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Obsolete Concepts Adam David Brown, Marco D'Andrea, Beth Howe, John Latour, Craig Leonard, Cindy Stelmackowich, Karen Trask Exhibition runs May 9 – June 13, 2008
Adam David Brown, Core Sample: The History of Art (detail), 2006, Janson's The History of Art (modified), video projection, table This exhibition brings together seven artists whose works, through various interventionist strategies, present new challenges to the authoritative functions of the book. Through sculpture, audio, paper works, digital imagery and documentation of a conceptual art project, the artists question the relevance of published textual knowledge and the limitations of the book as a finite, bound object currently faced with potential dematerialization. Artist Biographies Marco D'Andrea earned a Masters in Library and Information Science at the University of Western Ontario, and completed a BFA in Media Arts at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University. His works have been exhibited across Canada including in the McCleave Gallery's S.A.G.S.R.I. 2007-2008 Space Mission. Beth Howe completed a MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute. Howe has taught at the Ontario College of Art and Design, and has exhibited her works throughout North America. John Latour, a Montreal-based artist, earned a Master of Arts in Art History from Concordia University, and completed a Masters in Library and Information Studies at McGill University. His works have been exhibited in Toronto, Montreal and internationally. Craig Leonard is currently a Lecturer at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University. He completed a Masters of Visual Studies at the University of Toronto. He has exhibited his works across Canada and internationally. Cindy Stelmackowich is currently undertaking a PhD in the History and Theory of Art at the State University of New York, Binghamton, and completed her MA at Carleton University. She has had numerous solo and group exhibitions across Canada and in New York State. Karen Trask earned a Masters in Sculpture at Concordia University, and studied Fine Arts at the University of Waterloo. Currently based in Montreal, Trask has exhibited extensively in Canada, Mexico, Europe and the United States. Curator Biographies Olivia Lam received an Honours BFA in Studio Arts and a MA in Art History with a diploma in Curatorial Studies from York University. Olivia has worked at the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, YYZ Artists' Outlet, and on Nuit Blanche Toronto (2006).
Documentary Uncertainty Stephen Andrews, John Greyson, Hito Steyerl Exhibition runs March 29 – May 2, 2008
Each of the works of art in this exhibition approaches the question of the documentary image from a variety of challenging and revealing perspectives, thus entering into a dialogue with the other pieces in the gallery. Each piece is highly reflective about its chosen aesthetic form, thereby exposing the layers that lie both within and in between the images, and inviting the viewer to join the artist in his or her exploration of new critical ways of seeing. Biographies John Greyson is a Toronto film and video artist whose features, shorts, and installations include Fig Trees, Proteus, and Lilies. An assistant professor at York University, he was awarded the Bell Canada Video Art Award in 2007. Hito Steyerl is a filmmaker and video artist in the field of essayist documentary film as well as a cultural theorist, widely published writer, and professor of cultural and gender studies at the University for the Arts in Berlin. Her work takes place at the interface between film and the fine arts, between theory and practice. Documentary Uncertainty is the title of the first chapter of Hito Steyerl's new book 'Die Farbe der Wahrheit' (The Colour of Truth), which will appear shortly with Turia und Kant in Vienna. In the winter semester 2008 at Bard College, Hito Steyerl and Maria Lind will inaugurate a research project called 'The Greenroom', exclusively dedicated to questions of the documentary in art. Other events involving Hito Steyerl, John Greyson, and Stephen Andrews: For more information on Hito Steyerl's Toronto appearances, please visit the Goethe-Institut at www.goethe.de/toronto or contact Doina Popescu at arts1@toronto.goethe.org. For more information on the 21st annual Images Festival, April 3-13, please visit www.imagesfestival.com.
Grotesques Nao Bustamante, Cheto Castellano, David Khang, Natalie Loveless Irene Loughlin, Naufus Ramirez-Figueroa, Coco Rico Curated by Lissette Olivares Exhibition runs February 23 – March 21, 2008 Performances Saturday February 23, starting at 6:30 pm Grotesques must be thought of as a site of experimentation, where risk is a seductive ally that pries open the aperture for possibility. In this collective exhibition, the grotesque is invoked as a realm of mutative, transitional, and transgressive potentiality. Employing a range of taboo materials, themes, and forms, the artists move beyond the expected, searching for unconventional ways into the audienceÕs sensorium. Through symbolic inversion, this group of artist-agents emphasize a return of the repressed, amplifying contemporary political issues that exist within our everyday experience.
David Khang, 'Mediamorphosis' 2006, Performance with live monarch butterflies, human wisdom teeth, raw beef tongue Biographies
Nao Bustamante is an internationally acclaimed performance and video artist whose work has been exhibited around the world. She has received the Anonymous Was a Woman, NYFA, and Lambent fellowships. Juan 'Cheto' Castellano is a Chilean contemporary artist whose work explores the aesthetics of the taboo. His multimedia work analyzes the construction of postcolonial/postmodern identities in Latin American and Third World diasporas. Naufus Ramirez Figueroa is a Guatemalan-Canadian artist working in video, installation, and performance. His work touches issues related to war and diaspora. HeÕs a recipient of the Franklin Furnace Performance Art Fund. David Khang uses language as a trope to interrogate constructions and performativity of gender and race. He is a 2006-7 recipient of the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art. Irene Loughlin's interdisciplinary work questions and reworks visual representations of trauma, suffering, and resistance; she is a recipient of the Lynch Staunton Canada Council award for excellence. Natalie Loveless is currently a PhD candidate in the History of Consciousness Department at UCSC. Her work includes conversation-based installation, social intervention work and more traditional forms of durational action-art. Lissette Olivares is a theorist, critic and curator. As a cultural diplomat she promotes avant-garde practices and the careers of marginal artists; her PhD analyzes cultural resistance during Chile's dictatorship. Coco Rico's aim as an artist is to expose systemic injustices and to break the constricting rules of propriety through a summoning of the carnivalesque within public spaces.
