Author: artoronto

RetroContempo / 5 Years 23 Artists / Their Works Today
Opening Reception: September 17, 2014 / 6 – 8 p.m.

Since 2009, The Al Green Gallery has started to expand its focus from sculptures to paintings, installations and other art styles, and from established artists to emerging and potential talents. To get a better understanding of what has happened in the past five years, you probably should have a visit to the gallery before October 18. A retrospective show is opened up there, presenting the works of twenty three artists. All of them have exhibited in the gallery during the past five years.

Al Green’s bronze statue (left) and Jerry Campbell’s Jade Pool, 2014, oil on panel.

Probably “collage” is the most adequate word to describe my impression while I was wondering around the gallery space on the opening night. Blue ceramics stand besides oil paintings; bronze statues are surrounded by graphic pictures and black-white photos. No certain topics, no limitations in styles and manners, and even no specific aesthetic considerations in presenting the works. Multiplicity and diversity in artistic expression is probably what the exhibition is to be expected.

Alice Vander Vennen, Connexion, 2014, detail, mixed media, found objects.

George Farmer, Clear Cut, 2014, wood, steel and glass.

Similarly, diversity could be used to describe the art pieces. Bronze wire, cloth strips and buttons are utilized in Alice Vander Vennen’s Connexion while George Farmer puts wood, steel and glass together to create a miniature “golden forest”. Also, the diversity is hidden behind a collection of thirty six paintings by Julia Vandepolder. Each one of them contains different images and signs (such as Lenin’s portrait, airplanes and red flags) and represents family letters of her grandparents in World War II. The paintings as a whole could be viewed as a memory of family members and a “black-humor” recording of the dark and gloomy days several decades ago.

Julia Vandepolder, Stamp Series (36 paintings), 2014 , oil on panel.

Nicholas Crombach, Foudling, 2014, resin, paint.  

Multiple colors and mixed media, undoubtedly, could explain what the diversity is. Sculptor Christopher Reid Flock, however, attempts to examine multiplicity in single color and material. Passionate about ceramics since his childhood, Flock spent around seven years in Asia, studying techniques with ceramic masters in Japan and China. In his Basking Blue, ceramic is twisted like sea waves, which in his opinion is an attempt to blend boundaries of hard and soft. He also prefers to regard his pliable ceramic work as a metaphor of tolerance and absorption, which explains the Canadian spirits in an aesthetic way.

Christopher Reid Flock and his Basking Blue, 2014, stoneware, paint.

There was a nice atmosphere in the Opening Reception where artists and guests merged happily with a glass of wine in hand, discussing art and making plans for future exhibitions.

Text and photo: Daisy Li Meng

*Exhibition information: September 17 – October 18, 2014,  The Al Green Gallery, 64 Merton Street, Toronto. Gallery Hours: Mon – Wed & Fri – Sat, 12 – 5, Thur 12 – 7 p.m.

Saturday, September 20, 2014

PANEL CONVERSATION: Generation(s): Evolutions in Art Writing / 12:00 – 1:30 p.m.
Jackman Hall, Art Gallery of Ontario

From left to right: Richard Rhodes, Sarah Milroy, Gabrielle Moser and Sky Goodden.

Gallery Hop Toronto began with a panel conversation composed of Sarah Milroy, Sky Goodden and Gabrielle Moser. Richard Rhodes, editor of Canadian Art, served as moderator, though he acted more as a fourth member of the roundtable discussion. After each speaker made opening written remarks (fitting, for a panel of art writers) the most insightful moments of the talk arose out of spontaneity. Talking points included the lack of funds devoted to art writers, the difficulties facing young critics today and how the tendency for those in art writing to wear many hats in the art world has lead to a frightened, less offensive brand of art criticism. The panel discussion was livestreamed online and will be made available for viewing at canadianart.ca/writingpanel after September 25.

Text and photo: Mitch Billinkoff

Tours and Talks / 2:30 – 6:00 p.m.

Junction Triangle / Bloor West

This tour – although hardly Junction and only marginally Bloor West – attracted a large crowd of art-lovers, perhaps too numerous for the intended itinerary. Surely, the opportunity to meet curators heightens the quality of a gallery visit, just as the buzz of a large crowd suffuses the event with importance.

Division Gallery with Graham Gillmore’s recent works.

