Xpace Cultural Centre invites you to join them for their annual FREE fall programming launch and back-to-school party on September 8 from 7-11pm, featuring new work created this summer at Akin Lansdowne by our summer artists-in-residence Emily Norry and Kendra Lee, with accompanying essay by Sam Roberts. Emily, Kendra and Sam were winners of the Xpace Summer Residency Program for OCAD U graduates.
September 8 – October 14, 2017
Opening Reception: Friday, September 8, 7-11pm
Emily Norry, Queeries into History: The Love of Loring and Wyle (Project Space)
With accompanying essay by Sam Roberts.
This series by Emily Norry explores the lives of Toronto artists Frances Loring and Florence Wyle and their lifetime spent together. Through this show, Norry looks to expand upon her series Queeries into History with a more in depth exploration of these two artists. Where Queeries into History was meant to outline an entire ancestry of queer women through time, The Love of Loring and Wyle is a biography of two beloved but often forgotten artists that helped shape Toronto’s art world, while never wavering in their commitment to one another.
Using watercolour printmaking, Norry takes historical photos of Loring and Wyle’s careers and personal lives, paints them in colour and transfers them onto fabric. These leave images cracked, faded, and sometimes warped from the originals; this is reflective of the way history is often forgotten and overwritten in modern view. These images are then embellished, with embroidery, patterning and dried flowers as a way to describe intimacy, relationships and the way the past is reframed and added to in the present. The works will explore their sculptures, time as students, associations with arts societies, and their more then 50 year relationship.
www.emilynorry.com
Kendra Yee, Pantry Shelf (Window Space)
With accompanying essay by Sam Roberts.
The attempts to trace back family lineage are swallowed by the movements of time. Documents discarded, photographs burned, tombstones never carved and names changed to survive systems. Mimicking the setup of Kendra Yee’s Yeh-Yeh’s corner store in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, this installation honours family-run businesses. The items displayed replace the culture that has been lost, reclaiming broken narratives and forming new stories.
www.kendrayee.com