Annie Dunning / Jon Sasaki / Bruce Montcombroux
ANNIE DUNNING – AIR TIME
JON SASAKI – ON PURPOSE
BRUCE MONTCOMBROUX – PALANQUIN PARK
JUN. 26 – AUG. 7
Air Time is a musical collaboration with pigeons that celebrates urban ecology, the overlooked and the potential of the everyday. It includes a video, soundtrack, sculptures, photos and a poster. Annie Dunning employs a playful approach to nature and mystery. Empathy for the little guy, the overlooked and unconsidered leads Dunning to deal with mostly common items as subject matter. With an aesthetic that is influenced by craft and DIY style, Dunning explores what greater possibilities these objects might hold if released from their expected roles. She is interested in conflating the natural and human worlds. Her work focuses on rediscovering the potential of ordinary or common things, or viewing them from a slightly off-center, humorous perspective. Annie Dunning received her MFA from the University of Guelph in 2007. Her work has been presented in recent solo exhibitions at YYZ (Toronto) and The MacDonald Stewart Art Centre (Guelph) and in group exhibitions at the Georg Kolbe Museum (Berlin) and Art Metropole (Toronto).
Read the exhibition essay by Sally McKay.
On Purpose celebrates noble intentions, aspirations, and determination, while simultaneously conjuring up a bleak flipside of failure and purposelessness. Working in the vein of “romantic conceptualism,” Jon Sasaki utilizes primarily performance-for-video, objects, installations and interventions in work that mixes humor and pathos, often with gently antagonistic results. His practice often suggests a near-inescapable cycle of trial and failure. However, though the work may be cynical on the surface, it invariably asserts a fervent, unabashed optimism lying just below. Jon’s work has been presented in recent solo exhibitions at the Doris McCarthy Gallery, (UTSC) and Jessica Bradley Art + Projects (Toronto). He has participated in group exhibitions at VOX (Montreal), the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery (University of Toronto), the Owens Art Gallery (Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB) as well as the 2006 and 2008 editions of Toronto’s Nuit Blanche. Upcoming solo exhibitions will be presented at 126 (Galway, Ireland) and the Kitchener Waterloo art Gallery. Jon was an active member of the Instant Coffee art collective between 2002 and 2007. He lives and works in Toronto.
Read the exhibition essay by Catherine Dean.
Palanquin Park is about a searching for a place called home, while inventing maps that explore beyond geography to the possible intersection of place and belonging. Bruce Montcombroux explores invention, fabrication, bricolage, and makeshift structures. He is influenced by personal experiences of immigration, residing in isolated communities in Northern Canada, frequent moves, and many summers spent living in a tent trailer in various national parks. Questions about place and belonging, inoperative communities, and displaced populations form a subtext in his work. Bruce Montcombroux is a practicing artist, exhibits nationally and currently lives and works in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where he graduated with an MFA from the University of Saskatchewan in 2007, and now teaches sculpture and extended media as a sessional instructor with the Department of Art and Art History.
Read the exhibition essay by Cliff Eyland.