Mireille Eagan and Goose Lane with the Rooms Corporation, recipients of the 2022 APMA Best Atlantic-Published Book Award

Mireille is curator of contemporary art at The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery, St. John’s. Prior to this, she was curator at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. Eagan has lectured nationally on Canadian art and has published several catalogues and essays on Canadian artists. She has a special interest in promoting the activities of artists based in the Atlantic provinces.

Goose Lane Editions is based in Fredericton, New Brunswick’s capital and is a vital part of Canada’s ever-morphing publishing landscape. Whether it’s homegrown Canadian fiction, singular collections of poetry, books on contemporary art, or courageous stances on environmental issues and global politics, we provide book lovers with great reads that inspire, spur conversation, and stimulate minds. The publisher seeks to represent a balance of voices and proudly embrace Queer Lit as well as First Nations and Inuit authors and artists who are shaping and transforming our perspectives. Goose Lane Editions will continue to embrace diversity, fresh voices and novel perspectives. They will keep on sharing stories that challenge, startle, and enlighten — and enhance our ability to be surprised and to be inspired.

In Future Possible, Mireille Eagan and other writers and artists navigate the tangled histories and cultures of Newfoundland and Labrador to investigate the visual output and to write the narrative that it has created. The result is an ambitious volume, arising from a two-part exhibition of the same name at The Rooms, that provides a multi-vocal, multi-faceted history spanning pre- and post-Confederation Newfoundland. Lavishly illustrated with reproductions of original works and installation views, Future Possible features essays by curators and artists on topics such as pre-Confederation art; contemporary art, craft, and Indigenous culture; and outsider and folk art. This intriguing volume places artifacts from the province’s history and work by iconic Newfoundland and Labrador artists such as Gerald Squires and Mary Pratt in conversation with works by contemporary artists like Jordan Bennett and Kym Greeley. Together they explore how history is told and retold through objects and images and how these objects and images, and the power structures that preserve them, define an understanding of place. Contributions from Mireille Eagan, Jamie Fitzpatrick, Andy Jones, Heather Igloliorte, Jeff Webb, Darryn Doull, Bushra Junaid, Cory Thorne, Kelley Totten, Patricia Grattan, Gerard Curtis, Caroline Stone, Craig Francis Power, Christopher Pratt, Logan MacDonald, Lisa Moore, Eva Crocker, Andria Hickey, and a foreword by Anne Chafe.

About Future Possible: An Art History of Newfoundland and Labrador, the jury said:

“How can one not be seduced by the spectacular expedition through the visual arts of Newfoundland and Labrador that Future Possible  proposes? This work of exceptional graphic quality reveals a rich and astonishing artistic panorama of this territory, so vast and so diverse in its communities. The fruitful collaboration between Goose Lane Editions and The Rooms Art Gallery has obviously propelled the marketing of this book which has found its audience very well.”

Original photography by Nicola Davison.

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