Critical Fictions

Thinking with the work of Derek Dunlop, Kristin Nelson, Hagere Selam shimby Zegeye-Gebrehiwot, AO Roberts, & Logan MacDonald.

Critical Fictions is a collection of encounters with works by five queer Canadian contemporary artists. The book contains essays, fiction, poetry and experimental text. It is also an investigation into how critical and creative responses to art impact one another, and how they function as ways of understanding, knowing, perceiving, and valuing.

In her bold departure from conventional art criticism, Hannah Godfrey looks to the work of five contemporary queer visual artists, with attention to, and affection for, the wit, subversion, and many complexities of each of their practices. Shifting through written forms as experiential coves, Critical Fictions is a collection of inventive responses that are delicately linked, and devoted to their subjects.

Alongside the five artists—Derek Dunlop, Kristin Nelson, Hagere Selam shimby Zegeye-Gebrehiwot, Andrea Oliver Roberts, and Logan MacDonald—Godfrey shares a keen interest in intricacies of queer power, the body, and abstraction. Her varied approach to criticism embraces stories, poetry, essays, and other textual formations as means of wayfaring through the work of art. In these pages the reader will find not only celebrations of the depth, beauty, and acuity of the artworks discussed, but explorations of the imaginative thoroughfares they open up.—Publisher’s note.

“It’s with a unique, caring voice that Godfrey speaks about, to, and with the artists in this collection. Even if the reader is familiar with an artist’s practice, the writing, in both its abstract and critical forms, offers the time and space so desperately needed to cover the complicated and intimate relationship of a critic engaging with artwork. Critical Fictions is a special, caring, and necessary book where art criticism is written, challenged, turned on its head and back again, interlacing the varying concepts of the featured artists’ practices like thread in a loom. Only when the reader reaches the end does it become apparent the threads have become a tapestry—a rare and beautiful process that will stay with you into the real world.” —Lauren Lavery, Editor of Peripheral Review.

The 2023 Canadian book tour included Esker Foundation, Calgary; Neutral Ground, Regina; Art Metropole, Toronto; Fonderie Darling, Montreal; SFU and OR Gallery, Vancouver; Blinkers/C’cap, Winnipeg; NSCAD, Halifax.
 
The writing received the generous support of The Canada Council For The Arts and the Manitoba Arts Council.

Extracts have been published by Blackflash and The Peripheral Review.

It has been reviewed

by Jaz Papadopolous in the Femme Art Review

by Mielen Remmert in Border Crossings

by Emily G. Doucet in The Brooklyn Rail.

The artists:

Derek Dunlop

Kristin Nelson

Andrea Oliver Roberts

Peripheral Review have published the essay about Derek Dunlop’s work in their Spring 2020 issue. Read it here.


Blackflash magazine have published the essay about Hagere Selam shimby Zegeye-Gebrehiwot in their spring 2020 issue. Read it here.

Peripheral Review will be publishing the essay and other texts related to  Derek Dunlop’s work in 2020.


I gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country.

Je reconnais avec reconnaissance le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays.

Critical Fictions was written with the generous support of the Manitoba Arts Council.