War Zones Guillermina Buzio & Jorge Lozano, Derek Hardinge, Peter Kingstone, Afshin Matlabi Curated by Sally Frater Exhibition runs January 11 – February 15, 2008
Peter Kingstone, Charles L. Roberts, the War Years, Video Still, (Original image from the Frogmen, 1951), 2006. The aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001 has led to increased surveillance, suspicion and fear of specific groups - war can no longer be regarded as something that occurs 'over there' and not 'hereÕ. Featuring the work of artists Guillermina Buzio, Jorge Lozano, Derek Hardinge, Peter Kingstone, and Afshin Matlabi, War Zones examines the ways in which war and its associated aggressions have seeped into the collective consciousness of those situated in the Western hemisphere. Biographies
Guillermina Buzio is a film and video artist originally from Colombia. Currently based in Toronto, she has exhibited her work in Buenos Aires, San Francisco and Montreal. She holds a BFA from the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Prilidian Pueyredon (Argentina) and a Bachelor of Media Arts from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver. Derek Hardinge is a Toronto-based artist who has studied sculpture and installation at the Ontario College of Art. He holds a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Toronto and is currently studying photography at Ryerson University. He has shown his work in various venues throughout Toronto. Peter Kingstone is a single channel and installation video artist. He holds a Philosophy/Cultural Studies Degree from Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, and Masters of Fine Arts from York University, Toronto, Ontario. His work has been shown across Canada and throughout the United States. Jorge Lozano is a Toronto-based film and video artist. Originally from Colombia, he exhibited his work in Amsterdam, Paris, Toronto, Bombay and New York. He has studied philosophy and literature at University of Valle (Colombia) and Photo Electric Arts at the Ontario College of Art (Toronto). Afshin Matlabi has shown his work throughout Canada at the Mackenzie Art Gallery (Regina), Optica (Montreal) and the AMS Gallery in Vancouver. He holds a BSc in Engineering from Ryerson University, a BFA from the University of British Columbia and an MFA from Concordia University in Montreal. The artist currently lives and works in Montreal. Sally Frater is an independent curator, artist and writer. She holds a BA in Studio Arts from the University of Guelph. She is currently completing a MA in Contemporary Art from the University of Manchester/Sotheby's Institute of Art in London, England. INNER Space Domestic Violence Scott Waters Exhibition runs January 11 – February 15, 2008
In Scott Waters' Domestic Violence the interaction of wallpaper with rendered imagery can be seen as camouflage or as a play between the painted subject and the wallpaper ground, but it can also be seen as a private fantasy world made public. The work is not necessarily a critique of military or domestic culture Ð of TV saturation or the omnipresence of design Ð but more a public admission of a long-standing affinity for the machinery of destruction. Biography
Scott Waters received a visual art degree from the University of Victoria and a Masters of Fine Arts from York University. A Former soldier with the PPCLI, his work principally considers the military both as a social and aesthetic entity underpinned by fraternity and deviance. Recent activities include the publication of his illustrated memoir 'The Hero Book', numerous exhibitions in both Canada and the USA and a feature in the visual arts magazine, Border Crossings. This year will see his participation in the Canadian War MuseumÕs National Touring exhibition of Canadian War Art as well as Exhibitions at Craig Scott Gallery in Toronto and the Art Gallery of South Western Manitoba in Brandon. Scott Waters lives in Toronto with his partner, her son and two cats.
Re/translation: Land & Language Rebecca Baird, Peter Morin, Jude Norris, Arthur Renwick Curated by Michelle LaVallee Exhibition runs Oct 19 – Nov 23, 2007
A Space Gallery is pleased to present Re/translation: Land & Language. This exhibition is curated by Michelle LaVallee featuring new & recent work by artists Rebecca Baird, Peter Morin, Jude Norris and Arthur Renwick in the Main Space Gallery. The artists in Re/translation: Land & Language contemplate language, narrative, history and translation. Informed by the past and engaged in the present, this cultural investigation, awareness and acceptance bring attention to contrasting cultural paradigms, worldviews and cultural teachings. This exhibition is presented in partnership with Open Studio Gallery and the exhibit Re/translation: Block & Board. In this exhibition Luke Parnell, Angela Sterritt and Tania Willard examine history, myth and resistance in relation to daily existence while examining how we are influenced by worldview and cultural systems. The importance and relevance of maintaining connection to language, land, culture and community is revealed through the work of these artists. They identify and affirm an indigenous presence that is in constant transition, and acknowledge the strength and resilience of First Peoples despite daily and historical realities. The exhibits and artists honour the history, stories and words of our ancestors. The work of these artists is grounded in this land that we now call Canada. Their work reflects a First Nations perspective and how this engages with the contemporary world. The exhibitions contemplate how these artists are establishing their connection to this place and acknowledging this collective history. Showing concurrently, Daryl James Bucar will be exhibited in the A Space WINDOWS. In addition, the A Space INNER SPACE gallery will feature the work of emerging youth artists. A Space Gallery gratefully acknowledges the Canada Council for the Arts in the support of curator Michelle LaVallee through the Assistance to Aboriginal Curators for Residencies in the Visual Arts Program. Ms. LaVallee would also like to gratefully acknowledge the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation for their support which made possible the youth workshop and exhibition. Thank you to ANDPVA and 7th GEN for their contributions towards the artist/curator panel. Biographies
Rebecca Baird, born in Edmonton, Alberta, currentl lives and works in Toronto. Baird’s antecedents include Stony Mountain Cree. She has received a number of significant awards and grants, has exhibited extensively in Canada and abroad, including in the major national group exhibition Indigena at the Canadian Museum of Civiliaztion, and can be found in the collections of many galleries and institutions across Canada. She is a founding member of the Tecumseh and Sweetgras Collectives & co-organizer of the five 3 day festivals. Peter Morin is of the Crow clan of the Tahltan Nation of Telegraph Creek, BC. He currently resides in Victoria, BC. Peter spent 4 years working with Redwire Magazine, as a community educator and advocate for First Nations youth, through media, writing and art. He is a graduate of the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. Jude Norris is a multi-disciplinary Cree-Metis artist, who lives in Toronto. Her work has been exhibited in numerous festivals and galleries across Canada and internationally. Jude is a recent recipient of a Chalmer’s Arts Fellowship, and has received awards from the Canada Council, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council. Arthur Renwick is an artist, musician and professor who lives and works in Toronto. Renwick is from the Haisla First Nation in Kitamaat BC. He received his MFA from Concordia University, Montreal. His artwork has exhibited in several solo and group exhibitions at public galleries and museums nationally and internationally, and is represented in many private and public collections. In 2005 he won the K.M. Hunter Artist Award. A Space WINDOWS Curator On Migration Brendan Fernandes Mona Kamal Text By Elaine Chang
Brendan Fernandes, Slow Kill, Video Still, 2007 The term ’migration’ both evokes and complicates relationships between definable temporal and spatial coordinates; the duration and location of any migration are at once indeterminate and over-determined. Brendan Fernandes and Mona Kamal re-enact the liminal spaces and time zones of migration in their new works. In a sense, these artists offer multiple unanswerable variations on a question familiar to survivors of the North American family road trip: ’Are we there yet?’ A shared interrogation of what it truly means to arrive serves to link their distinctive installations, as does their engagement with tensions between stillness and motion, permanence and impermanence, and ’home’ and ’not-home.’ Born in Kenya of Indian heritage, Brendan Fernandes immigrated to Canada in the 1990s. He earned his MFA (2005) from The University of Western Ontario and his BFA (2002) from York University in Canada. Accolades include: grants from The Ontario and Canada Councils for the Arts including the prestigious International Residency in Trinidad and Tobago. In 2007 he will have three solo shows across Canada and has been invited to exhibit in the Western New York Biennial at The Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY. Fernandes recently completed the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art, and is presently participating in The Lower Manhattan Cultural CouncilÕs Work Space Residency program. He currently resides in New York and continues to exhibit both nationally and internationally. Mona Kamal is a visual artist. Within her art practice she creates monumental installations that explore her ancestry within a modern Canadian construct. She has received several grants for her installation projects through the Ontario Art Council and the Toronto Arts Council. Mona is currently a member of SAVAC and sat on their programming committee for two years. She is also on the Board of Directors at A Space Gallery. Mona is actively involved in community arts projects and works with children and youth in the St. James Town community. She has an upcoming residency at the Sanskri Foundation in New Delhi, India and an upcoming solo exhibition at the York Quay Centre in Toronto. She has exhibited in Toronto and New York. A Space WINDOWS The Language of Culture Pamila Matharu Exhibition runs September 7 – October 12, 2007
