Akin Vitrine Gallery + Erin Candela

We are delighted to introduce our current Akin Vitrine Gallery artist, Akin King alumi, soon to be Akin MOCA artist and staff member Erin Candela. Erin’s work will be on exhibit in our galleries beginning at 1485 Dupont for the month of September and then 1747 St. Clair Avenue West for the month of October.

Erin Candela is a Canadian artist originally from northern BC, currently living in Toronto. Often using historical documents such as photographs, public school books, nature encyclopedias and community journals, themes of Memory and identity are frequently present in her drawings. Ideas of North, Canadian landscape, and portentous depictions of wild creatures and characters are also common and contribute to a scattered and ambiguous narrative.

Things Go So Wrong?
Mixed Media
Dimensions Variable
2019

To contact the artist:
Instagram: @candles_
#Akinvitrine
www.erincandela.ca

Akin Collective + Akin Projects are excited to present our 2019 programming in two Vitrine Galleries located at Akin Dupont and Akin St. Clair. These miniature galleries feature the diverse talent of our members with travelling installations rotating each month. Each artist will be featured for the first month at Dupont and second month at St. Clair. For more information about our artists and our programming, join us on Instagram @akinvitrine.

‘Things Go So Wrong?’ will be on view for the month of September in our Dupont Akin Vitrine Gallery, located in the Clock Factory Building at 1485 Dupont Street (entrance on Campbell Avenue). Find Akin Studio 215 on the second floor and follow the sign into the hallway around the corner. The building is open from 9am to 6pm, Monday to Saturday.

The exhibition will then travel to the Akin St. Clair Vitrine Gallery and be on view for the month of October at 1747 St. Clair Avenue West. Gallery is street level and can be viewed at any time.

Akin Artists Included in blog TO's list of Up and Coming Artists

This past weekend blogTO released their list of 10 up and coming Toronto artists and many are current Akin members. The list includes Kendra Yee of Akin Ossington, Joshua Advincula, Chason Yeboah, Liang Wang of Akin MOCA, Jill Smith of Akin Dupont, Amika Cooper, Charlotte Penabel, Raquel Da Silva of Akin MOCA, Alexander Robinson, and Allana Cooper. BlogTO compiled the list of up and coming artists based on suggestions from local arts institutions and organizations. The individuals who made it onto the list are all visual creatives who have emerged on the scene in the last couple of years with some exciting work. Some of them already have a few solo exhibits under their belt, while others' CVs consist solely of group exhibits. Regardless of how many past shows these artists have done, the future looks promising (blogTO, 2019).

Continue reading to learn more about the Akin artists who made it onto the list.

Diverting Cracks Found in the Cement, 2017 by Kendra Yee

Kendra Yee

Kendra Yee is a Toronto-based artist, designer, and curator. Her work consists of mixed-media paintings, ceramic sculptures, and panel-based illustrations. Yee pulls tales from her personal history, lived experiences and collective memory to form speculative worlds where fluid characters come to life through the conversations of interactive bodies.  

Yee is currently developing a program with Davenport-Perth Neighbourhood and Community Health Center that centers around alternative education. In fall 2018, selected women participants aged 13-19 in the west end area of Toronto will join together to create an independent comics anthology surrounding topics on personal identity.

Liang Wang beside his painting The Colour of the Wheat, 2017, Oil on panel, 18” x 24”

Liang Wang

Liang Wang is a Toronto-based painter raised in various parts of Taiwan, China, Australia and Canada. He has exhibited work in numerous groups shows at locations including Northern Contemporary Gallery (Toronto); Federation Gallery, Turnbull Gallery (Vancouver); and Rutherford Galleria (Edmonton). His work is in private collections in Canada and New Zealand. One day I saw the sunset forty-four times is his first solo show. Wang currently teaches painting at the McCanny Secondary School.

