archives 2006
JAN 14 - FEB 25
Daryl Vocat (ON) Practical Associations
Catherine Ross (NY) Fingering and Footing
Daryl Vocat's Practical Associations contemplates human relationships, through the influence of culture. By exploring various means of communication, the work examines the way we understand and present ourselves, and the structures acted out within our relationships. Culture and social ideologies inform us, while socialization affects the way we understand ourselves. Although everyone is influenced by culture, it can be unclear how these influences manifest, or why certain relational dynamics persist despite attempts to work beyond them. Practical Associations is an act of translation, by using imagery and phrases from literature and popular culture such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Francesca Lia Block, Spider-Man, and David Hockney as starting points. Information from disparate sources is interpreted and mixed together to create this body of work. In addition to source imagery, self-portraiture plays an important role in this work. The self-portrait or "double" is an attempt to record a history, or to leave a trace. Within a poetic and social framework, a persona is created, and its potential is explored.
Catherine Ross: "My work looks around the spectacle to find lively unconscious activity, performances of uncontrolled (though often rhythmic) gestures in the reactions of everyday people. Without the direction of technique, movement reveals an inherent awkwardness, a humor that echoes our own vulnerabilities. In my work, I point to these moments by juxtaposing the refined gestures of actors and by collaborating with musicians who create improvisatory reactions to my recorded material. For every project I put myself in the shoes of my subject matter. The creation of 'Fingering and Footing' included six attempts to become a contestant on the Price is Right game show. Although I failed to appear on stage, my participation ensured that contestants are not actors, but fanatically committed everyday people with truly unconscious reactions. The original music was improvised, using vocal vibrations to translate the waves of physical excitement and implied screaming into its conscious equivalent."
MAR 11 - APR 22
Libby Hague (ON) Open Images: Open Narrative
Yael Brotman (ON) Dreamline
Libby Hague: "Thematically, my recent work looks at the risks of living in a precarious world. My point of view is secular, and I use narrative to puzzle out how, without an external code to direct us, we can determine humane social relationships. I've worked for a long time in print and installation, and the two streams have come together in my latest series, Everything needs everything. Everything needs everything plays out in Toronto's business core, its condo corridor and under the Gardiner Expressway at an apocalyptic future moment. As an installation of woodcuts, it is both claustrophobic and immersive. Girls tumble from the sky to protect babies who, perfect and fearless, give them a reason to hope and to act. Shards of glass and chandeliers interrupt the central dramas by spilling into our own space to mark the fragility and extravagance of civilized life."
Yael Brotman: "For the past five years the thrust in my art practice has been the exploration of storytelling and the nature of narrative. Urban myths, legends, epics, fairy tales, and gossip are all versions of storytelling; and storytelling in a non-linear structure, informs my painting on woodblock installation, Dreamline. The installation consists of a double string of small blue paintings, each mounted on a 3-inch ash cube. The images figured in the paintings are culled from iconic emblems found in traditional fairytales, from photographs and advertisements in contemporary newspapers and magazines, and from my own sketches and photographs. The narrative, though an open-ended one, has rhythm and phrases that shift in mood from somber to whimsical to hopeful."
MAY 6 - JUN 17
Stephen Fisher (NS) Strange events in the invisible strata
Nicolas Fleming (QC) seeking scapes
During his stay in St. John's, Nicolas Fleming intends on presenting a few unannounced, brief, and physically demanding, exploratory performative acts in unknown territory which will be determined by his guide. The suit he wears to perform these acts is conceived to block his eyesight. While seeking the scapes, Fleming will be collecting information by touch and by hearing, all the while creating a mental image of his whereabouts. Based on this exploration, he will then attempt to recreate the landscape he roamed through painting. Later, the canvas-made suit he wore, a video documentation and the painting resulting form the act will be presented as an installation at Eastern Edge Gallery. Fleming's current body of work is driven by a desire to investigate drawing and painting as performative acts. He situate the acts of markmaking within the contemporary dialogues of other disciplines, such as performance, in order to examine how painterly practices have evolved in a performative sense since action painting.
Stephen Fisher: The purpose of this exhibition of paintings is to make visible, the invisible events that have taken place, do take place, and will take place over the surface of the Earth. These paintings are mainly concerned with the amalgamation and compilation of various events such as weather patterns, animal migration, geological events and formations, human made boudaries and broadcasting ranges that exist only in diagrammatic form. These new, Strange Event Scapes that are created when all this information is layered on a painting surface describe a new "scape". This represents the past, present and future of an area, thus creating what Fisher calls a visual "super event". He is interested in possible political, cultural, and environmental conversations that may arise from viewing these events all in one continuous space. The simultaneous availability of these events as new layered (land)scapes may raise questions about how we interact with the environmental activities around us. We can see our patterns of activity over-laid with animal, geological, and environmental activity.
