An exhibition at Cline House Gallery, Cornwall Ontario, August 2025
Homage brings together two projects by Montreal artist Fred McSherry that pay tribute to historical figures whose deeds, courage and sacrifice in war and political activism at the turn of the 20th century brought an end to the age of empire and forged a new political, social, and economic order. Painted after photographic portraits and newspaper images, the works presented in After 1914 (2006 – 2025) and Suffragette (2011 – 2025) transform the fleeting moment of the photographic instant into an extended meditation on memory and memorial processes, and contemplate the crucial role that the individual plays in shaping collective history.
Suffragette is the product of research on The Women’s Suffrage and Political Union, founded in Manchester in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst, her daughters, Christabel, Sylvia, and Adela, and a local group of women socialists and labour activists. The WSPU distinguished itself within the suffrage movement with its militancy and strategy of direction action. “Deeds not Words” was their motto and public demonstrations were their stock in trade. Intended to garner front page media attention and public sympathy for their cause, the group’s disregard for convention, and their ingenuity in dealing with official resistance brought national and international recognition as well as condemnation. Labeled ‘suffragettes’ by the popular press, the term was intended to ridicule and diminish the actions of WSPU until they reclaimed it, giving the name to their journal and publishing this notice in 1914:
“We have all heard of the girl who asked what was the difference between a Suffragist and a Suffragette, as she pronounced it, and the answer made to her that the ‘Suffragist jist wants the vote, while the Suffragette means to get it.’”
After 1914 comprises paintings and etchings made after group photographs of participants in and witnesses to the brutality of WWI, and prints of propaganda posters in circulation at the time. In the portraits, the conversion from photograph to painting unfolds through a series of individual gestures, with each brush stroke and etched line attending to the differences that separate the individual from the group. The reworked propaganda posters draw attention to the narrative productions put in play to support the war. While these particular images highlight the language used to garner support for the first World War, their heroic and nationalist views echo similar sentiments to those that endorse contemporary conflict.