The Tom Thomson Art Gallery will open an exhibition called Dark Matter: The Great War and Fading Memory on Friday, May 9, with a public reception at 7 p.m..

Curator Andrew Hunter will give a walking tour of the exhibition.  Dark Matter is organized and circulated by the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.  The exhibition will be on view in the North and Jennings David Young Galleries from May 9 to June 22. 

Free public tours are offered to the public on Sunday, May 11 and Sunday June 15 at 2 p.m.  This exhibition is sponsored in Owen Sound by D.M. Johnston Financial Services, the Royal Canadian Legion and the Days Inn & Conference Centre.

Major historical paintings by such artists as David Milne, A. Y. Jackson, Paul Nash, Mary Ritter Hamilton, Maurice Cullen, and F.H. Varley, and Jack Turner, will be included in the exhibition, on loan from the National Gallery of Canada, The Canadian War Museum, and Library and Archives Canada. Work by contemporary artists Allan MacKay, Dianne Bos, and Peter MacCallum will be also included.

Dark Matter explores the psychological void left in the aftermath of World War One, one that continues to haunt the present through the fading memories and imaginings of descendants of veterans and the ever growing mass of conflicting historical interpretation.

Rooted in a consideration of the impossibility of "truth" in war and its remembrance, the exhibition brings together period and contemporary artworks, artifacts, archival material and music in a poetic reflection on the drive to fill the void left in the aftermath of war.

Images of empty battlefields as captured in period paintings, documentary films and photographs, contemporary images of memorials including Vimy Ridge, displaced objects and fragments, and personal memories offer a compelling statement on the weakness of memory, and the play of emotion and denial within official history and acts of mourning.

Hunter argues that the "truth" of the First World War rests in absence and the unknown, and not in the glut of material and excruciating detail that contemporary media and history encourages and allows. This exhibition is inspired by Hunter's family history; both of his grandfathers served in the First World War. His reflections on the weight of the shadow cast over the lives of these men and their families permeate Dark Matter.

Hunter has produced historical and contemporary exhibitions, publications and writings for art galleries and museums across Canada, in the United States and Europe. He is widely known for his creative narrative engagements with museum collections, his collaborations with contemporary artists, and his innovative approach to writing about art and history. He is director/curator at the University of Waterloo Art Gallery.