The Language of Culture explores notions of transgressive identity that stems from all insurgent borders and boundaries be it: physical, geographical, political, disappearing, and/or imaginary. Pamila Matharu is visual artist, educator and cultural producer living in Toronto. Her art practice is informed by a mash-up of contemporary world culture that goes beyond limits, boudaries, and borders of all natures. She is a 2nd Generation South-Asian Canadian, born in Birmingham, UK and raised in the bland & beauty of the Toronto suburbs. The artist acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council. INNER Space Tales from the man that found eternity in an empty can Z’otz* Collective Exhibition runs September 7 – October 12, 2007
Nahœm Flores, Erik Jerezano, and Ilyana Martinez met one day and created a new entity – Z’otz* (Mayan word for ’bat’) – an amalgamation of their personalities and a fusion of their artistic styles. Z’otz* appears weekly in the invented worlds it creates and inhabits. Here, these curious souls explore the freedom of the absurd through experimental collaboration. Z’otz* has taught these three artists to read images, forms and colours with their souls, and to respond viscerally to them. The emergence of this new beginning – Z’otz* – has been liberating, allowing them the space to let go, and play. MAIN GALLERY Fleeting Face Sandra Brewster, Erika DeFreitas, Joyce Lau, Ritian Lee, Fariba Samsami, Shiva Shoeybi Curated by Teresa Ascencao
Sandra Brewster, Cool Pose 7 (a), charcoal on paper, 40 x 25in, 2002 As globalization seeks to envelope the world in a single global culture, concern over the loss of national and personal identity is mounting. Fleeting Face challenges us to examine the issue using a variety of perspectives on identity. At a time when certain identity politics are disputed, considered ineffective and even naive, A Space presents this timely and crucial dialogue. Fleeting Face is a group show, which brings together six Canadian artists that use the human face as a means of grappling with racial and cultural identity issues from personal, as well as global perspectives. Sandra Brewster, Erika DeFreitas, Joyce Lau, Ritian Lee, Fariba Samsami and Shiva Shoeybi deal with the formation and deconstruction of identity through the exploration of multi-racial blending, cross-cultural immigration, mass media consumption, oppressive rule, and rebellion. Sandra Brewster is a multimedia artist who holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from York University. She is a recipient of numerous grants and awards, and has exhibited in a number of exhibitions in Toronto, Winnipeg and South Africa. Erika DeFreitas is a Scarborough-based emerging artist whose practice is primarily conceptual. She has exhibited projects in artist-run centres in Canada and the United States. She is currently a candidate in the MVS graduate program at the University of Toronto. Joyce Lau is a media-obsessed artist whose fascination with iconography is prevalent in all her work. Joyce received her BFA in Photographic Studies from Ryerson University and has exhibited in Toronto and New York. Ritian Lee is a Chinese-Canadian visual artist working in photography, sculpture, installation and performance. Since 1989, he has exhibited both nationally and internationally, with group and solo shows in Canada, China and the United States. Fariba Samsami was born in Tehran, Iran. She is a Montreal-based installation and multimedia artist. She received a BFA in Painting and Drawing from the College of Decorative Arts in Tehran in 1980, and another BFA from Concordia University in 1993. Shiva Shoeybi was born in Iran, raised in Dubai, and moved to Canada in 1996. She received her Honours BFA University of Western Ontario and completed the one-year Independent Studio Program at the Toronto School of Art. Teresa Ascencao was born in Brasil. She is a photo-based artist who holds a BFA with distinction from the University of Toronto and teaches at the Toronto School of Art. She was co-curator of Sem Saudade / Without Regret. Art for Change A Loraine Leeson Retrospective Exhibition runs May 4 - June 9
Opening reception Friday May 4, 7-9 PM Artist Talk Saturday May 5, 12 noon Presented by A Space in partnership with Trinity Square Video and Mayworks Supported by the British Council
Loraine Leeson, West Meets East, 1992, Textile/photographic montage displayed as a 16' x 12' vinyl photo-mural, from The Art of Change This solo retrospective exhibition celebrates Loraine Leeson, an artist whose work has influenced and worked towards social change in East London and beyond for over 30 years. Showcasing photo-montage posters, large-scale images, audio-visual, digital and online work, the Toronto exhibition also includes contextualisation by artists and long time friends of Leeson's, Carol Conde & Karl Beveridge. Several years ago a team of German researchers initially investigated Leeson's practice in depth and developed an exhibition exploring her process-based approach and artworks from the public domain. This show opened at the Neue Gesellschaft fur Bildende Kunst in Berlin in November 2005 and has since toured to the UK, where it was exhibited at SPACE Gallery in East London in November 2006. Loraine Leeson is a visual artist based in East London (England) whose practice since the late 70's has centred on the exploration of art as a catalyst for social change. This has involved engagement with trade unions, tenants and action groups, local communities and young people around issues of regeneration and identity. She has co-founded and directed organisations for this purpose including the Docklands Community Poster Project, The Art of Change and currently cSPACE. Art for Change: A Loraine Leeson Retrospective is being exhibited at A Space MAIN Gallery, A Space WINDOWS, and Trinity Square Video. Aberrations (ex situ) Boja Vasic Manuela Lalic
Exhibition runs March 23 – April 28, 2007
Boja Vasic and Vessna Perunovich, Invisible City: the Architecture of Survival, Photograph, 2006 The two artists in this exhibition, Boja Vasic and Manuela Lalic, each explore the potential of material salvaged from systemic waste. Vasic documents the ’Invisible City’ (created in collaboration with Vessna Perunovich) constructed, much like Jorge Luis Borge’s map, right over top of a modern city’s garbage dump, by a community of Roma refugees on the outskirts of Belgrade. Lalic builds on the idea of the corporate social model through what she calls ÒMonumental AccumulationÓ adding packing tape to boardroom furniture to create a new structure. In the gap between the struggle for survival in abject marginalization on one extreme, and the cancer-like growth of surplus economic gain on the other, lies the vast territory mapped by a globalized neo-liberal guild. Vasic and Lalic pose the question as did the generations following the cartographersâ order in Borge’s fictional empire whether that map is of any use to future societies, other than that of a relic. Manuela Lalic was born in France, she has lived and worked in Montreal since 1997. She studied at the Beaux arts in France (1992-1996) and did a master in visual art (UQAM, Montreal, 2002). In 2002, she received the Duchamp-Villon price. She has taken part in numerous solo and group shows (Quebec, Canada, Germany, France, Belgium, Japon, Spanish, England, China and Lebanon). Boja Vasic is a Toronto based media artist and photographer. His work has been shown in Cuba, Serbia, Portugal, Albania, Liverpool, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Chicago, Denver and Toronto. He has won several international awards including the Chris Award at the Columbus International Film and Video Festival, a Bronze Medal at New York Festivals, and the Gold Award at Dallas HeSCA Media Festival. Ingrid Mayrhofer is a visual artist and community arts practitioner. Her work addresses issues of social justice through personal imagery and collective experience. Born and raised in Austria, Ingrid received her arts education at York University and has exhibited in Canada, Nicaragua, Mexico, Serbia, Japan, Chile and Austria. Aberrations (ex situ) is presented in conjunction with the 20th annual Images Festival, April 5-14, 2007. For more information please visit www.imagesfestival.com A SPACE WINDOWS Loki Gili: Song of Sorrow, Song of Hope