However, the appreciation of art itself should stay the main focus – which, of the five venues, was virtually impossible in the three which exhibited video work. While it is understandable that close proximity with TIFF skewed the choice toward that medium, it remains a surprising and questionable decision both in terms of representation of the Toronto art scene and in terms of quality of the tour as a whole. The intimate space intended for viewing Laurent Montaron’s beautiful short film at Mercer Union but the gallery’s viewing room could at most accommodate a dozen spectators; while the pace of the visit could not permit beholding the videos of Lynn  Marsh at Scrap Metal and Mark Lewis at Daniel Faria galleries for their entire duration. An image might be worth a thousand words, but no speech of a curator can replace a proper viewing experience. At least, Clint Roenisch and Division galleries left a more lasting impression with works by Jason de Haan and Graham Gillmore respectively.

Sky Goodden discusses Laurent Montaron’s video installation at Mercer Union.

Lynn Marsh, Anna and the Tower, video at Scrap Metal Gallery.

Video by Mark Lewis at Daniel Faria Gallery.

Jason de Haan, Free and Easy Wanderer at Clint Roenisch Gallery.

Text and photo: Elena Iourtaeva

Dundas West Tour

It was a beautiful day for a tour along Dundas West this Saturday. It was led by curator Stefan Hancherow, and started at PM Gallery, that is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year with a show called Forward Thinking, featuring 12 artists who have reached a point in their career where they’ve decided to embark on a new path. Crystal Wagner pieces look like water-dragons dancing in and out of the sea.

Work by Crystal Wagner at PM Gallery.

ESP, a gallery that predominantly showing works from female Canadian artists. They host one new show a month, and this one was a preview of FEATURE art fair. Then we went to MKG127,  featuring work by Gwen Macgregor, who was present to talk to us. The most intriguing of her pieces was a series of stills of a woman she videotaped every morning, pushing a heavy cart up a hill.

In Loop gallery, John Abrams and Candida Girling were present to discuss the concepts behind their exhibits. Abrams, who has been sourcing film for four years, was inspired by Jean Luc Godard’s 1960 film Breathless, featuring Jean Seberg, whom he depicted in 20 different portraits of black and white oil paintings. Candida Girling’s exhibit A City of Sky: An Urban Intervention, is a series of interactive vertical landscapes that re-imagine greenery in the urban landscape.

Paintings of Jean Seberg by John Abrams at loop gallery.

Candida Girling’s exhibition, A City of Sky: An Urban Intervention, at loop gallery.

The young artist Nicholas Di Genova was exhibiting his work inspired by stop motion in LE Gallery. Di Genova is currently exploring new mediums of art, and his playful style is heavily inspired by zoology, mutation, evolution, manga, anime, as well as childhood hobbies such as model airplanes, Dungeons & Dragons, and war hammers.

Nicholas Di Genova’s work at LE Gallery.

The last stop was Cooper Cole Gallery displaying work from Georgia Dickie and John Riepenhoff. Dickie likes to deal with the temporal aspects of the nature of materials and thus created sculptures held together by balance, while Riepenhoff focuses on the relationships people have with gallery experiences, so he created a box that houses small works from different artists – a gallery within a gallery.

Visitor in Cooper Cole Gallery.

Text and photo: Josephine Mwanvua

MAGAZINE LAUNCH AND 30TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION / 6:30 p.m.
MOCCA

Guests at MOCCA, celebrating the 30th Anniversary of CanadianArt Magazine.

“Our role really is to try and bring the best of Canadian art to Canada and to the world.” Says Jill Birch, CanadianArt’s Chief Executive Officer. The Thirtieth anniversary celebration for CanadianArt magazine was hosted at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, where the current exhibition TBD is on view.

Editors Richard Rhodes and Sarah Milroy discuss the success of CanadianArt.

After brief talks by editors Richard Rhodes and Sarah Milroy, the event kicked off to a joyous celebration of the magazine’s thirty years of production. The crowd, composed of students, artists, journalists, art viewers, and briefly, famed architect, Eb Zeidler, spent the next few hours not only discussing the museum’s display, but the success of both CanadianArt and Canadian art. With closing remarks, Richard Rhodes confidently and happily claimed that the publication will be around for at least another thirty years.

MOCCA artistic director, David Liss (centre) with guests.

