Years back, the Art Gallery of Ontario presented a number of exhibitions that veered heavily into pop culture: David Bowie and Guillermo del Toro to name just two. The move wasn’t without critics, but it certainly added an air of excitement and youth to one of Canada’s great art museums. Well, the vibe returns in earnest this week with the opening of a photographic exhibition featuring the works of Canadian music icon Melissa Auf der Maur.
Auf der Maur came up in the Canadian music scene with the buzzy Montreal band Tinker before she was thrust into the middle of the grunge scene playing bass for two of the most iconic bands of the era: Smashing Pumpkins and Hole.
She played and toured with the bands at the height of their powers and popularity including Hole’s Celebrity Skin tour.
The exhibition Melissa Auf der Maur: My ’90s Rock Photographs features the Canadian bass player’s photographs from her youth as a Montreal art student at Concordia University through her immersion in one of the biggest music scenes of the last century.
These aren’t just the snapshots of a musician out on tour. One thing is made perfect clear right from the beginning. This is an exploration of an extraordinary time, yes, but also the work of a talented artist and photographer. It would not work otherwise.
The exhibition is divided into three rooms progressing from Auf der Maur’s early years to a crescendo with a full MTV-style explosion as the grunge scene peaks and starts to flame out.
What we find is a wonderful and thoughtful look at an extraordinary period of time told in photographs, notes to self, and snippets of ephemera by someone who was immersed in it but just beside the scorching centre. She wasn’t Billy Corgan or Courtney Love but she was right there beside them at the height of it all. The perfect person to tell this story, in the perfect way.
What I loved was that there is something for everyone. There are the big moments write large through clever staging and presentation that harken back to perhaps the last great rock era. And there are tender, funny and moving moments that are told through snapshots and notes, candid pics that tell a story that is just as important and meaningful.
The AGO should be proud of the way they have treated this material. It shows a museum ready to take chances again. When I visited in the middle of the afternoon on a Wednesday, the space was filled with visitors young and old taking in the vibe. And, it was definitely a vibe.
Auf der Maur went on the have a solo career, and recently penned a memoir as well, Even the Good Girls Will Cry: A ’90s Rock Memoir, which was published earlier this year. In 2010 she co-founded Basilica Hudson, a multidisciplinary art centre in Hudson, NY, where she lives with her family and magic cats.
This is a great exhibition that is both artistic and energetic. It harkens back to a meaningful era in music that still fascinates to this day, but it also feels emotional. Like, these era, these characters, this energy, might not return in an era of AI and analytics. And that’s an awful, but important, thought.
Melissa Auf der Maur My ’90s Rock Photographs runs until June 6, 2027.