeras. Leaf and Maryan formed a friendship in 1958 in Paris where her work influenced his. The exhibition includes loans of Leaf’s work from her personal collection and the Smart Museum of Art in Chicago.
Forthcoming exhibitions include a presentation of Leaf’s work at Frieze Masters, London (October 2022), and June Leaf: New Work at Ortuzar Projects, NYC (November 2022). Leaf’s work will be included in Americans in Paris: Artists Working in Postwar France, 1946—1962 (February 1—July 1, 2024) at the Grey Art Gallery, New York University, co-curated by Debra Bricker Balkan and Lynn Gumpert.
In 2016, Leaf was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Other notable exhibitions include: June Leaf, Museum Tinguely, Basel Switzerland (2003); A Survey of Painting, Sculpture and Works on Paper, 1948-1991, Addison Gallery of American Art (1991); and a retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1978).
The artist’s work is held in private collections and permanent public collections including: Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy at Andover, MA; Art Institute of Chicago, IL; DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, IL; Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, WI; Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Museum of Modern Art, NY; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel; University of Southern Illinois at Carbondale, IL; Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT. Leaf is the recipient of prestigious awards including a National Endowment for the Arts Grant (1989), a Fulbright Grant (1958), as well as honorary degrees from DePaul University, IL and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. For inquiries Contact Andrea Glimcher, Hyphen, at aglimcher@hyphenadvisory.com
ABOUT THE CURATOR
Emily Falencki is an artist who lives and works in North End Halifax and Cape Breton Island. She is the founder and director of 2482 Maynard and The Blue Building Gallery. Raised in New York City, Falencki completed her BFA at NSCAD University and her MFA at the National College of Art in Dublin, Ireland. Grounding her work with a profound commitment to personal narratives and how these relate to a shared experience, Falencki’s artistic practice led her to create a new kind of art space in Halifax, with 2482 Maynard and The Blue Building Gallery.
Falencki has spent much of her life on Cape Breton Island and has been a Member of the Boardof ICCA since August 2020.