Text and photo: Brinae Bain

My first encounter with Faith La Rocque’s work was in MOCCA’s group exhibition titled,  ineffable plasticity/the experience of being human in 2011. In that show she displayed Salt Ramp With Celestial Children, a fish tank filled with living green organism. Her Crystal Ladder suspended from the gallery’s ceiling was beautifully simple but embraced the theme of the exhibition. Nature and its various forms are central elements of La Rocque’s art.

Artist Faith La Rocque at the Opening Reception on September 13, 2014

For her first solo show at De Luca Fine Art, La Rocque presents a collection of sculptural works informed by the subject of alternative health therapies. For the past 7 years, the artist has explored the interplay of belief, ritual and consumerism involved in the healing process. The works reflect her interest in the body, emotions and psychological states.

Faith La Rocque, chisel to carve light thoughts, 2014, Georgian marble, feather, motor, metal tube, dimensions variable.

Faith La Rocque, chisel to carve light thoughts, detail, 2014, Georgian marble, feather, motor, metal tube, dimensions variable.

The piece that gives its title to the show, chisel to carve light thoughts, is very intriguing and a good example of La Roque’s method of mixing two different materials, both organic but very different is their texture, their surface and feel. A Georgian marble block rests on a pedestal, pure and powerful in its whiteness.  A motor-operated metal rod in connected to a feather. The rod rotates around its own axis so the feather gets closer to the rock until it touches it time and time again.  The illusions created in this way make us believe that those soft touches might erase the surface of the marble and even fill it with lightness, warmth, and even emotions. It seems that that lightness can overcome the rigidity of the stone – as numerous tales about the healing power of feathers and their touch tell us.

Faith La Rocque, thoughtscreen 04, 2014, 8-mil low-level conductive plastic, tape, 8 x 8 inches.

Protection is the main idea in thoughtscreen 04, a helmet-shaped hat, created from a very unnatural material: plastic tape. It can be interpreted as a screening device for brain tumors, a helmet for protection from hurt, both human and environmental, or a simple kerchief to keep you warm.

Faith La Roque, Obsidian Ladder, 2014, obsidian, brass, hemp rope, 360 x 12 inches. Photo: Walter Willems. Courtesy of De Luca Fine Art/Gallery.

Obsidian Ladder addresses our desire to climb up to the sky, to connect with a higher realm. Obsidian is an extremely powerful and fast acting stone in crystal healing. It can bring negative emotions and unpleasant truths rushing to the surface, which have to be confronted before peace can return. It is also a very protective stone and is said to form a shield against negativity and to absorb negative energies from the environment. Looking at La Roque’s ladder, I don’t think I am brave enough to climb it, but I would love to touch it and feel its magic power. However powerful the stone is, the ladder seems too fragile.

Faith La Rocque, Conduit, 2014, electric massager, lamp cord, marble, motion sensor, staples, dimensions variable

Each piece in the exhibition is illustrative in some ways, and lends itself to a theme of healing and the process of it.

Guest at the Opening Reception with Obsidian Ladder.

Text: Elena Iourtaeva and Emese Krunák-Hajagos. Photo: Elena Iourtaeva.

*Exhibition information: September 13 – October 11, 2014, De Luca Fine Art / Gallery, 217 Avenue Road, Toronto. Gallery hours: Wed – Sat: 11 – 6 p.m.

Opening Reception: September 11, 2014 / 6:30 p.m.
Canadian Sculpture Centre

Camilla Geary-Martin’s sculptures are anything but ordinary. Drawing from her past experiences, they take on an ethereal quality while delivering a riveting story grounded in the human form. Experimental, unique and earthly – all this features could be found in her latest exhibition at the Canadian Sculpture Centre.

Artist Camilla Geary-Martin with her sculpture, Alice, at the Opening Reception.

Geary-Martin creates a diverse selection of intimate and engaging bronze sculptures. Her work is unique and experimental at the same time with a strong focus on the human form. A broad array of life experiences has influenced her as an individual and now informs her sculpture. The focus of this show reached back two generations to encapsulate her grandmother’s embroideries and days spent sketching embroideries and other artifacts  in the Victoria and Albert Museum that resulted in a carefully curated sculpture exhibition. 

Camilla Geary-Martin, Head Study, patinated bronze.