Us by Jill Smith, performed at Forest City Gallery, 2018, part of in attendance

Jill Smith

Jill Smith is an interdisciplinary artist based in Toronto, Ontario (1995). Her most recent work explores everyday absurdity, as well as the connective possibilities of materiality. By re-contextualizing familiar motifs with organic, bodily forms, her work calls into question how one both exists and performs as a social body. While Smith’s work stimulates the imagination through whimsical and nonsensical colour and form, it is the relatable, yet ambiguous materiality that offers a platform to question the familiar, and escape to the alien and the uncanny.

Detail view of work by Raquel Da Silva

Raquel Da Silva

Finishing up her degree in Painting and Furniture Design at OCAD, Da Silva's super clean and colourful acrylic paintings have caught the attention from the likes of Nike (she designed a shoe for them in August). Plus her furniture is rad too (blogTO, 2019).

ART SHOW: Verbal Gems - Zoë Bridgman

Verbal Gems
Solo Show by Zoe Bridgman

April 9- 10
Exhibition hours: 12-7
Opening Reception : April 9 6pm-9pm

Costume House
165 Geary Avenue, 2nd Floor Unite A

Akin Dupont member Zoë Bridgman is a painter and photographer currently living in Toronto. She studied at Parsons School of Design and graduated with a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She worked as a commercial photographer for over a decade in Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto. 

She has participated in several group shows throughout her career in San Francisco, Montreal and Toronto. In 2013 she exhibited her “Influence” project at Contact Photo in Toronto and in 2013 participated in Flash Forward. 

More recently Zoë has been painting and completed her “Verbal Gems” project which she started in 2017.

Come Up to my Room at the Gladstone featuring artists An Dy and Kendra Yee of Akin Dupont

Come Up to My Room (CUTMR) is the Gladstone Hotel’s annual 4-day alternative design exhibition happening this year on January 18-21. There will be art, design, installations and events happening in all areas of the hotel curated by Jana Macalik and Christophe Jivraj with Lukus Toane featuring dozens of artists including An Dy and Kendra Yee of Akin Dupont.

Each year CUTMR provides artists and designers the opportunity to take risks, to push their ideas, to evoke meaning not just function. The event was conceived in 2004 as a vehicle for experimentation and interaction within the fields of art and design. Acting as counterpoint to the Interior Design Show and giving rise to the more recent Toronto Design Offsite Festival, CUTMR has since become a cornerstone of the Toronto alternative design scene.

This year, CUTMR 2018 explores how people interact with art and design. Is it a shared experience mediated by an artist or designer? Or is it an individual response triggered by personal experience? Or is it all of the above? We hope you decide to check out the event and investigate for yourself! Don't forget to to visit the second floor where Akin artist's An Dy and Kendra Yee will be showing work in the north corridor, and in room 214. 

AN DY | 2ND FLOOR NORTH CORRIDOR: 

'These Pixels are TOO sweet' by An Dy

An Dy is putting Pixels on trial, calling on a variety of media to challenge and affirm the way we consume art and media. Imagery will include motifs taken from virtual interfaces such as the adobe suite programs, and contrast them with traditional forms such as the human figure. Allowing for a slower way to interpret these spaces, An Dy's work postures as stand in’s for the stimulation we receive through our screens at a time where we are both consumed by social media and alienated from it. 

An Dy is a Toronto born artist, graduated from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in April 2017 with a BFA. These Pixels are Too Sweet explores the language of painting as a way to reflect the oversaturated experience he had growing up navigating the structures of the digital world.

SISTER CO-RESISTER | ROOM 214:

Sister Co-Resister is Pamila Matharu, Karen Azoulay, Nedda Baba, Yan Wen Chang, Marianne Ibrahim, Zahra Komeylian, Maanii Oakes, Kalpna Patel, and Akin Dupont artist Kendra Yee.

