UPCOMING

JANUARY-MARCH 2025

BACKBEAT is an upcoming collaborative curatorial exhibition and publication of Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery, co-curated by gallery team Acting Director/Curator Pam Corell and Gallery Assistant Adam Myatt. This exhibition is inspired by the cultural impact of media geared specifically towards teens throughout our recent history. What was included and excluded? How did that impact artists' perceptions of themselves and their world? Creating large printed works referencing these secrets that lived in drawers, hidden in closets and tucked under mattresses, will bring forward the things that make us different, things that were discouraged in the process of trying to fit in.

BACKBEAT, the title of our speculative teen magazine, references publications such as Teen Beat and Tiger Beat.  BACKBEAT is a term that comes from drumming, describing the accenting of normally unaccented beats in a bar. Our magazine will do just that - highlighting perspectives and subjects that likely wouldn’t have appeared in glossy magazines celebrating popular culture. 

Teen magazines typically keep it light - fashion trends, celebrity gossip, quizzes and fold out posters. Artists will be encouraged to think about what they saw in the media addressed to them when they were teens. BACKBEAT is intended to be a place where artists are able to interrogate that messaging, and respond with their own. Artists will be encouraged to create work that addresses the statement “If I knew then what I know now”, as futile messages to our past selves, that could potentially reach a new contemporary audience. 

Part cautionary tale, part celebration of silly lightness, BACKBEAT will play with the informality of monthly magazines, and will use that informality to challenge and consider the things we’re told are normal, good and what we should aspire to. Artists can explore and celebrate what they might have had to hide: a secret passion, a forbidden crush, a guilty pleasure.