“The creative process is an important element in my work, combining the sensuality of moist clay with a fascination for the human form. While my work is both representational and semi-abstracted, I particularly enjoy the freedom of the abstract… still the presence of the model informs my work, giving meaning and credibility to the form.” wrote Geary-Martin  in her Artist statement. We can see both approaches in the exhibition from the almost realistic Head Study to the more abstract figures of Woman with Child and Moon Face Man. Some work is an interesting mixture of the two like Miss Universe with an almost realistic head and the semi-abstract elongated body.

Camilla Geary-Martin, Woman with Child (left) and Moon Face Man (right), patinated bronze.

Camilla Geary-Martin, Miss Universe, patinated bronze.

The making of the piece, the handwork that formed them is always visible in the surface of these sculptures’ but they are also radiate emotions. Camilla Geary-Martin’s work realistic and magical at the same time.

Camilla Geary-Martin, Bestman, patinated bronze.

Text and photo: Haafiz Karim

*Exhibition information: September 11 – October 3, 2014, Canadian Sculpture Centre, 500 Church Street. Gallery hours: Tue – Fri: 12 – 6, Sat: 11 – 4 p.m.

September 13 – 14, 2014
Trinity-Bellwoods Park

The cloudy skies and morning rain showers did little to deter the participants of this year’s Queen Street West Art Crawl Art Show in Trinity-Bellwoods Park. Guests and artists alike donned their rain gear and celebrated the annual event.

Guests viewing the work of Daniel Bombardier (DENIAL)

Over two-hundred booths were set up, showcasing the artists and their works. With the various mediums, styles, and techniques, the fair created a dynamic viewing experience for visitors either looking to decorate their homes or simply view contemporary art.

Sarah Carlson of Living Streams Studio.

Ryan Ashley of Untouched Poetry creates a poem for a young guest.

Artist Sarah Carlson attracted quite a few guests to her booth with vibrant images of Canadian Wildlife. Her colorful pieces brought a pleasant distraction from the grey day. Visiting Californian poet, Ryan Ashley set up a small table near the entrance to the park where he created on-the-spot poems for guests with an old typewriter.

Brandy Olley of Salvage Jewelry Co.

Todd Monk of Todd Monk Art

Brandy Olley’s booth featured custom hand-forged jewelry, to which she accredited a modern style with traces to a vintage simplicity. No matter the style or medium, the Art Show had something for everybody.

Matthias Trinke of Encaustic Painting with his wax paintings.

The Nugs booth with creator Nick Sianchuck (right).

The event at Trinity-Bellwoods certainly catered to all tastes, and provided a cosmopolitain experience in viewing art with guests and artists from not only Canada, but across the globe. The Show’s colorful pieces and bustling crowds provided a lively and joyful afternoon as just one part of the Queen Street West Art Crawl.

Text and Photo: Brinae Bain

Saturday, September 20, 2014
Toronto, Various Locations

Join us for our annual Gallery Hop Day in Toronto!

Presented in partnership with RBC, our Gallery Hop Day will be held on September 20, 2014. Gallery Hop Day is free and includes shows, talks and tours happening at galleries throughout the city. The day begins with a panel conversation, continues with tours and talks, and concludes with the launch of the 30th anniversary issue of Canadian Art. Don’t miss these exciting events!

PANEL CONVERSATION:

Generation(s): Evolutions in Art Writing / Noon to 1:30 p.m.
Jackman Hall, Art Gallery of Ontario, 317 Dundas St. W.

The past 30 years have seen major shifts in the delivery technologies for art writing and the relationship between art writers and the art scene. Join Sarah Milroy—a past editor of Canadian Art—along with critics Sky Goodden and Gabrielle Moser for this roundtable discussion on the past and future of contemporary art writing. Between them, these panellists have written for the Walrus, the Globe and Mail, Artforum.com, Artinfo, Modern Painters, and many other outlets. The discussion will be moderated by Canadian Art editor Richard Rhodes.

For the first time ever, we will be webcasting this panel live across the country. Tune in free from coast to coast, or get more details in advance, at canadianart.ca/writingpanel.

Tickets for the live, in-person event are not required, but capacity is limited. Please arrive early to reserve a seat. Auditorium doors will open 15 minutes before scheduled start time.

TOURS AND TALKS:
2:30 to 6:00 p.m. / Various locations in Toronto

Our Hop tours and talks are programmed with the goal of creating an interesting, challenging and enjoyable experience for everyone. Our tour guides are collectors, critics and other arts professionals, making them the ultimate portal into the arts. There are tours through the Junction, the West End and Queen West.