JUL 1 - AUG 12
Jinny Yu (NB/ITALY) Me(n)tal Perspectives
Francine Lalonde (QC) Flexible spaces
In Me(n)tal Perspectives Jinny Yu considers such notions as individuality, mass, and anonymity. As the title and the visual images suggest, her ambiguous feeling towards the busyness of urban life is expressed in this series of work. It is at the same time the disgust towards the density and containment, but also the fascination towards the complicated visuals. Most of the works in this series are produced on aluminum sheets with graphite pencils and paint, on which Yu continues to play with the different perspectives. Expressive lines of different size done with graphite occupy the entire surface of the metal sheet; they are however contained within the boundary of the surface. The different layers of perplex perspectives are enhanced by an additional layer of lines suggesting an urban architectural setting. Since 1996, Yu’s works have been shown in numerous exhibitions, which have taken place in various museums and galleries across Canada, in the United States, in Japan and in Russia. An artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts in 1999 and at Stiftung Starke in Berlin in 2004, at Red Gate Gallery in Beijing in 2005, and a grant receipient of Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec, Jinny Yu has taught in Toronto, Montreal, Sackville (NB), Paris (France) and is currently working on a research project at the Center for Studies on Technologies in Distributed Intelligence Systems at the Venice International Universty. She has given guest lectures at various educational institutions, such as Sangmyung University in Seoul, Korea, NSCAD University in Halifax, Concordia University and Cegep Rosemont in Montreal.
The subject of Francine Lalonde's works in sculpture-installation is the appropriation of a physical and mental space. The work is the result of architectural and spatial analysis, and the study of proximity relations and psychoanalysis. Since 1998, Lalonde has been expressing these interests formally by integrating architectonic structures into spaces in which the architectural components, dimensions, scale relations, light sources, and so on have been meticulously analyzed. While she adds volume, it is, of course, her own investigation and spatial experience that is superimposed on a place, similar to "marking" her territory. Francine Lalonde lives and works in Montreal. She has presented her work in about twenty group and solo exhibition at various artist-run centres such as Articule, Powerhouse, Skol and Circa in Montreal, Axe Néo-7 in Hull, Oeil de poisson in Quebec City, Rouyn-Noranda, Eyelevel Gallery in Halifax and Grunt in Vancouver. She has produced artworks for public art program projects at CEGEP de Gatineau and Maison-Théâtre in Montreal. In 2004, she participated in a Quebec-Catalan exchange, travelling to Barcelona, Spain to create a work for Hanger art centre. She has taught visual art at Collège Édouard-Montpetit since 2000.
SEPT 15 - OCT 28
The Third Leg (QC/NY) Welcome to Gayside
Coral Short (BC/UK) Stationary
In 1985, residents of Gayside, Newfoundland, voted to re-name their hometown, "Baytona, NL", after enduring increased harassment. Was this an effort to distance the small town from any association to gay culture, especially in light of a new, terrifying AIDS epidemic? Inspired by this tale, and mindful of the climate of social prejudice in heat of the 1980s AIDS crisis, collaborative queer art trio, The Third Leg, present their interpretation and re-appropriation of "Gayside", the once feared place-name. The month-long exhibition explores both actual and fictitious histories and examines the artists' personal experiences of growing-up gay in both rural and metropolitan locations. The Third Leg is the collaboration between three artists from New York City, Montreal and Toronto. Since 2004, The Third Leg has exhibited illustration, print and textile-based interactive installations at La Centrale (Montreal), Cinders Gallery (Brooklyn), Participant Inc (New York), and John Connelly Presents (New York).
Through sound performance, Short reveals her ambiguous questioning & critique of gender construction and it's role in social determination through subtly revealing gestures, "hypnotically charged sound loops and a drop dead sexy implementation of a stapler". Coral Short is a versatile performance and installation artist who has lived, worked and exhibited extensively throughout Europe and Canada. She has created numerous short films, video works and installations with a passion for sound and an activist attitude towards Queer politics and Community development. She has spent the past 7 years overseas in Korea, Japan, Scotland and England and has recemtly moved back to Brittish Columbia.
NOV 25 - DEC 16
MEMBERS SPEAK Annual Members' Exhibition
Over 30 members submitted a recent artwork. Members' artist talks will take place December 6th and 13th, 7pm at the gallery.
Participants: Jackie Barrett, Jennifer Barrett, Barbara Beisinghoff, Mark Bovey, Tara Bryan, Shirley Greer, Craig Francis Power, Vanessa Hall Patch, Raina McDonald, Anita Singh and Robert Truszkowski.
