Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler: No More Boring Art: Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (AGNS), Halifax, Canada

The Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) in Halifax holds a near-mythic art world status, due in large part to its influential conceptual art program during the 1960s and ‘70s. Hubbard / Birchler revisit a pivotal yet largely overlooked moment from this period.

In April 1971, a group of students wrote “I will not make any more boring art” repeatedly across a wall of NSCAD’s Mezzanine Gallery, following the instructions sent by American artist John Baldessari (1931–2020) who called the project a “Punishment Piece.” Baldessari did not travel to Halifax to participate himself, instead, designating students as surrogates to carry out the work. A lithograph of the project produced by the NSCAD Lithography Workshop emerged soon afterward and has become one of Baldessari’s most iconic works.

But who were the anonymous participants who gave form to Baldessari’s idea more than five decades ago? Until now, they have remained unknown. How did this experience shape their lives? What has become of them? Through extensive archival research, photographic forensics and an international search, Hubbard / Birchler set out to identify and find them.

No More Boring Art (2025), a multi-channel video installation with sound, leads viewers on a meandering journey through a constellation of interconnected, deeply personal portraits exploring the relationship between life and art. Central are the perspectives of women, offering a poignant counter-narrative to the dominant male voices of NSCAD’s conceptual art legacy. The work delves into the unrelenting passage of time, the complexity of memory, and the reconstruction of overlooked histories.What emerges is both an act of remembrance and a rebalancing.

Mezzanine (2025), is a 3D digital animation inspired by three unidentified photographs Hubbard / Birchler discovered in the Baldessari files at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University Archives. The work reconstructs NSCAD’s now-demolished Coburg Road campus, in mid-April 1971, when two exhibitions overlapped in uncanny proximity: the final day of Baldessari’s “Punishment Piece” upstairs and a soon-to-open display of radio-controlled model airplanes downstairs. In speculative reconstruction, Hubbard / Birchler’s animation moves between day and night, inside and outside, staging an encounter between these unlikely neighbors —the procedural rigor of conceptual art above and the devoted enthusiasm of amateur craft below.

Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler are among the most celebrated contemporary artists working with film and new media. They often seek engagement with adjacent fields of study that have more conventionally been considered the domain of the anthropologist, archeologist or historian. Their work aims to inspire sensorial interactions and explore connections between social life, history and memory. No More Boring Art  is curated by David Diviney, Chief Curator, AGNS.

Images:

Installation view, No More Boring Art and Mezzanine, Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax, Canada, Photos Steve Farmer