The Junction Tours

Junction Triangle/Bloor West Tour
2:30 to 4:00 p.m.
Led by critic Sky Goodden
Meeting Point: Division Gallery, 45 Ernest Ave.

Morrow/Miller Tour
4:30 to 6:00 p.m.
Led by head of cultural programming at the Drake Hotel Properties Mia Nielsen
Meeting Point: Olga Korper Gallery, 17 Morrow Ave.

The West End Tours

Parkdale Tour
2:30 to 4:00 p.m.
Led by assistant curator of the Art Gallery of York University Suzanne Carte
Meeting Point: General Hardware Contemporary, 1520 Queen St. W.

Dundas West Tour
4:30 to 6:00 p.m.
Led by curator Stefan Hancherow
Meeting Point: p|m Gallery, 1518 Dundas St. W.

The Queen West Tours

Niagara / Tecumseth Tour
2:30 to 4:00 p.m.
Led by associate art curator of TD Bank Group Robyn McCallum
Meeting Point: Walnut Contemporary, 201 Niagara St.

West Queen West Tour
4:30 to 6:00 p.m.
Led by Canadian Art contributor and collector Bill Clarke
Meeting Point: Koffler Gallery, 180 Shaw St.

MAGAZINE LAUNCH AND 30TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION / 6:30 p.m.
MOCCA, 952 Queen St. W.
“TBD” curated by Su-Ying Lee

After the last tours, make your way to MOCCA to take in “TBD” and enjoy the launch of the 30th anniversary issue of Canadian Art with the magazine’s editors.

The special 30th anniversary issue includes features on Sonny Assu, Nicholas Pye and Sheila Pye, and Sarah Thornton, who will be giving talks on her new book in October as part of our International Speaker Series. Highlighting the 30th, Richard Rhodes offers a feature article titled “Generation(s)”—also the theme for the Gallery Hop—that looks at the past 30 years of the Canadian art scene. Join us as we look at Canadian Art and Canadian art—past, present and future.

For more information please check: http://www.canadianart.ca/cafevents/toronto-gallery-hop-day/.

Friday, September 19, 2014 | 8 p.m.
The Power Plant

Join us for a FREE party to celebrate the opening of our Fall 2014 Season, and be one of the first to check out new works by Pedro Cabrita Reis, Julia Dault and Shelagh Keeley, artists whose practices simultaneously bridge painting, drawing and sculpture.

This is the first Canadian solo exhibition of work by Portuguese artist Pedro Cabrita Reis. The exhibition continues the artist’s investigation into the perceived boundaries of architecture, sculpture and painting. Presenting an all-encompassing intervention at The Power Plant, Cabrita Reis creates and produces this new project with the space of the gallery in mind.

Color Me Badd is a major solo exhibition by New York–based artist Julia Dault. Contextualizing new projects through a selection of past works, the exhibition Color Me Badd reveals the importance to Dault of balancing spontaneous gesture with responsiveness to rules, logic and the constraints of materials. Physical negotiations are central to Dault’s textured paintings and improvised sculptures; both are exhibited in Color Me Badd.

For her installation at The Power Plant, Keeley will create a new wall drawing that will envelop the clerestory walls. Her drawings on these grand canvases are the remnants of her corporeal action and articulate the moment and gestures of her body. Keeley’s drawings act as performative objects. They emerge from choreographed gestures as they relate to the limits and conditions of a bound space.

Both exhibitions are open: September 20, 2014 – January 4, 2015.

For more information please go to: http://thepowerplant.org/Exhibitions.aspx

Kagame Murray, Anthropomorphic (The Dreamer), 2002, acrylic on canvas, 81 x 48 inches. Courtesy of Articsok Gallery

Kagame Murray’s art sits on the boundary between two dimensional surfaces and three dimensional objects made complex by an intensification of illumination. The early works Africa and Anthropomorphic (The Dreamer) bring explorations of colour, forms and texture. In Venus there is a dominance of surface and colour. In the Typewriter Disaster Series, here represented by #2, #6, #7, #28, there is a shift from two to three dimensions with allusions to a fourth. Discarded typewriter ribbons (found objects) are recycled as photographs. Space becomes a pliable material, to be manipulated by the artist.

