Opening this week in the SMU Art Gallery is the exhibit Pulp Fiction: rough, cheeky, and vibrant work by fourteen young artists from across Canada working with various mediums. Organized and circulated by Museum London (Ontario), the exhibit comes just after a run at Toronto's Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art. Pulp Fiction is an assembly of individuals of a generation that in the 1990's began to popularize the notion of personal art displays, independent of the art scene, museums and galleries. Despite living in different parts of the country, most of the artists of Pulp Fiction have worked together on various projects in the past, or otherwise know each other through other people. When they meet, they converse, craft, and collaborate with each other on all things art, often exchanging work.

Many of the artists provide solo and collaborative works, moving seamlessly from physical art forms to digital and back again, all in the spirit of DIY (do-it-yourself) and street art. Spanning a gamut of mediums, Pulp Fiction features DVD animations by Tasha Brotherton, Barry Doupe and Amy Lockhart, works on paper by Marc Bell, Peter Thompson and The Lions (Brotherton, Matthew Brown, Doupe, Collin Johanson and James Whitman), provocative vinyl banners and purses by Liz Garlicki, painted mixed media installations by James Kirkpatrick, painted and mixed media objects by Jason McLean, Mark DeLong and Jennie O’Keefe. Seth Scriver and Shayne Ehman contribute three paintings on car hoods and a DVD animation.

The exhibit actually opened last month, but the highly-anticipated artists' performance and talk is this Thursday, the 18th of February, at 8:00pm, with James Kirkpatrick and Peter Thompson of Brain Trust, involving sound art and projected animations. The display is accompanied by a full-colour catalogue featuring essays by curator Corinna Ghaznavi and by Saint Mary's University Art Gallery Director/Curator, Robin Metcalfe.

All events at the Saint Mary's University Art Gallery are free of charge. For more information please visit the Saint Mary's University Art Gallery website at www.smuartgallery.ca, or their Facebook page.