Exhibition runs March 23 – April 28, 2007 These images by four Roma youth – Gergo Balogh, Zsolt Balogh, Scarlette Farkas and Bela Lazi – are part of the Loki Gili interdisciplinary project produced by the Roma Community Centre of Toronto and the Red Tree Arts Collective. The youth have photographed their families and friends in the Parkdale community where they have lived since coming to Canada as refugee applicants. Two participants, along with their families, were sent back to Hungary when their appeals for refugee status were rejected. Two of the youth remain. Among these photographs, we see the departure of one young photographer and her family on the last day of the photography sessions. Artistic Director: Lynn Hutchinson. Marlene Creates lives in Portugal Cove, Newfoundland. Since the 1970s she has participated in over 200 solo and group exhibitions, both nationally and internationally. She taught visual arts at the University of Ottawa, Algonquin College, and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. She has been the curator of several nationally touring exhibitions and has worked in artist-run centres. For over twenty-five years her work has been an exploration of the relationship between human experience and place, and the impact they have on each other. Her work is in numerous public collections, including the National Gallery of Canada and the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. MAIN GALLERY 21 Cheryl l’Hirondelle, Divya Mehra, Jayce Salloum, Camille Turner, Gabriel Yahyahkeekoot
Curated by Elwood Jimmy
Jayce Salloum, untitled part 4: terra (in)cognita, Video Still, 2005 By design, the artists participating in the 21 exhibition come from aboriginal and other non-dominant cultures. Their works move beyond cultural representation and expectation, providing viewers with the opportunity to re-examine and reconfigure how we relate to one another. The works of Cheryl l’Hirondelle, Divya Mehra, Jayce Salloum, Camille Turner and Gabriel Yahyahkeekoot address different aspects of the cultural realities occurring in this country. What unites them is their ongoing willingness to subvert dependencies on archetypes, definitions, and labels in the creation of identity as they move toward the reconciliation of politicized identities and evolving contemporary realities. Cheryl l’Hirondelle (aka Waynohtew, Cheryl Koprek) is an Alberta born, Vancouver based Metis/Cree non-status, French, German, Polish multi/interdisciplinary artist. Her practice is an investigation of the intersection of cree worldview (nehiyawin) and the interdisciplinarity of creative expression inherent in other indigenous, world and youth cultures. She develops performative physical endurances, infiltrations and interventions, site-specific installations, and interactive net.art projects. Divya Mehra is a multimedia artist who is currently attending Columbia University to complete her MFA. She obtained her BFA degree from the University of Manitoba. Her work has been exhibited across Canada. Jayce Salloum has worked in video, installation, photography, drawing, performance, and text since 1975, as well as curating exhibitions, conducting workshops and coordinating cultural projects. He has lectured worldwide and exhibited internationally in institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Canada; Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; Centre Pompideau, Paris; 8th Havana Biennial. Salloum’s texts have appeared in many journals such as Third Text, Documents, Framework, Fuse, Felix, Mix, Public, Pubic Culture and Semiotext(e). Camille Turner is a Toronto-based media/performance artist and cultural producer. She is a founding member of Year Zero One and has presented her collaborative projects, community engagements, public performance and digital interventions at venues such as: Dak’art lab 2004, La Biennale de lÕart African contemporain, Senegal and at the Banff New Media Institute. She was a visiting artist at Interaktions-Labor in Germany and at The Container Project in rural Jamaica. Turner is currently artist-in-residence at Central Neighbourhood House. Gabriel Yahyahkeekoot is a multi-disciplinary artist, originally from Beardy's and Okemasis First Nation. Much of his work stems from his personal experiences in the city of Regina, the place he grew up and still calls home. His work has shown across Canada. Elwood Jimmy is originally from the Thunderchild First Nation in west central Saskatchewan. Currently based in the city of Regina, he has been active in the national arts community as an artist, independent curator and administrator since the late 1990’s. Currently, he is the Southern Artistic Coordinator for Common Weal Community Arts. Mobile Homes Craig Leonard with the Maritime History Archive
Exhibition runs January 5 – February 9, 2007
Irene Pardy, Lower Little Harbour, photo, 1963 Mobile Homes is the culmination of Craig Leonard’s two-year partnership with the Maritime History Archive in St. John’s, Newfoundland. With the encouragement of archivist Heather Wareham, Leonard undertook fieldwork across Newfoundland in search of photographs from private collections depicting abandoned communities as a result of the province’s Resettlement schemes (1954-72). Of the 130 photographs gathered, Leonard will present a selection that focuses on the physical movement of houses over water as captured by Nellie Feltham, Rex Ralph, Vera Penney, Sherry Giles, Mildred & Stanley Watton, Mark Button, Walt & Shirley Andrews, Irene Pardy, Marilyn Marsh, and Mayor Dave Saunders. Mobile Homes includes a drawing by the bureaucrat and obsessive indexer Mr. Alex Stacey, an intricate relocation chart based on census records, an Esso autoroute map that predates the Resettlement years, a Maritime History Archives fieldwork uniform, and the video Art Wicks of Badger’s Quay (2006) which presents Art himself explaining the technique he used to haul over 20 houses from Port Nelson to Badger’s Quay. Craig Leonard’s recent projects have relied on research and community partnerships. His work includes an investigation into the intricacies of censorship and cultural relations between Cuba, the USA and international librarian associations; an archival project on artistrun centres in Ontario; a compilation of obsolete concepts from the Oxford English Dictionary; and an uncovering of an anti-canon of Canadian literature. Craig currently teaches Intermedia at NSCAD University, Halifax. A SPACE WINDOWS Echoes of Grace Marlene Creates (Newfoundland)
Exhibition runs January 5 – February 9, 2007
Marlene Creates, Echoes of Grace, photographic image and text, 2002 Echoes of Grace is a series of five photo and text panels commemorating the history of maternity care at the Salvation Army Grace General Hospital in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Opening in 1923, the hospital was the first in Newfoundland to offer maternity services. With over 100,000 babies born at the Grace, there was much public sadness when it was closed in 2000. The work contrasts found text and graffiti written across walls of the hospital by nurses on the last day the hospital was open, with interviews conducted by the artist, including one with the oldest surviving nurse who began working at the Grace in the 1920s. Marlene Creates lives in Portugal Cove, Newfoundland. Since the 1970s she has participated in over 200 solo and group exhibitions, both nationally and internationally. She taught visual arts at the University of Ottawa, Algonquin College, and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. She has been the curator of several nationally touring exhibitions and has worked in artist-run centres. For over twenty-five years her work has been an exploration of the relationship between human experience and place, and the impact they have on each other. Her work is in numerous public collections, including the National Gallery of Canada and the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. MAIN GALLERY Tracking Absence Deborah Koenker, Mae Leong, Femke van Delft and Charlene Vickers
Curated by Sally Frater This group exhibition brings together women artists working around issues of consumerism, employment, identity and violence, as they relate to the presence and absence of the othered body. Femke van DelftÕs series Missing is comprised of photographic images and texts that culturally map missing sex-trade workers in downtown Vancouver. Deborah KoenkerÕs textile installation Fotos y Recuerdos/Photographs and Memories presents a grid of single fingerprints and photographs of the nearly 500 women and girls who have been murdered in Juarez, Mexico. Charlene Vickersâ mixed media sculptural installation Sleepwalking comprises various objects including moccasins sewn from beer cases, folded blankets and photos placed in and around a circle of chairs to expose the objectification and cultural dislocation of the First Nations culture by the tourist industry. Mae LeongÕs Barcodes+Sound displays thousands of the artistÕs collected barcodes revealing them as a memento mori for the exploitative conditions and intensely physical labour that produce these items.
