By Corinne Frost on Oct 18, 2009 and filed under Features, This Week's Edition. Follow any responses with RSS 2.0.

Viktor Mitic's Blasted Beaverbrook.

Viktor Mitic’s Blasted Beaverbrook is not your average profile painting. One of Mitic’s most notable works, it shows a black and white Lord Beaverbrook himself sitting in a red and gold leaf arm chair with a beaver on the arm of the chair. The figures are quite noticeable against the lime green background, but what really makes this painting unique is the multiple bullet holes in the canvas.

This is just one of the many pieces in the 50th Anniversary Legacy Collection at the Lord Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton. The original idea for the anniversary celebration was to acquire 50 different pieces of artwork by Canadian artists to be on display. However, it has grown into something bigger than they ever expected. In fact, they have managed to receive three times the amount of art work than they were expecting from artists all over the country.

Mitic’s Blasted Beaverbrook is one of the first pieces of art that you come across in the Legacy Collection, and rightfully so as it is a portrait of Lord Beaverbrook, the man the art gallery is named after.

Diana Thorneycroft’s Martyrdom of the Great One.

It is the variety of artwork in this collection that truly makes it what it is. Diana Thorneycroft’s Martyrdom of the Great One is completely different from Mitic’s work. Thorneycroft’s work is a diorama that she has constructed and then photographed. This particular piece has Wayne Gretzky with his arms chained up to tree branches. He has blood on his hockey gear and is surrounded by lions, tigers, and cheetahs out in the wilderness of western Canada. While this piece may seem somewhat violent, it is also interesting as we Canadians normally view our hockey players as heroes in a sense. However, in this depiction that does not seem to be the case.

Martyrdom of the Great One is just one in a series of eight Martyrdom diorama photographs done by Thorneycroft. Other’s in the series include Martyrdom at the Rink, The Martyrdom of St. Donald and The Stoning of St. Peter the Fat Fan, which depicts Canadian hockey players slap shooting rocks at Peter Griffin from the television animated series Family Guy.

But perhaps one of the most intriguing pieces of work in the Legacy Collection is Tom Benner’s Pontiac. It is a life-size sculpture of a Pontiac car made out of copper, birch bark, plywood, steel and leather. It is said to be one of the main attractions of the collection currently on display at the art gallery. The sculpture has working doors and is completely functioning except for the fact that it lacks an actual engine.

From sculptures to paintings and photographs, the 50th Anniversary Legacy Collection at the Lord Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton will be open until January 4, 2010.