The hottest item for back to school: a Sobey Art Award nomination

For Séamus Gallagher, 2023 has been a year of "firsts." In late August, Gallagher left Halifax, and for the first time in their life, they found themselves living beyond Atlantic Canada. Grad school was calling. And now, the Moncton-born artist is settled in Pittsburgh, where they're enrolled in the MFA program at Carnegie Mellon University. 

Right before all of that happened, however, Gallagher was coming to terms with another big first: being shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award. The $100,000 prize is considered the top honour in Canadian contemporary art, and Gallagher is one of five artists who will compete for this year's Sobey. 

Like all of the shortlisted artists, Gallagher's work will appear in a group exhibition that opens at the National Gallery of Canada this October, shortly before the winner is announced. And Gallagher is still reeling from the excitement. To hit so many milestones in such a short time? It all feels a bit surreal.

• Read more CBC Arts coverage of the Sobey Art Awards

The artist, 28, began earning art world attention while still studying at NSCAD University in Halifax. There, they developed a style of self-portraiture that's become a signature of sorts. There's an element of drag to Gallagher's work, whether they're making photographs, video or VR content. "There is a performance element, even if it is a photo work," says Gallagher. "So much of what influences my choices — modelling these characters — comes from drag sensibilities." 

Gallagher is always the model — though they're rarely recognizable. The artist will often construct masks, costumes and entire environments while in pursuit of creating an image. And for their latest body of work, Gallagher is playing a role unlike any they've embodied before: the ghost of a corporate beauty queen — a real-life character who was invented to sell stockings at the 1939 New York World's Fair. That exhibition (Mother Memory Cellophane) opened in September at the Musée McCord Stewart in Montreal, and will be there through February. 

Gallagher told us more about that project when we called to chat about the Sobey nomination.

I want to talk about the Sobey for a little bit. Congratulations, by the way!

Thank you so much.

Can you tell me about the moment you heard the news and how you reacted?

I was shaking uncontrollably — in the best way! (laughs) I was in shock. By the point [I was longlisted], I had already decided to start grad school, and so I felt like: Wow, this is exactly what I hoped for as I leave the Atlantic Canada region. And then a few weeks later, I received an email about being shortlisted and I just couldn't believe it. I'm so incredibly touched and it just felt like incredible timing. 

It's definitely helped my imposter syndrome. (laughs) I don't think it's necessarily healthy to reflect on external validation to ease my anxieties, but it has been such an incredible confidence booster as I'm going through so many changes. I just feel so lucky to have felt such support — particularly within the Atlantic Canadian region — from so many artists and curators I admire. Yeah, I'm just honoured. 

What prompted you to leave the east coast for grad school?

I've just been working in a bubble — a bubble that's very supportive and that I love dearly. 

I was worried that I would maybe recycle the same ideas, the same way of working. I really wanted to allow myself space to experiment and learn from people that come from different backgrounds and different styles of working. And so I decided to apply to Carnegie Mellon's three-year MFA program because it's so small, there's so much support, and it's also just so interdisciplinary. I've seen a few artists go through it and their practice radically changes. I'm happy for that to happen if it does — though I won't force it.

I know I want to play around with prosthetics, but that's the only thing that I'm currently really excited to focus on. I've always loved horror movies and body horror, so I want to play with silicone molds and create prosthetics to wear and photograph and see what can come of it. So much of my work does deal with persona and masquerade and creating these characters. And with my last project being so influenced by ghosts, I want to lean in and go into more of a monster territory. 

The people in your program must know you're up for a Sobey. What's it like navigating that?

I'm the only person from Canada, so I don't know — I haven't talked about it yet. I don't want to be like, "Hello, I'm Sobey-shortlisted artist Séamus Gallagher. Nice to meet you." (laughs) 

You were talking about the experimentation that you're hoping to do in grad school. But if you win the Sobey, are there dream projects the prize money would make possible for you?

The grand prize is a bit of an unfathomable number to me. All I can think of is I would like to take a little vacation to Berlin and buy some goofy outfits. (laughs) Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what the next few years will hold. Just having a sense of security would be great enough. I can't wait for the gala. Some Halifax friends will be there. Just to get glammed up: I'm really excited. I want to buy a wig specifically for the occasion. That's all I know!

Can I ask you about your show in Montreal, Mother Memory Cellophane? What's it about?

The title came from a poll taken in 1940 on the most beautiful words in the English language, and mother, memory and cellophane were the top three. It's a project I've been working on for the past two years, I want to say. I was reading a lot of Mark Fisher at the start of the pandemic, and I was thinking about the idea of hauntology and how our present is sort of haunted by lost futures of the past. 

What does that mean to you, exactly? What does it mean to be haunted by lost futures?

Maybe the promise that capitalism had given so many generations. Even for the most privileged individuals and nations, the promises are warping into something else — in a way that takes over a lot of our individual lives. We're incapable of thinking of anything outside of capitalism, and everything is distilled into a commodity, essentially. 

I was thinking about haunting in relation to the 1939 New York World's Fair, and the theme of the world's fair was World of Tomorrow. A weird thing about these fairs is that corporations are given the same amount of space and attention as entire countries, and [in 1939], the Dupont pavilion, they were announcing their newest invention, which was nylon stockings. 

They had a campy presentation with this woman whose only public identification was "Miss Chemistry." [Nylon] was an incredible, huge hit, but it only lasted a few months; nylon stockings — the production of them — had to be put on hold so Dupont could make nylon parachutes for the war. This project that I've been working on: I'm sort of performing as a ghost of Miss Chemistry. It's video work and a series of photos and installation, and I'm performing as this figure that embodied the promised world of tomorrow.

The topic of the 1939 New York World's Fair: why did you want to surface that moment in history? Why now?

I think it had to do with the feelings I've been having around environmental destruction. And I was wondering how I could revisit this past as a way of sort of navigating my own feelings towards the present — and without relying on apocalyptic imagery.

This conversation has been edited and condensed.

The 2023 Sobey Art Award exhibition will be at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa Oct. 13, 2023 - March 3, 2024. The winner of the prize will be announced in November. www.gallery.ca