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Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art

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Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art

Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Nonprofit Organization, 460 Portage Avenue Unit 1, Winnipeg, MB.

Established in 1972, Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art is Canada’s oldest accredited ICA with a holistic mandate to support all aspects of art-making by presenting, producing and circulating contemporary art.

06/10/2026

Due to unforeseen circumstances our galleries will be closed today. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

06/09/2026

📣 Plug In ICA is looking for a Communications Intern to join our team this fall!

The Communications Intern will participate in a broad range of activities that include various aspects of overseeing and being responsible for communications, outreach, marketing, and administrative activities of a contemporary art gallery or museum. 🖼

This is a paid internship opportunity funded through Young Canada Works. Candidates must be a recent graduate, under 30 years old, and a Canadian citizen or permanent resident to meet eligibility requirements outlined by Young Canada Works — Careers in Heritage.

For the full job description please visit our website through the link 🖇 in our bio

06/06/2026

Currently in our bookstore: BackFlash 43.1 l Off Leash

"There are moments across this issue that return to the question of what we can actually hold onto, perhaps including faith in art itself. In conversation with artist Annie MacDonell, writer Lodoe Laura asks, “What does it mean to remain unjaded when the conditions for making and showing work feel increasingly compromised?” It’s a question I’ve heard echoed with disillusionment lately. And yet, the works in this issue lean toward a different mood, the quiet pleasures of contact, attention, and shared memory. MacDonell’s recent work (including the image which graces the cover) looks to the history of psychedelics as an off-ramp from the rut of capitalist realism. I keep coming back to the idea that much like psychedelics, art is hardly utopian, but at its best, it’s a hell of a trip."
Find this book in our bookstore through the link in our bio.
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06/01/2026

🏠️ Opening Thursday! Join us from 7 - 10 PM on June 4 to celebrate the opening of Sarah Anne Johnson's exhibition 'House on Fire'.

On June 5 from 5 - 7 PM, we will be having a Live Chat with Sarah Anne Johnson, David Moos, Meeka Walsh, moderated by Robert Enright. It will take place at University of Winnipeg Manitoba Hall Boardroom, room 2M70 located at 515 Portage Ave.

'House on Fire', is the title of a long series of works produced by artist Sarah Anne Johnson. Coming from a deeply personal narrative, 'House on Fire' is the artist’s belated response to a family trauma unearthed and fragmented, but one that she has ultimately reassembled. Johnson’s grandmother, Velma Orlikow, was a victim of psychiatric experiments performed at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal.

The installation, which centres on a dollhouse of secrets, also includes altered family photos, archival newspaper clippings, and small bronze figures of distress. Over time, the project grew from the original installation to include performances created for video.

This iteration of 'House on Fire' is currently presented as a reconsideration of the original installation and an introduction to new works by this remarkable artist.

Sarah Anne Johnson is a Winnipeg-born multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans photography, painting, sculpture, video, and performance. She holds a BFA from the University of Manitoba and an MFA from the Yale School of Art. Sarah is the recipient of numerous grants and awards and her work is held in several major permanent collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum. Sarah is best known for her photo-based practice in which she physically and digitally alters large-format prints with oil paint, gold leaf, stickers, and other materials.

Plug In ICA would like to thank Michael Nesbitt for making this exhibition possible.

Visit our website for more info about these events!

📸 : Sarah Anne Johnson, 'The Kitchen', Cake, 2016, image courtesy of the artist.

05/31/2026

Currently in our bookstore: Esse 117 l Crip
 “While “handi” (short for the term “handicapé” in French) and “crip” (derived from “cripple,” meaning “disabled”) are diminutive forms of stigmatizing terms, the meaning we ascribe to them is by no means reductive. On the contrary, they carry a political weight that provides those who embrace them with a powerful tool for empowerment, offering disabled artists non-normative ways for articulating the strange temporalities of disabled experience and alternative ways for navigating an ableist art world. In this issue, we are interested precisely in this work of social, political, and cultural transformation, and we focus on the ways in which crip authors and artists address the different challenges they face.”
Find this book in our bookstore through the link in our bio

 

05/27/2026

📣 Plug In ICA is delighted to announce Live Chat, a conversation with Sarah Anne Johnson, David Moos, Meeka Walsh, moderated by Robert Enright.

Join us on June 5 from 5 - 7PM at the University of Winnipeg Manitoba Hall Boardroom, room 2M70 located at 515 Portage Ave. for a conversation about the work of Sarah Anne Johnson and her exhibition, 'House on Fire'. 🏚️

Sarah Anne Johnson is a Winnipeg-born multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans photography, painting, sculpture, video, and performance. She holds a BFA from the University of Manitoba and an MFA from the Yale School of Art. Sarah is the recipient of numerous grants and awards and her work is held in several major permanent collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum. Sarah is best known for her photo-based practice in which she physically and digitally alters large-format prints with oil paint, gold leaf, stickers, and other materials.