Kagame Murray, Typewriter Disaster Series #7, 1999, photography on archival fugi paper, 72 x 48 inches. Courtesy of Articsok Gallery

An underlying theme of ‘light’, the density of The Impacted Mirror point back to ancient Egypt, the tropical world of Africa and the presence of masks as constructions. Triptych Sockets seems to be an exploration of meaning which comes with a change in context. In The Impacted Mirror: The Violence of Life the theme of light becomes the subject matter. Here light, as with the abstract expressionists of the mid twentieth century, becomes an exploration of luminosity as displayed in the artificial lighting of the urban strip mall. Colour is shifted to the incandescence of a volcano. Representation gives way to the glare and the actuality of the highway. This is light that is about illumination and simply about itself – rather than showing the quality of the object. Red, the color itself, rather than a red object, displays energy, nuclear explosions and the sun in close-up. This light is not used as the basis of seeing something, but as the theme of a daring glance at the sun.  This is light intensified into something material and becomes the absolute found object. 

Kagame Murray, The Impacted Mirror: The Violence of Life, 2013 174 Floating points: film and television re-directional materials, wood,acrylic rods, bullet proof glass, 7’10” x 6’10” x 8 1/4″.  Courtesy of Articsok Gallery.

Kagame is on an adventure, with many journeys of discovery. Antithetically Murray channels the truth of everyday horrors to create “the beautiful” and allows the viewer to gaze into his mirror and recognize their rumination.

Kagame Murray: Triptych sockets,1996, photography on archival fugi paper, 96 x 29 1/2 inches. Courtesy of Articsok Gallery.

R.M. Lacovia

*Exhibition information: September 4 – October 4, 2014, Articsok Gallery, 1697 St. Clair Avenue West, Toronto. Gallery hours: Wed – Sat, 12 – 6 p.m.

Artists for Artists / Emerging practices for professional visual artists
September 18 – 21, 2014, Toronto
In partnership with the Manifesto Festival of Community and Culture

How is the business model for artists changing? What new tools are successful emerging artists using? How do we make sure that artist are paid fairly in this shifting landscape?

This fall visual artists from across Canada will meet in Toronto to answer these questions at CARFAC’s national annual conference, Artists for Artists. In partnership with Manifesto, Canada’s largest urban music and arts festival, this year’s theme is emerging practices for professional artists. Panels will also explore the state of performance art in Canada and fees for performance artists.

Participants will have the opportunity to mingle with your fellow artists at events like the reception for the National Visual Arts Advocate Award. And there will be lots of art and music to take in between our Toronto gallery art crawl and the action packed Manifesto programming.

For details and registration please go to: http://www.carfac.ca/2014/07/artists-for-artistsemerging-practices-for-professional-visual-artistsseptember-18-21-2014-toronto/

Painting courtesy of Peter Barelkowski

MIGRATION – NUIT BLANCHE 2014
Propeller Centre for the Visual Arts

■Did you immigrate to Canada, or are you the descendant of immigrants ? Yes? No?

■Are you in awe of the massive annual migrations of whales, geese, toads, dragonflies, owls, ospreys, ducks, hawks, butterflies, hummingbirds, bats and – in the Canadian north – colossal animals? Yes? No?

■Does the notion of “migration” feel like a metaphor or symbol for something very meaningful to you? Yes? No?

If you answered YES to at least one of these, please consider submitting a work(s) of your art to MIGRATION an Official Independent Project, 2014 SCOTIABANK NUIT BLANCHE at Propeller Gallery, Queen and Ossington! The MIGRATION exhibition will be from Wednesday September 24 to Sunday October 5, with Nuit Blanche on Saturday October 4.

The NUIT BLANCHE event is our blockbuster show of the year. As many as 4,000 people pass through the gallery on this one 12-hour night; an amazing opportunity to grandstand your work.

Propeller itself is MIGRATING to a new gallery location at 30 Abell Street in January, so this theme is especially exciting to us.

NUIT BLANCHE is an enormously labour intensive exhibition, especially since the night itself is 12 hours long!! We would be interested in knowing if you could offer some assistance in a task such as being in attendance in the gallery sometime in the night, hanging or take down. Any such assistance will be in the company of a Propeller member. Please let us know in your submission.

Let us know in your submission if there are any special installation needs and how these will be handled and by whom.

All work must arrive ready to be installed.

Propeller handles all work with the upmost care and respect, but we are not responsible for damaged work.

Propeller wants you to know that we would be honoured to have you submit work to this exhibition. It is very exciting to us that so many people find our gallery to be so suitable for their work. And our location to be super busy on Nuit Blanche. We will give every single submission our most considerate consideration!

