Long before smartphones documented every backstage moment, there was Melissa Auf der Maur with a point-and-shoot camera slung over one shoulder and a bass guitar over the other.
This fall, the former bassist for Hole and The Smashing Pumpkins invites Toronto audiences inside that world with Melissa Auf der Maur: My ’90s Rock Photographs, opening at the Art Gallery of Ontario on September 8.
Featuring more than 200 photographs, video, personal ephemera, and new music, the exhibition is less a history lesson than an intimate visual diary of one of rock’s most influential decades. Rather than polished publicity shots, these images capture the quiet, candid moments that existed between sold-out concerts, recording sessions, long bus rides, and life on the road.
Before joining two of alternative rock’s defining bands, Auf der Maur studied photography at Concordia University in Montreal. Throughout the 1990s she never stopped documenting the people and places around her, developing rolls of 35mm film in one-hour photo labs while touring across North America and beyond. The result is an archive of more than 15,000 images, from which this exhibition draws.
For anyone who grew up on the music of the ’90s, the exhibition promises a rare glimpse behind the curtain of an era that still shapes rock culture today. But even visitors without a deep connection to alternative music will find something compelling in Auf der Maur’s photographs. They reveal not celebrity, but humanity – friendships, exhaustion, anticipation, creativity, and the fleeting moments that happen when the stage lights go dark.
One of the exhibition’s centrepieces is BASS WOMB ROOM, a newly created immersive installation combining mirrored environments, projected imagery, field recordings, and previously unreleased music written by Auf der Maur during the 1990s. The accompanying 15-track album, her first new music in 15 years, will be released digitally on September 4, with a special cassette edition launching first at the AGO.
The experience extends beyond the gallery walls. On September 9, Auf der Maur will return to Toronto for an exhibition celebration and book signing of her new 240-page photography book, featuring 250 images and personal reflections from the artist alongside essays from writers including Michael Stipe, Ann Powers, and AGO curator Sophie Hackett.
While the exhibition celebrates one of rock’s most memorable decades, it also quietly reflects on a different kind of nostalgia – the last fully analogue era before phones, social media, and constant digital documentation changed how we experience music forever.
Melissa Auf der Maur: My ’90s Rock Photographs opens to the public September 8, 2026, at the Art Gallery of Ontario, where it will remain on view through June 2027.
Admission is included with general gallery admission and remains free for Ontarians under 25, Indigenous Peoples, AGO Members, and Annual Passholders.
👉 More information: https://ago.ca
Cover image: Self-Portrait in House of Mirrors, USA, 1995, © Melissa Auf der Maur
Leave a Reply