Canadian artist Max Dean has donated 50 of his works, together worth nearly half a million dollars, to the Ottawa Art Gallery.

Dean has been a recipient of the Governor General's award for visual and media arts, and his robotic chair and photographs are found in the National Gallery of Canada several blocks away from the OAG.

But the collection of photographs and installations he's donating to the municipal gallery is highly autobiographical, and the ideas behind them stem from his time living in Ottawa starting in 1979, he said.

"I spent a decade here teaching, and exhibiting, and making a lot of work, making some of my most important work here," said Dean. "The table and the robotic chair were all developed here."

"So, there is a deep-seated feeling that this is a place I really cherish, and this is a coming home, in some senses."

Waiting for the Tooth Fairy

Of the 50 works he's donating — half are photographs — he considers one of the most significant to be his 2009 installation Waiting for the Tooth Fairy.

It incorporates some of his own toys from childhood, a mattress and an uprooted tree. The gallery's senior curator, Catharine Sinclair, said it's meant to evoke the trajectory from birth to death.

Dean was first fascinated by a huge tree he saw during a big rain storm back in the 1980s while driving on Ottawa's Island Park Drive. It had snapped six feet up its trunk.

"I looked at this and I thought, 'I have to have this tree!'"

He didn't get that particular tree but did find the smaller, uprooted one used in the installation years later in Kemptville, outside of Ottawa.

Dean's art installation 'Waiting for the Tooth Fairy' incorporates an uprooted tree he found in Kemptville, just outside of Ottawa. (courtesy of Max Dean)

Gift 'transformative' as gallery readies for big move

Dean's artworks will eventually make their way into the new Ottawa Art Gallery being built next door to its current home in the old courthouse on Daly Avenue.

The announcement of his donation, which the gallery called "transformative," was made at one of the last receptions to be held in that old space.

Dean told the audience they should be very proud of the new building, and he urged the community to support its local artists and to buy their work.

"I haven't been back for two years, or something like that. You can feel the difference," said Dean. "There's a whole different feeling and vibe in this city.

"This isn't a pretty vibrant city, this is a very vibrant city. It's quite exciting."