NSCAD microgallery: Big art in a little space

Gallery's tiny confines prompt artists to use space creatively

Actias Luna instalment in the Microgallery, by artist and student Natania Sherman. Photo: Laura Oakley

Imagine ideas so big they can fit into the space of a missing brick.

This is the idea behind the Microgallery, an art gallery that is literally a missing brick in a wall at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.

The gallery is located along a stairwell in the school's historic Granville Campus.

Natania Sherman has her instalment, Actias Luna, showing at the gallery from October 17-31.

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The Microgallery in context. The gallery is located in a brick wall in the school's historic Granville campus. Photo: Laura Oakley

She says her piece was inspired by the size of the gallery.

"[I] happened upon the moth figurines that are now a part of my exhibition." Says Sherman. "I started to research moths and eventually decided to create a space for them - a moth sanctuary, if you will."

Sherman says the gallery has had a positive impact on her school since it was founded.

"It gets people thinking about how to engage in a different kind of space and the small scale of the work makes you feel really intimately engaged with the art."

She says students are often made to feel that their work has to be big and imposing to have impact. The Microgallery presents the opposite idea.

Small beginnings

Ben Stephenson, now a graduate of NSCAD, started the gallery in late 2009. There have been ongoing student and guest art installments in the space since its opening.

Stephenson started the gallery after a phase of considering miniature sculptures. He noticed the missing brick in the wall at his school.

He then took a crowbar to scrape out the rest of the mortar, and painted the space white.

Once the gallery was ready, he put a poster beside it stating: "Now accepting proposals for exhibitions in the Microgallery." No one applied.

Stephenson says at first he approached classmates who had no projects on the go, to feature their work in the Microgallery. Soon enough, it was the other way around and he was getting contacted regularly.

He says the news coverage the gallery received so far has presented it as a novelty, showing it as tiny and cute.

"The first exhibits played on the smallness in a funny way," Stephenson says. "I think that diminishes it."

Stephenson says it is more of a challenge to create powerful art in such a small space.

"I think that big ideas could potentially happen there." Says Stephenson. "I hope that people keep seeing it that way."

The gallery grew in popularity by word of mouth. Posters - that are actually much larger than the gallery itself - helped to inform students of upcoming shows.

Within the last few months, there has been a Facebook page created by the current curator.

Stephenson says the gallery was never made official. It is something the students love and so it has stayed.

"No one ever asked permission to have the Microgallery. I think that speaks to the atmosphere of NSCAD."

Stephenson, who is now working on a fiction novel to be published this spring by Douglas & McIntyre, says founding the Microgallery is a proud achievement from his time at NSCAD, because it's something that lives on.

Although Stephenson's idea spawned from his own interest in small sculptures, the gallery has never featured his own work.

"[The gallery] became more interesting if it was a space anyone could put their art, not just me," says Stephenson.

He spent one year as curator of the gallery. During that time he would oversee artists as they installed their works.

Stephenson's favourite instalment was one by Adrian Phillips called Expectations Lead to Disappointment: A Fireworks Show at the Microgallery.

This one-time show featured a small iPod screen, showing video of fireworks. Speakers were set up in the area surrounding the gallery so that spectators who watched the screen could hear the loud sounds of fireworks as if they were real.

When Can I Go?

The gallery is currently opening new shows every two weeks. Their Facebook page provides information on the gallery and featured artists.

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