Plural Montreal - The Contemporary Art Fair We Didn’t Know We Needed
By Carrie Scott
No one needs another art fair. Not me. Not you. Not the galleries. Not the collectors. Certainly not the artists, who bear the brunt of the cost and the chaos. Art fairs are, when you strip them back, shopping malls. Well-lit, well-attended, occasionally transcendent shopping malls - but shopping malls all the same.
So I went to Plural with… expectations. A solid regional fair. A few good galleries.
Reader, I was wrong.
I slept on it. Worked out. Did a Tillbery face mask. Let the noise settle. Let the usual fair-fatigue do its thing. And I've landed somewhere slightly inconvenient for the oversaturated art fair narrative: Plural is good. Really good. This year, maybe especially.
And it’s bucking where it should sit in the pecking order. There’s a hierarchy of fairs, tedious as hierarch is. Art Basel and Frieze at the top. Their satellites - Untitled, NADA, the Minor Attractions - orbiting below. Then come the photo fairs. And then, somewhere further down the list, the "regional" category: competent, worthy, but rarely making headlines.
Plural isn't sitting in that last category. It's playing closer to NADA or Untitled - that particular register where things are still discoverable, still breathable, still a little less choreographed. And crucially: it's well run. Organised by galleries, for galleries. Contemporary Art Galleries Association (AGAC) runs Pluarl. As a non-profit organisation that actively contributes to the dissemination and promotion of Canadian artists through its different online platforms, projects and events, they are doing the art fair game differently. Booths you can actually see. Lighting that works with the art instead of against it. Food and drink that suggests someone thought about human needs. A talks programme with real substance - Dr. Kenneth Montague was there. So was I, which means I'm biased, but I'm biased and right.
There are also workshops for artists on pricing and introducing their work to curators. It's holistic in a way fairs can rarely be.
But what really made the difference here in my take on the fair is that the work on view is itself great. Strong gallery programmes. Serious artists. And prices that exist in the realm of reality - not "price on request," not "please submit your collection history," just actual numbers attached to actual work.
Top Picks from Plural 2026
Here are a few of the artists that I haven't been able to stop thinking about:
Represented by Jano Lapin Art: Decorative at first glance but then you notice the medical sutures, the raw handling of material on skin-like paper and the work becomes something more perfectly devastating, like your favourite Bon Iver song.
Represented by Robertson Ares Gallery this work felt like a digital ode to James Turrell. This piece framed nature so perfectly I wanted to move in with it. I am not being hyperbolic.
Represented by Stephen Bulger Gallery: I think I arrived late to this fan club, but I'm fully committed now. Simoneau explores the passage of time with such elegance — huge ideas, distilled.
Represented by Duran Contemporary: Perfect compositions about nothing and everything. The way rain hits a window. The way light grazes a table. The way memory loses focus and comes back again. These burrowed into my heart and haven't left.
Represented by de Montigny Contemporary: At first this work is whimsical, lush, strawberries-and-shortcake delightful. Then you learn you're looking at part of a larger narrative rooted in an 1840s Haudenosaunee beaded souvenir bag — objects made by Mohawk and Tuscarora communities for Niagara Falls tourism, where Victorian florals masked deeper codes of survival and meaning. The strawberry keeps coming back. So does the weight of what it carries.
Represented by Ellephant Art: Saturated colour, confrontational gaze, radical intimacy. His ongoing series Queer Portraits photographs Montreal's artist community staged in their domestic spaces - every object deliberate, every room a constructed studio. Completely stopped me in my tracks.
Represented by Robertson Ares Gallery: Cinematic, slightly surreal, and heavy in the best possible way. Obscured and cut-off faces circling questions of racial trauma, memory, and internalised supremacy. Go look at all of his work. Immediately.
In the Anticipation curated section of the fair: I kept circling back to her work in different parts of the fair, always with the same reaction: wait, who did this? Ghostly figures on stoops, towering monuments to people present and absent. Somewhere between memory and apparition.
Represented by Pangée: A huge installation at the fair, RatKing, was heavy, draping, emotional figures - part Frankenstein, part flower, part body. Elisabeth is pulling at a long thread of female sculptors but do something incredibly fresh and dynamic. This piece has since been acquired by National Galleries Canada and I could not be more thrilled for this young artist.
Represented by TIAN Contemporain: I might be a bit biased as I’ve known Trevor for a year now but seeing his work in person at this fair reminded me of everything I love about his work - an exploration of space, rhythm, and movement. His paintings weave together forms, lines, and textures into dynamic, almost audible compositions drawing inspiration from a range of music genres.
And also: Léopold L. Foulem, Bronson Smillie, Jennifer Latour (I already own one, which is the only reason she wasn't on my shopping list), Andil Gosine, Marie Lannoo, and June Clark — all worth your time and attention.
Plural Montreal Contemporary Art Fair: The Bottom Line
Annoyingly: I did need another fair. This one.
Montreal is also, for the record, a wonderful city with great hotels, great food, and no bad reason to visit. Add Plural to your 2027 calendar. You won't regret it. And, promise, I'm not just saying that because I spoke there.