Charlene Vickers, Sleepwalking, mixed media sculptural installation, 2004-2006; photo: Iga Janik Deborah Koenker is a Vancouver-based artist who holds an MFA in Sculpture/Installation from Claremont Graduate University and a BA in Fine Art from the University of Southern California. Her work has been exhibited in venues across Canada, the U.S.A., Mexico and Ireland and can be found in the collections of many galleries and institutions in North America. Koenker teaches at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. Mae Leong was born in Hong Kong and currently lives and works in St. Catherines, ON. She has a BA in Visual Arts and a B.Ed (Visual Arts) from Brock University and a Certificate in Fine Arts Proficiency Testimonial from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She has exhibited in venues throughout Ontario, New York, Chicago and Hong Kong. LeongÕs work can be found in private collections in Canada, the U.S.A., Hong Kong and Taiwan. Femke van Delft is an award-winning artist who is based in Vancouver, BC. She has shown her work nationally in galleries throughout British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario and internationally in venues in San Franciso and Ireland. Van Delft has a B.Sc (Gen) from the University of Alberta and a BA (Eng. Lit) from the University of Lethbridge. The artist also works as a professional photographer. Charlene Vickers lives and works in Vancouver, BC. She is a graduate of the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design with a focus in painting and has a BA in Critical Studies of Art from Simon Fraser University. She has shown her work in galleries in British Columbia, Ontario, Florida and Indiana. VickerÕs work explores her Ojibway ancestry and her experiences growing up and living in urban spaces. Sally Frater is an independent curator and artist based in Toronto, ON. She holds an Honours BA in Studio Arts from the University of Guelph and a post-graduate certificate in Museum Management and Curatorship from Fleming College in Peterborough, ON. She recently curated the exhibition the life and death of i.d. at the McMaster Museum of Art in Hamilton, ON. Wagon Burner, This! Princess Moonrider, That!
Maria Hupfield & Terrance Houle
September 15 to October 21, 2006
Woodlands Ojibway meets Prairies Blackfoot/Saulteaux in the Big Smoke. This two-person collaborative exhibit works to reclaim images of First Peoples within the media and popular culture. Maria Hupfield’s work advances her previous investigations into memory, location and history in a sculptural installation that references iconic representations of the “Indian princess” and canoes. Terrance Houle’s video installation plays on the troupe of Indians as “wagon burners.” Using satire, irony and humour, these artist’s works share larger concerns about their position as artists working within an urban context while maintaining a connection to culture, community and land.
Terrance Houle is an internationally recognized interdisciplinary media artist and a member of the Blood Tribe. A graduate of the Alberta College of Art & Design, Houle has developed an extensive portfolio that ranges from painting and drawing to video/film, mixed media, performance and installation. His works have been shown in Calgary, Vancouver and Toronto and internationally in Brisbane, Australia, and Warwickshire, England. In the fall of 2003 Terrance participated in a Thematic Residency at the Banff Centre of the Arts, which focused on 34 indigenous people working on issues of colonization and communion. Currently Houle works and maintains his art practice in Calgary. 
Maria Hupfield is a conceptual artist working in sculpture, installation and performance. From the Martin Clan of Wasauksing First Nation, Hupfield is an art educator and community arts and culture programmer living in Toronto, where she bases her art practice. She currently teaches part time at the University of Toronto. Hupfield has a MFA in Sculpture from York University and an Honours BA Specialist in Art and Art History from the University of Toronto and Sheridan College. Her work has recently shown in New York City, Vancouver, Toronto and Calgary. This event is being presented in collaboration with imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival. For more information about their festival please visit www.imaginenative.org. Shaping the Orbit Curated by Doris Ha Lin Sung Traditionally, craft has been a social practice, in which women negotiate their relationship in the familial and social spheres. Following this tradition, the artists in Shaping the Orbit use ceramic, textile, paper cutting and assemblages to articulate the transient nature of their own experience of cultural crossing and displacement as Chinese-Canadian women.
Notions of passages are seen in the computerized weaving of Li Chai which detail her own experiences of both childbirth and migration. The ceramic pieces of Ying-Yueh Chuang create an artificial ideal of a paradise, in which memories are emerging and submerging.  Ying-Yueh Chuang, It blooms on the day...(2004), ceramics, acrylic rods Karen Tam’s paper cutting and fabricated artifacts of North American Chinese restaurants interrogate the notion of hybridity in the orbit of postmodern life. Through their works, the artists shape the orbits of their lives with hands that elicit crossings of time, place, culture, and personal memory.
