Pam Hall is an interdisciplinary artist working across, and sometimes in between, the boundaries of medium and discipline.
2022-2024. Made from vintage family linens, The Grandmothers' Blanket places the artist's handwork in service to revealing the hand stitching of other older women. Both homage and witness, it honours and reveals the often undervalued work of women.
2021. In 2021, Hall was in residence at the Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research at Memorial University. She led a conversation about knowledge-making and co-ordinated a collaboration with lab members to create a Knowledge Blanket. Each participant created a patch from a de-constructed lab coat which Hall ultimately stitched together into a feasting cloth for use in the lab.
2021. Invited to fly her fish there, Pam accepted an Artist Residency in Titling, Fogo Island. Closing the circle on a 25 year old project, ReSeeding the Dream, Pam revisited this work a final time. They flew on lines, they flew as a blanket and they flew as projected images on a historic fishing house in a magical meadow by Sandy Cove, NL.
2020-ongoing. During the pandemic, Pam began to take things apart... fish, aprons, clothing. It was a soothing practice of "unmaking" which inevitably led to putting things back together again. The un-made fish became a Fish Blanket, the unmade aprons became Work Blankets...she has a lot of unmaking ahead, so imagines many blankets will emerge.
2019. Pam returned to Fogo Island to work with Shorefast as they visioned the refurbishment and reclamation of the Punt Premise – four buildings in Joe Batt's Arm active during the inshore fishery.
2010–present. A collaborative art-and-knowledge project by Pam Hall and hundreds of participants in communities in Newfoundland.
2017. The second iteration of Re-Seeding the Dream took place in Port Rexton, Newfoundland, and was part of the inaugural Bonavista Biennale.
2017. Hall undertook a community residency on site in Keels, to engage directly with visitors and community members in gathering and revealing local knowledge from the region.
2009–ongoing. A daily practice in which Hall reminds herself to be attentive, awake, and mindful as she begins each day. Each gesture is photographed and shared with friends on Facebook.
2015. Using long commercial aprons, Hall inscribed the working hours of audience members who added up the hours they spent on ordinary “housework”.
2014. Work from the past decade of Hall's practice, bringing solitary and private practices into conversation with collaborative and public projects.
2013–2017. Inviting participants to mark and manipulate a small folding paper house and then return it to her through the mail, Hall sent out over 400 paper houses to countries all over the world.
2004–2010. Marginalia is a collaboration / correspondence / conversation between Pam Hall and Margaret Dragu, two artists on opposite coasts of Canada.
2006–ongoing. For over three years Hall collected used aprons as the "material" for this large scale installation project.
2008. A collaborative residency project at RISD.
2003–2007. A series of book projects: Hystories, A Female Handbook, Re-membering the Body, and 161 women feel....
1997–1998. Hall "sowed" a field of winter wheat with emblems of sustenance – protein meeting protein – evidence of more labour than her own.
1997–1998. A mixed media collection of "pages" and objects, located in the in the Historic Ryan Premises of the Community Museum in Bonavista.
1997. A 12 panel series of digital images based on conversations with inshore fishermen in Newfoundland and Haida Qwai.
1995–2001. A large and layered installation representing 6 years of work, which opened at the AGNL in St. John's in 2001.
1994–2007. These works are both a conversation with Hall's own history in the fishery and an exploration of the power of memory – to wound and to heal.
1997–1999. As the first artist in residence at MUN's Faculty of Medicine, Hall spent two years exploring the body, ethics, and the terrain of "healing".
1988–1993. The Coil began her life as a cod-trap – a fishing net which had hauled thousands of pounds of fish ashore, and was beyond mending.
1989–1991. These drawings investigate the humble trap skiff and its transformative power.
1991. A series of drawings and paintings responding to tensions between the inshore small-boat fishery and the big high-technology offshore fleet.
1991. Hall's continuing explorations with fishing and its tools led her to create this series of drawings of single objects.
1988–1991. Part of a body of work investigating the gear, tools, vessels and specialized clothing of the inshore fishery.
1993 and 2005. Two series of bookworks constructed from old artworks, hand-made paper, and small scraps of beach detritus.
1988–1989. In the summer of 1988, Hall installed her first site-specific landwork as part of The International Sound Symposium.
1988. An encounter alone in an empty landscape, in the winter of 1988.
1987. A 28-day cycle of daily drawings on black paper.
1985-1987. In 1985, Hall returned to Northern Scotland to develop a body of work investigating the sacred stone sites of the region and speculating on the power of stone and the places it marked.
2022. The latest hardcover book containing the collaborative research and creation of the Encyclopedia series. Made with Mi'Kmaq artist Jerry Evans and knowledge-holders of Miawpukek, Conne River in Newfoundland, this publication is fully bilingual in Mi'Kmaq and English.
2021. An Artist's Talk on 3 major projects from 1997-2020, hosted by the MFA Program at Grenfell Campus at Memorial University
2017. In 2017, Excerpts from Chapters 1 & 2 were published by Breakwater Books and ISER Books at MUN.
2003–2007. A series of book projects: Hystories, A Female Handbook, Re-membering the Body, and 161 women feel....
2004. This illustrated lecture was delivered in 2004 as the Keynote Address at the national conference, Ethics and Engagement in Vancouver, B.C.
2003. A presentation examining the Canadian inshore fisheries crisis from the personal perspective of more than 15 years of creative work in this area.
1982. Words and pictures by Pam Hall
1987–present. Hall has worked as an Art Director and Production Designer on feature films, television dramas, and mini-series.
1994 and 2000. Information about "Mending the Invisible Wound" and "Under the Knife: personal hystories".
© 2024 Pam Hall. Designed by Matthew Hollett.