Critical Fictions | Book Launch/Reading & Q&A with Author Hannah Godfrey

The Bookshop At Esker invites everyone to engage in the world of art writing and discover the work of five extraordinary artists as responded to by Hannah Godfrey in her new publication “Critical Fictions.” For this bookshop event author Hannah Godfrey will read from her new book, with a Q&A to follow.

“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 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.”

– ARP Books

About Hannah Godfrey:

hannah_g is a writer, artist, community radio producer, and Co-Active coach. Her work is informed by queer echo-locating, contemporary art, and recollection. She is the Curator of Galerie Buhler Gallery in St. Boniface Hospital. From 2008-2018 she was the Director of the Artist-Run Centre, aceartinc. and the editor of the gallery’s in-house annual publication, PaperWait. Here she co-founded Flux Gallery, co-founded The Cartae Open School, and co-founded the gallery’s first Indigenous Curatorial Residency.Previous to moving to Canada, hannah was (among other things) a programmer and projectionist at the Cube Microplex, an event manager at St. George’s concert venue, usher at Arnolfini and Watershed cinema, and Assistant Learning Manager at the British Empire & Commonwealth Museum, Bristol, and crew for the Bristol Ferry Boat Company.

Critical Fictions was written with the generous support of Canada Council for the Arts and the Manitoba Arts Council and published by ARP Books.

April 12th, 2023 at 6-7pm