Please note:

■This is a juried call – the jury’s decision is final.

■Submission fees are not refundable.

■30% commission on sales for non members.

Other ways to submit:

■Send your submission on CD or DVD. We do not accept submission via email.

■Up to 3 images on CD / DVD: 200dpi, maximum 1 MB saved as a jpeg.

■Your address, phone number, and e-mail

■Title of Work, Year, Medium, Size & Value

■A brief written statement about the work, maximum 50 words, saved as a Word file (.doc) on the same disk.

Include a hard copy with your submission.

■Non-refundable Entry Fee by cheque or money order made out to:

Propeller Centre for the Visual Arts.

*submissions without entry fees will be disqualified.

■A self addressed, stamped envelope for return of materials.

■Submission must arrive by 12 noon September 17th, 2014

Entry materials without a SASE will not be returned.

Send your entry to:

MIGRATION
Propeller
984 Queen Street West
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M6J 1H1

If  you have any questions please contact the gallery at  gallery@propellerctr.com or by phone: 1-416-504-7142.

Due date: Wednesday, September 17, 2014 12:01 p.m.

Fees$45.00 CAD – 1st image, $30.00 CAD – per additional image

In the last hot days of summer, Paul Petro Contemporary Art gallery brought to us a double exhibition of new works by Shelagh Keeley and Morley Shayuk, coherent in their highly tactile aesthetic, and yet split in references by a millennium.

Installation view of Morley Shayuk’s work

Morley Shayuk chose the enigmatic title of his series, Lotus, for its double reference to the mythological flower and the sports car, which highlights the ambiguousness of this “go-to spirit word”. His primary source of inspiration lies in the constructed landscape that surrounds him. Having recently moved to the suburbs of Toronto, a typical car community with houses built in the 40s and now extensively renovated, Morley became increasingly fascinated by the “bevel cluster” on front doors of neighbourhood houses.

Detail of Morley Shayuk’s Untitled, 2014 diptych, acrylic, stuccoed cement, plastic, glass.

Morley Shayuk, Untitled 2014, acrylic, stuccoed cement, glass, rocks.

The structural aesthetic of these shapes and textures – from the ubiquitous garage door to the standard v-cut on facades – directly informs his works, in which he uses an array of organic and non-organic materials: cement, glass, plastic, but also rocks and wood. By reproducing the composition, Morley has even “renovated” a painting by Toronto artist Jay Isaac, whom he admires. Motivated by the manmade, the pristine geometric compositions of Morley’s works transform the mundane and take it to the realm of pure aestheticism.

Installation view of Shelagh Keeley’s work

Shelagh Keeley’s work, on the other hand, draws on the legacy of Roman culture, and specifically Lucretius’s De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things). Having previously been engaged with non-Western cultures and Eastern philosophies, Shelagh turned to Pliny the Elder, and then to Lucretius, whom she recognizes as connected to her earlier interests. It was on Cyprus that Shelagh got inspired by Lucretius’s philosophical poem and his notion of “film”, an outer layer which all things possess, and which gets detached from a thing to eventually produce perception upon interacting with our organs of sense. This idea feeds into her interest in the power of intuition and non-verbal modes of communication, which helped her transform the verbal message of Lucretius’s poetry into visual imagery. Shelagh admires Lucretius for his stance against orthodoxy and characterizes him as a visionary because he had foreseen numerous notions which are now widely accepted, such as atomism and materialism. Furthermore, she values his writing for sensuality and poetic vividness, whose visceral quality she is transposing onto her works.

Detail of Shelagh Keeley’s after lucretius / de rerum natura, acrylic on Mylar.

Currently, Shelagh is installing her major exhibition at the Power Plant, Notes on Obsolescence, curated by Gaëtane Verna which will open to the public on September 19, 2014.

  Guest in front of Morley Shayuk’s work at the Opening Reception, September 4, 2014.

Text: Elena Iourtaeva and Andrey Bilenkyy. Photo:  Elena Iourtaeva

*Exhibition information: Morley Shayuk: Lotus and Shelagh Keeley: after Lucretius / de rerum natura, September 5 – October 4, 2014, Paul Petro Contemporary Art, 980 Queen St West, Toronto. Gallery hours: Wed – Sat, 11 – 5 p.m.