Li Chai was born in Inner Mongolia, China. She completed a MFA program in textiles at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2003. Chai recently held a solo exhibition of her work at the Mary E. Black Gallery in Halifax and currently lives in Toronto. Ying-Yueh Chuang received a diploma in fine arts from Langara College in 1997, a BFA from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 1999, and a master’s degree with a major in ceramics from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2001. She has exhibited in Taiwan, Canada, the U.S., Korea, Hungary, and Australia and her work is found in public and private collections including the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Canada Council Art Bank, and the WOCEK Icheon World Ceramic Centre in Korea. She is currently working as a studio ceramist in Toronto. Montréal-based artist Karen Tam holds a MFA in sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from Concordia University. She has participated in exhibitions and artist residencies across Canada, in Ireland, and in the United States. Doris Sung is a Toronto-based visual artist and curator. Sung graduated with a MFA in 2004 and is currently a PhD candidate in the Social and Political Thought program at York University. Her research focuses on contemporary Chinese visual culture and her artwork investigates the relationship between Daoism and visuality. The Hive Dress (La robe-ruche) Julie Faubert and Héloïse Audy April 28 to June 3, 2006 Opening Reception and Artist Talks Friday, April 28, 7 – 9 PM Presented as part of the Mayworks Festival of Working People in the Arts
Quebec artists Julie Faubert and Héloïse Audy interviewed over one thousand women to create The Hive-Dress (La robe-ruche), an innovative textile and sound-based installation that gives voice to the contemporary world of the seamstress. Originally shown at La Centrale Gallery in Montreal (2003), this moving work traces an intimate and gripping portrait of an often unrecognized milieu: that of mainly immigrant women, working in the textile factories of Montreal. Asking them to write down what they thought about at work, on thin strips of paper, the artists then sewed together the assorted sentences one after the other onto an endless ribbon, made from unused pieces of fabric left over from the factories. This impressive amalgam of fabric and paper has taken the shape of a gigantic skirt in which the public can enter. The Hive-Dress attempts to reclaim an invisible part in the ordeal of the seamstresses, the stream of thoughts and emotions that accompany their daily work, the thought process which runs freely, while their bodies are restrained to repetitive routines. The multi-lingual voices of these diverse women, hidden inside the walls of the gallery, evoke some of the invisible barriers which the artists were confronted with through their process, while offering a confounding amalgamation of these women’s lives realities and ephemeral reveries. Julie Faubert lives and works in Montreal. A recipient of a bursary from the Fonds québécois de recherche sur la nature et les technologies, she completed her Masters in Visual and Media Arts at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQÀM) in 2005. Héloïse Audy also lives and works in Montreal. After studies at the Canadian National Theatre School, she obtained her degree in Visual Arts and Art History from the University of Montreal in 2001, and is currently completing her Master’s Degree in Fine Arts at Concordia University, in the Fibres Department. Since 2000, Julie Faubert and Héloïse Audy have collaborated on in situ projects where their common interest for abandoned public sites charged with specific histories has lead them to reanimate and reinvent the memory of these spaces. This event is being presented as part of the Mayworks Festival of Working People in the Arts. For more info please visit their website at www.mayworks.ca A SPACE WINDOWS Dancing on the Water: Aboriginal Longshoring in BC Tania Willard Dancing on Water: Aboriginal Longshoring in BC looks at the history and the current Aboriginal workforce in Longshoring. This exhibition illustrates stories, histories and experiences of Aboriginal people on the waterfront, examining traditional relationships and the impact of colonial industries. Artist Tania Willard draws from her passions in Aboriginal rights, working class histories and brings together a picture of an unspoken history of Aboriginal working people in Canada. 
Tania Willard has exhibited her work in community art venues, professional commercial gallery spaces and artist run centres locally and internationally. Her work, incorporating activism, media and messaging helped to shape the artistic direction of Redwire Native Youth Media Society. An Aboriginal alumni member of the University of Victoria, Willard received her Bachelors degree with honors in 1998. Tania's work, grounded in her experience as a Secwepemc person and as an urban Native, is about sharing. This event is being presented as part of the Mayworks Festival of Working People in the Arts. For more info please visit their website at www.mayworks.ca Manhood Opening Reception Friday, March 31st, 7-9 PM Presented as part of the 19th Annual Images Festival Recognized as one of Iran’s most important contemporary photographers, Sadegh Tirafkan's work offers an eloquent meditation on modern Iranian man's relationship to his past and his search for a meaningful identity in the present. In Manhood Tirafkan explores the multiple facets and constructions of contemporary Iranian masculinity in a compelling exhibition of projected video and large-scale colour photographic portraits. This event is being presented as part of the 19th Annual Images Festival, Canada’s largest annual event devoted exclusively to independent and experimental film, video, installation, performance and new media (April 13-22, 2006).
Blending tradition, history, and memory, Tirafkan skillfully reveals the rich nuances of a culture that has existed for over 3,000 years while exposing the homogeneous precepts of a male-dominated society. Not surprisingly, the male body plays a predominate role in the artist’s lexicon of images, with vignettes of the Zorkhaneh (the “powerhouse” of traditional Iranian body builders) contrasted with dramatically veiled self-portraits. Wood block patterns play across naked skin, revealing the unforgettable and un-erasable “tattoo” of culture and identity, while acts of heroism, patriotism, love and betrayal work themselves out in the contorted images of men wrestling, their bodies posed in sacrificial murder positions. Through symbols, icons and various cultural rituals,Tirafkan demonstrates virile choreographies symbolizing fraternity, combat and sacrifice while challenging taboos surrounding veiling and nudity in Persian society and culture. All in all, time and place collapse into this visceral search for identity and meaning in the contemporary world.
Sadegh Tirafkan was born in 1965 in Iraq to Iranian parents. He trained as a photographer at the University of Fine Arts in Tehran. Tirafkan has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions since the late 1980s, including in Iran at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran; in Europe at the VU Gallery in Paris; and in the United States at the Lehmann Maupin Gallery and the Massound Nader Gallery in New York. A significant monograph of his work titled Iranian Man was recently published by Belgium’s La Lettre Volee. Tirafkan currently divides his time between Toronto and Tehran. To view Tirafkan’s body of work, please visit www.tirafkan.com. Models of Desire Rebecca Anweiler and Sabrina Ovesen
Curated by Siobhán Smith February 24, 2006 – March 25, 2006 Models of Desire explores various tensions and expressions of female desire, beauty, sexuality, and fantasy. For artists Rebecca Anweiler and Sabrina Ovesen, desire is always complicated and powerful. The works in this exhibition express the ambiguity and playfulness of human desire, pushing beyond restrictions of gender and the body. The exhibition’s title refers to the psychoanalytical models of desire often used to explain and understand human sexuality, and draws attention to the ideals and models shaping our own understandings of desire.
Rebecca Anweiler’s work is concerned with representations of gender and female sexuality as seen through, and produced by, cultural and scientific institutions. In this recent series of paintings, Anweiler has juxtaposed scenes from Hollywood cinema, lesbian porn, and photo-realistic depictions of the animal kingdom to challenge assumptions about desire and call into question what constitutes “normal” and “natural.” Sabrina Ovesen has created a series of photographs of porcelain figurines of women and girls.