David Moos is the president and founder of David Moos Art Advisory, a bespoke firm placing museum-calibre works in private and public collections in Canada and the United States. Prior to founding DMAA in 2011, Moos was the Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2004–2011) and the Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama (1998–2004). While at the AGO, Moos acquired Sarah Ann Johnson’s “House on Fire” for the permanent collection, through the generous support of Michael Nesbitt. Moos received a BA from McGill University, Montreal, and a PhD in Art History from Columbia University, New York. In 2020 he co-founded Museum Exchange, the first digital platform for art donations, allowing museums to access works of art being offered by collectors outside their established donor base.

Meeka Walsh, C.M., is the Editor of Border Crossings magazine. She has published a collection of short stories and most recently Malleable Forms: Selected Essays for which she received the 2023 Alexander Isbister Kennedy Award for Non-Fiction. She has served on a number of Boards nationally and locally, including Plug In ICA and The National Gallery of Canada. She lives in Winnipeg.

Robert Enright, C.M. is a writer and professor who lives in Winnipeg and teaches in the School of Fine Art and Music at the University of Guelph. As a contributing editor he has conducted the artist’s interviews in Border Crossings magazine. He has written for Artforum, frieze, ArtReview and The Globe and Mail and has contributed essays, introductions and interviews to over 300 books and catalogues.

Check out our website to learn more about this event & the exhibition!

05/24/2026

Currently in our bookstore: Open Fragments: The Theatre of Adhere and Deny 1997-2010
 “With its roots reaching back to Shared Stage in 1981, Adhere and Deny has been exploring the world of puppets and objects as theatrical main-players since 1987, with its current incarnation existence since 1998. Both in form and philosophy, Adhere and Deny has always been about singular artistic experience, not toeing the theatrical party line. This is a book about vision - artistic vision in its most dizzying mystical, mystifying and sometimes hilarious form.”
Find this book in our bookstore through the link in our bio

 

05/22/2026

📢 Plug In ICA would like to remind you of our upcoming exhibition, 'House on Fire' featuring Sarah Anne Johnson. We invite you to join us for the opening reception in our galleries on June 4, at 7PM.

'House on Fire', is the title of a long series of works produced by artist Sarah Anne Johnson. Coming from a deeply personal narrative, 'House on Fire' is the artist’s belated response to a family trauma unearthed and fragmented, but one that she has ultimately reassembled. Johnson’s grandmother, Velma Orlikow, was a victim of psychiatric experiments performed at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal.

The installation, which centres on a dollhouse of secrets, also includes altered family photos, archival newspaper clippings, and small bronze figures of distress. Over time, the project grew from the original installation to include performances created for video.

This iteration of 'House on Fire' is currently presented as a reconsideration of the original installation and an introduction to new works by this remarkable artist.

Sarah Anne Johnson is a Winnipeg-born multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans photography, painting, sculpture, video, and performance. She holds a BFA from the University of Manitoba and an MFA from the Yale School of Art. Sarah is the recipient of numerous grants and awards and her work is held in several major permanent collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum. Sarah is best known for her photo-based practice in which she physically and digitally alters large-format prints with oil paint, gold leaf, stickers, and other materials.

Plug In ICA would like to thank Michael Nesbitt for making this exhibition possible.

We would like to extend our thanks to the Yossi Milo Gallery for their support on this exhibition.

📸 : 'House on Fire', Laundry Room, 2009, image credit Sarah Anne Johnson

05/20/2026

📣Today is your last chance to view 'Transcendence' featuring April Hickox & Sheila Spence. Visit the exhibition this afternoon from 12 - 6PM!

'Transcendence' draws inspiration from the history of floral paintings, exploring the impermanence of life, the passage of time and reflecting on the collective new cycle of awareness brought on by the pandemic and the AIDs crisis.

Sheila Spence is a lens-based artist and activist. Over the years, her work has explored longing and belonging. For Spence, art has been a tool for self-exploration, enabling her to assess and process her personal values. Spence’s work is rooted in the belief that artistic practice can serve as a means for personal assessment and understanding. By engaging with her art, she can examine the core elements of her identity and the values that guide her life. Over the years, Spence has addressed a diverse range of topics in her work. These include q***r politics, feminism, communities and connection, a sense of place, loss, and love. Each of these subjects is approached with honesty and authenticity, reflecting her commitment to genuine self-expression.

April Hickox was a Canadian lens-based artist, teacher and independent curator who lived on the Toronto Islands. Over the course of 37 years, April mined the distinctions between personal and public sites through film, video, photography and installation. Her work with objects and the still-life are rooted in narrative histories that individuals accumulate through-out their lives and the ability of inanimate objects to shape memory. Hickox was the Founding Director of Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography, and a founding member of Tenth Muse Studio, and Artscape Toronto. For the past seven years she was a member of the curatorial board of Art With Heart, Casey House. Most recently, April was an Associate Professor of Photography at the Ontario College of Art and Design University in Toronto.

📸 : ‘Lexicon for Loss’, Sheila Spence, installation view at Plug In ICA, 2026. Photo courtesy of Karen Asher.

Address

460 Portage Avenue Unit 1
Winnipeg, MB
R3C0E8

Opening Hours

Tuesday	12pm - 6pm
Wednesday	12pm - 6pm
Thursday	12pm - 8pm
Friday	12pm - 6pm
Saturday	12pm - 5pm
Sunday	12pm - 5pm

Telephone

+12049421043

Website

http://www.plugin.org/

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