​Dianne Davis, Untitled, 2024, Cyanotype on paper. 

We live the opposite, dar(l)ing 

​Dianne Davis

May 11 - September 14
For the exhibition We live the opposite, dar(l)ing, artist Dianne Davis has fashioned an alternative history for RiverBrink, inserting imaginary characters within an invented historical queer community in Niagara. Working in the media of drawing, photography, and installation, Davis has created fictional characters and relationships which pay homage to queer artists from the past and her current community. The third installment of a series the artist initiated in 2017, the exhibition is intended to disrupt the history of RiverBrink, the former vacation home of London lawyer and collector Samuel E. Weir. In this imagining, the masculine space of the home, now a public art museum, becomes the site of an alternative domestic narrative. The exhibition is rooted in a reimagining and reconstructing of queer legacies from the past, with the goal of supporting dialogue with the present. 

Dianne Davis is a Niagara born, Toronto-based visual artist (www.diannedavis.ca). She has exhibited her photo-based work in solo exhibitions at Harbourfront Centre, Angell Gallery and Cedar Ridge Creative Centre as well as in numerous group shows. Her work, Richmond Park, is on permanent display in Toronto’s Bell Trinity Square. Davis is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, most notably Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts Council visual arts grants. She holds an MEng from the University of Toronto, a BFA in Photography from OCAD University, and an MA from Concordia University. Davis has created fictional characters and relationships which pay homage to queer artists from the past. ​
​welivetheopposite.com
Image credit: Millie Chen, Onguiaahra / Niagara River

TURBULENCE: Millie Chen

May 11 - September 14

Turbulence is caused by unsteady vortices, chaotic eddies and other flow instabilities.

Turbulent events are caused by unrest, disruption, conflict and resistance.

Millie Chen’s exhibition, Turbulence, contemplates the interrelationship of phenomenon, history, social justice and sorrow. The exhibition title is named after a new series of drawings; the first three works in the series will be exhibited at RiverBrink Art Museum, along with older (2015-2023) works on paper.

Chen crosses the Onguiaahra (Haudenosaunee) or Niagara River almost daily. The new series of drawings emerges from years of walking along both banks of the river and gazing in awe at its flow. These drawings focus on river sites that have historic and symbolic significance, embodied in the turbulence created by disturbances under the water surface.

All of the works in the exhibition are connected by the use of grids as a structuring device. The grid is a powerful generative mechanism that integrates singularities into an all-encompassing structure where everything is linked and empty space is matter. Chen uses the grid to both retain and release control, as a means to embrace unpredictability and “errors” and to express the wobbliness of being human. These incursions into uniformity and regulation amplify the grid’s enigmatic qualities, inviting chance and intuition. The grid contains order, chaos, grief, and limitlessness.

Adopt-an-Artwork

Ongoing

​​Adopting an art work from the permanent collection at RiverBrink is a unique way to support the art museum. Although adopted art works remain at RiverBrink, your financial support enables you to establish a special connection with a beloved work of art.
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You may choose from one of five annual giving levels, starting at $50. Your adoption helps support ongoing care and conservation of art works and helps ensure the future of the collection.

For more information and to view the artwork available for adoption click here.
Image detail: Mary Prittie, Untitled (Canada Furnace), 1986, Gift of Allan Prittie

Recent Acquisitions

Ongoing
​Bottom Floor

​RiverBrink continues to collect through donation and purchase, with the goal of developing a collection that both complements and broadens the Samuel E. Weir Collection. The recent acquisition of three works by Ghitta Caiserman-Roth increases the number of women artists in the collection, an underdeveloped area of acquisition.
Image: Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté, L'essoucheur (The Digger of Roots), c.1880-1937, Bronze, Samuel E. Weir Collection. 

Suzor-Coté at RiverBrink

Ongoing
Curated by Debra Antoncic
Lower Level 

Bronze sculptures by the 20th-century Québec artist are on permanent display in the library. Beginning in the 1940s, Sam Weir commissioned the casting of the bronzes with the goal of acquiring a representative survey of the artist’s work in sculpture. This project was continued following Weir’s death.
​© RiverBrink Art Museum Inc. 2020