Combining the conventions of portrait and fashion photography with kitsch, Ovesen’s giclée prints are both idyllic and disquieting. It is the simultaneous quotation and destruction of feminine clichés that constitutes the artistic and political strategies of both Anweiler’s and Ovesen’s work. From a questioning of idealized female proportion, to an exploration of the nature of love and sexuality, the works in this exhibition disrupt traditional models of desire presented to us through popular and material culture. Rebecca Anweiler completed her MFA at Concordia University in Montréal, and is an honours graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design. Her artwork has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions, and her paintings are in many private collections, as well as the public collections of the City of Toronto, the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, and the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, Ontario. Anweiler received grants from both the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Art Council in support of the production of her current body of work. Sabrina Ovesen is a Vancouver based artist and a graduate from Ryerson University in Toronto. After completing school she lived briefly in Prince George, B.C. and held her first solo-show, Self-Portraits, at the Prince George Art Gallery in 1999. Ovesen has exhibited widely throughout B.C. and in Toronto. Siobhán Smith is a recent graduate of the Masters in Art History and Curatorial Studies programme at York University, Toronto. In 2004, she was awarded the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Canada Graduate Scholarship. Currently, Smith is the Public Programs / Publicity Coordinator for the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver. She will give a curator’s talk during the opening reception on Friday, February 24, between 7pm and 9pm. A SPACE WINDOWS The Burden of Memory Susan Kordalewski Opening Reception Friday, February 24th 7–9 PM
The Burden of Memory is a photographic installation that explores the constraints of memory in our current age of information excess. Defining herself as a “visual writer”, Kordalewski, through this work seeks to realize and depict the chain of moments that construct contemporary notions of individuality and subjectivity. She writes: I investigate the post-modernist denial of the meta-narrative as it plays against the reality of human experience, while also exploring the personal narrative and its stream of consciousness. I am interested in exploring contemporary philosophical, psychological and sociological ideas as they enact upon self-perception and the construction of one’s selfhood. The result is an intimate exploration of the tensions within and against contemporary notions of selfhood through sociological dynamics related to self-perception. Currently based in Toronto, Susan Kordalweski studied printmaking and photography at Concordia University (BFA 2005), The University of Toronto and The University of New Mexico. I Represent Michael Chambers, Stephen Fakiyesi, Dana Inkster, Dionne Simpson, Camille Turner, Syrus Ware Curated by Natalie Wood January 13 – February 11, 2006 Opening Reception Friday, January 13th, 7-9 PM “The politics of representation in the current art context of a multicultural Toronto is complex and often problematic” states curator Natalie Wood. “Artists who choose to represent their racialized identity, whether by choice or by economic necessity, often struggle against the prevailing prejudice that work dealing with identity politics delivers issues and content often to the detriment of form and aesthetics…claims of representing the ‘black experience’ often leaves artists open to charges of essentialism, reductionism, and stereotype.” I Represent brings together six artists to exhibit works that enter into a dialogue concerning the desire, the expectation and the impact of contemporary black representation. Featuring some of the most important emerging to senior Canadian artists working in the area of cultural race politics, the artists variously embrace, critique, and struggle against the constraints of representation and its impact on their personal and professional lives. Working in a variety of media and practices, their work ranges from painful and personal positions to ironic, irreverent, and reconstituted perspectives of history, identity and popular culture reflecting a complex diversity of cultural practice and expression. 
Michael Chambers, The Box (detail), 2005, silver gelatin print Michael Chambers’ installation is part of an ongoing photo-based series entitled The Box in which he employs the box as a metaphor to explore the packaging and commoditization of black identity, its historical roots, and its limitations. Dionne Simpson's deconstructed canvases explore the conflict between diversity and conformity, culture and class through depictions of urban landscapes. Dana Inkster pushes the boundaries of contemporary oral histories in an experimental video which has her protagonist searching for reflections of herself in a smoky gay bar, evoking archetypal stories of heroes and their monumental quests for self-determination. Syrus Marcus Ware’s large-scale painted self-portrait combines personal history with clinical anatomical drawing to explore issues of transgendered representation and the legacy of slavery on identity. Stephen Fakiyesi appropriates images and symbols associated with empire, colonialism, post-colonialism and pop culture, de-contextualizing them into stencilled decals and cutouts. In her video installation, Camille Turner reprises her invented title as “Miss Canadiana,” a celebrity with self-declared ambassadorial power. In this installment of her Red, White and Beautiful performance series, she is interviewed about and displays her petition to integrate black history into Canadian history by turning Black History Month into a year-long series of events. 
Camille Turner, The Petition, 2006, video still Natalie Wood is a multimedia artist, curator, and arts educator based in Toronto. She has an MA in art education, and teaches at schools, art centres, and health organizations to develop and support health and creativity, especially within black and queer communities. A SPACE WINDOWS Soul Bridges Pedro Alderete
December 7, 2005 - January 6, 20065 A Space Gallery will present a special exhibition entitled Soul Bridges by the late Pedro Alderete (1961-2005) in the A Space WINDOWS Gallery. This selection of mixed media paintings and drawings was organized in commemoration of the life and work of the artist who was an active member of the A Space Board from last January until his untimely death on October 17, 2005. Born in Havana Cuba, Pedro’s background shaped much of his work. He studied at the San Alejandro Academy of the Arts, where his ideological learnings clashed with that of Castro’s socialist state. Coming to Canada in 1989, he worked as a barber before being accepted with advanced standing at the Ontario College of Art and Design. Active in various aspects of Toronto cultural life, Pedro’s inventive, unself-conscious and eclectic approach to materials and media were consistently engaged in his concern for the world’s humanity and the human condition. The works that Pedro developed over the years have been drawn from a variety of sources and inspirations such as Cuban religious iconography, Cuban tourism, snapshots, military photos and architecture. Using found objects, painting, collage, photo-transfers, performance or installation to express his ideas, like his life, his work crossed borders, cultures and communities. He built narratives to communicate his ongoing concerns in efforts to raise awareness around numerous social-political issues including war, racism, mental health and AIDS.
