UPCOMING

Talk Sexxxy

JANUARY 9, 2025 - JANUARY 19, 2025

Written & Performed by Lee-Anne Poole

Directed by Stephanie MacDonald 

Lighting Design by Leigh Ann Vardy, Curation by Lou Sheppard

Lee-Anne Poole has tried to tell this story a few ways, Talk Sexxxy was a blog, then it was workshopped as a play, she's adapted it into poems, and fiction, and a screenplay - not putting the subject down for over 15 years, and also never really presenting the work. This play is the play and is also the making of the play. 

Talk Sexxxy is a semi-autobiographical account of a phone sex operator who isn't leaving her apartment. 

Running from January 9 to 19th at the SMU Art Gallery

The performance runs for 45 minutes, with open time for art installation exploration. The Saint Mary's University Art Gallery is wheelchair accessible with access to all-gender washrooms. 

Presented by: The Landline Collective 

Production Manager Chelsea Dickie 

Director Stephanie MacDonald 

Preparator Adam Myatt 

Written & Performed by Lee-Anne Poole 

Curator Lou Sheppard 

Lighting Design Leigh Ann Vardy 

We would like to acknowledge the support of Arts Nova Scotia and the

Canada Council for the Arts and the Saint Mary's University Art Gallery.

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.