In addition to the WINDOWS exhibition, A Space will collaborate with aluCine Toronto Latin@ Media Festival to host Songs of Peace and Thunder: An Evening for Pedro, a special one evening video screening and art exhibit in the gallery on Monday, December 12th, 2005 from 7:00-9:00 PM. This will be the premier screening of Eulogy for Pedro by Sinara Rozo. According to Rozo, the short experimental video is a celebration (and not just a mourning) of life, depicting a friend’s passion for art and love for life. The piece combines photomontage and complex structures of layering and editing to recreate both the vividness of his life and the immensity of the loss. MAIN GALLERY Petroglyphs in Motion James Luna
October 19-November 12, 2005 Opening Reception and Artist Talk, Friday October 21st, 7-9 PM Presented in collaboration with the 2005 imagineNATIVE film + media arts festival A Space Gallery is pleased to present internationally renowned performance and multimedia artist James Luna in conjunction with the 2005 imagineNATIVE film + media arts festival (October 19-23). A resident of the La Jolla Reservation in California, James Luna (Luiseno) draws on the daily realities of reservation life in his work, utilizing satire, pop culture and irony to address the serious social issues affecting First Nations peoples in the Americas. In the video and photographs that make up Petroglyphs in Motion (commissioned by Site Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2000), the artist presents a spectrum of characters ranging from shaman to leather man to cell-phone-wielding deal-maker in this performance-based installation. Using the petroglyph as a starting point, Luna present a non-linear narrative of the Native American man, exposing some of the stereotypes and challenges he continues to face in the modern world. Uniting the “prehistoric” with the present, Luna rejects the Western version of history that excludes and undermines Native people and artists, and continues to deny their evolution. In bringing these static figures, seemingly frozen in time, into motion and combining them with contemporary culture, Luna brings the history of Native peoples out of the museum and off of the rocks, into the present, marking not only presence (in time and place), but also reclaiming ownership of the past, present, and future. In the documented performance that takes his audience from laughter one minute to discomfort in the next, Luna is unafraid to confront the realities of Native life, particularly reservation life, in all its complexities. James Luna has a B.A. in Fine Arts from the University of California at Irvine, and an M.Sc. in Counseling from San Diego State University. His work has been showcased at venues including the Whitney Biennial, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the National Gallery of Canada and the Nippon International Performance Art Festival in Japan. He was recently selected by the National Museum of the American Indian for the 2005 Venice Biennale, where he featured a new work that showed historical and cultural parallels between Italy and Indigenous America. James Luna will give a performative lecture during the opening reception on Friday, October 21 between 7-9 PM. A SPACE WINDOWS memorias: a work in progress Florencia Berinstein October 19-November 12, 2005 Opening Reception, Friday October 21st, 7-9 PM This installation project is a contemplation on the immigratory experience and a work-in-progress of a larger exploration on the same topic. Divided up into four themes: departure (la salida), the journey (el pasaje), arrival (la llegada) and settlement (el establecimiento), each window contrasts, through pictures, photographs and text, some of the myriad of feelings that accompany each of these different phases of immigration. An exploration of the artist’s personal journey from Argentina, this work touches on the complexities of re-settling elsewhere, particularly when it’s premeditated by political upheaval. Florencia Berinstein is a Toronto-based artist who has been engaged with community based visual arts practices for over 12 years. During this time, her work has been concerned with questions of the role of the artist in society, the role of art in community/public space as a transformative tool for social change and questioning the homogeneity of public art/political artists’ projects to date. She received a BFA from Concordia University, Montreal and an MA in Art in Public Space from RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. The artist has received awards from the Toronto Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, and has been the recipient of a Chalmers Professional Development Grant, and the KM Hunter award for Visual Arts. Florencia is the current Festival Coordinator of the Mayworks Festival of Working People and the Arts. ReCollect Mary Kavanagh and Carol Sawyer
Curated by Corinna Ghaznavi September 9 – October 15, 2005 Opening Reception Friday, September 9th, 7-9 PM Mary Kavanagh and Carol Sawyer both examine aspects of memory and its construction and reconstruction in ReCollect. This multi-media exhibition, which was initially presented at Galerie La Centrale (Montreal) in 2004, features a selection of previous as well as new and different work that similarly tread upon the concept of reality, or truth, in their use of archival strategies that involve the photographic image, the collection and the souvenir. The gathering of objects, their display and the use of museological practices have become accepted methodologies in contemporary art. Yet the very nature of memory and archival practices is ambiguous: archiving is selective, memory is malleable, and both are subjective. By mimicking archival and historical framing and systems of reference, the artists in ReCollect highlight what is remembered and what is erased in these systems. In Shadow Archive, Kavanagh meticulously collected, bagged and labeled debris from a house embedded with memory and filled with residues of other’s lives. In the installation, Seeking Georgia, she archives and displays samples of earth taken on a pilgrimage to New Mexico, identifying sites which she matched to renowned artist Georgia O’Keefe’s landscape paintings. Sawyer focuses on the camera’s (in)ability to capture truths with her photographic series, Remnants, images of textile remnants that appear to be “actual” fabric, and her video Mylar Card which features the artist’s own continuously morphing image. Similarly, Flux, presents spaces in flux, documenting the interior of houses under renovation. The search for truth, or alternative truths, is used as a process to lay bare the mechanisms of historical and social contrstructions used to build up theories. What emerges in the juxtaposition of these artists are issues of social encoding and identity which reveal the embedded subjectivity in both mythology and power structures
Mary Kavanagh lives and works in Lethbridge Alberta where she teaches in the Art Department at the University of Lethbridge. Carol Sawyer is a Vancouver-based artist and performer. Corinna Ghaznavi is an independent curator and freelance critic based in Durham, Ontario whose practice investigates the intersections of science, nature and culture. Withdrawing Room David Grenier
Curated by Rochelle Holt June 24 - July 30, 2005 Opening Reception Friday June 24th, 7 - 9 PM Transforming the gallery walls with drawing, leaf-patterned wallpaper, ethereal lighting and projected images, Withdrawing Room is the third and final work in the series of multi-media installations by Toronto artist David Grenier. This highly stylized work explores the ways in which our sensory perceptions are deployed and defined by architectural spaces. Provocative, intricate and sometimes humorous, Grenier’s work engages in a direct dialogue with the decorative arts and craft traditions as it asserts a critical queer presence. The installation constructs a hybrid space wherein domestic signifiers and figuration intersect with architectural discourse, gender and sexuality. The work plays with notions of space – literal three dimensional places, such as the home, the body, and the city, as well as more liminal and liquid territories that relate to the spaces within memory, narrative and time. The practice of queering space underwrites Grenier’s work and is explicit in the Withdrawing Room projects. He states: My focus is on the inherent complexities within spatial discourses and how I seek out, appropriate and remake these spaces as habitable. The work questions the genderedness and sexuality of spaces, places, things and gestures in order to call attention to the slippage or play that is present within their very production. I am waging a renovation, a process of reordering space and of taking or claiming space.
Grenier turns what is inside the home out in order to destabilize notions of public and private, of hiddenness and security, confounding the spaces between subject and object(ified) through the physical implication of the viewers’ body. The result, sensual and layered, is a performative investigation of the gaze that links appearances to form a critical representation of urban spaces and systems of order. Visit the artist’s website at www.davidgrenier.ca <http://www.davidgrenier.ca> A SPACE WINDOWS in absentia Nina Leo
June 24 - July 30, 2005 Opening Reception Friday June 24, 7-9 PM Nina Leo explores themes surrounding society’s growing dependence upon media and technology and our disconnection with sensory experience with in absentia. Through a series of mixed media installations, Leo presents fetishized scientific materials, including hair and blood samples, fingerprints and stains which are collected, catalogued and re-presented to the viewer. Displayed with Polaroid photos and under microscope plates of glass, these remnants are installed as sculptural artifacts, inviting the viewer to experience them in physical reality. The context and meaning of this evidence remains ambiguous, creating an unmediated space in which we can draw our own conclusions and ultimately confront our preconceptions regarding the essential questions of existence. As with media and technology, the viewer is presented with processed information out of context that can offer no possible resolution to any one truth. In these pieces however, the intervention is foreign and the viewer is provoked to consider how much of what they see truly exists and, how much is the making of their own preconceptions, for whatever beauty/ fear/ hope/ repulsion they may find, lies somewhere in the space between. In each case the perspective of the viewer, both literally and metaphorically, will directly impact their reading of the installation.
Nina Leo has exhibited her work regularly in galleries and public institutions since 1990. She received her BA in visual art from the University of Western Ontario; and has received grants and awards from the Ontario Arts Council and the Ontario Society of Artists. |
Sacrifice, 2003, c-print, 2003, 100 x 300 cm
Sabrina Ovesen, Untitled, 2004, gicleé print
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