This project is a marker for the absence of intersectional feminisms’ in contemporary visual culture. It sets out to examine the labour around making and holding space - an often-repeated evocation in contemporary artistic and social discourse. In the art historical canon, the feminine has been relegated to interior, domestic spaces for the past two centuries. The social parallel has been to isolate feminist discourse within biological, ethnic, and class-bound markers. While the experiences of institutionalized misogyny and erasure, the women, femmes, two-spirit, and gender non-conforming artists in this installation intersect- profound discontinuities and contentious disagreements abound. The language of solidarity between these intersections is very much a work in progress- with approximate markers holding space for terms that can encompass the vastness of a marginalized existence. The result is a space in permanent flux- containing the messy shards and jagged edges of solidarity in a state of continual evolution. Shattered nerves, furtive pride, salvaged homelands, nostalgia and itinerant spaces of care populate this room. Its inhabitants are late-invited guests, squatters even, at a conversation whose terms have been pre-defined. They speak in languages that have been misappropriated and distorted, vulnerable to misinterpretation and co-optation. Their loud din echoes in passages and labyrinthine hallways, leading to a protected space where their incitements can breathe. 

KENDRA YEE is a Toronto-based artist and designer. She focuses on recreating the speculative world that exists within her head, combining these landscapes with cultural elements discovered throughout local neighbourhoods. 

EXHIBITION HOURS:
THURS, JAN 18: 7-10PM
FRI, JAN 19: 11AM - 10PM
SAT, JAN 20: 11AM - 10PM + Opening Reception 7-10PM
(after 6pm, entry is dependent on capacity - online ticket holders who arrive after this time may not get in if venue is already full)
SUN, JAN 21: 11AM - 5PM

SPECIAL EVENTS:
THURS, JAN 18 | EXHIBITION PREVIEW | 7-10PM
FRI, JAN 19 | STUDENT DAY - $5 STUDENT TICKETS WITH VALID STUDENT ID ONLY
SAT, JAN 20 | OPENING RECEPTION | 7-10PM
SAT, JAN 20 | LOVE DESIGN PARTY | 10PM - LATE
SUN, JAN 21 | TSA IDEAS FORUM | 1-3PM

Akin Show & Tell #55 at Akin Dupont - Wednesday April 26

Join us next Wednesday for a relaxed and fun ‘Show and Tell for Artists’ at Akin Dupont. This is a time for Akin members and other Toronto artists to show completed works or works in progress and get friendly feedback and answers from their peers in a casual studio setting.

Feel free to bring art to share, bring a friend or two, bring snacks or drinks or just bring yourself! Come for the conversation or just to meet people and hang out.

Akin Dupont - 1485 Dupont St - Studio 204 (entrance on Campbell Ave)
If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to get in touch! Email michael@akincollective.com See you there!

The Akin Library launches March 13 at our next Skillshare for Creative Professionals

The Akin Collective Team is excited to announce the launch of our newest initiative for our studio members: The Akin Library! This volunteer-led and donation-based collection of books will be housed at Akin Dupont in studio 204 and will feature print materials created by our members as well as a variety of art-related publications donated by members including zines and artist books, exhibition catalogs, artist biographies, how-to books and more.

Join us is on March 13 from 7-9pm at Akin Dupont - 1485 Dupont St in Studio 204 to celebrate the launch of the library at our Skillshare for Creative Professionals: Books We Love. Attendance is free but space is limited, please register to attend at www.universe.com/bookshare

The Akin Library will be open for all members of the Akin Dupont studios and all Akin Collective Shared Members during regular studio hours. Akin Collective members from our Lansdowne, Dufferin and Sunrise Studios will be able to view the library collection at appointed times throughout the month. Books can be borrowed for up to one month at no cost.

We are happy to accept book donations at any time for the collection. Donations can be dropped off in the drop-box at the library or you can email us to make other arrangements or bring your donations to the Skillshare! We especially encourage members to donate books they have created!

We are also seeking volunteer librarians to help manage the library. If you are interested please contact jen@akincollective.com for more information. Volunteer librarians must be Akin Collective studio members.

We hope this library will evolve and grow over time and contribute to enriching the lives and creative practices of our studio members. We would like to thank Mark Buck of Akin Dupont for his help in launching the library.

EXERTION / Chris Harms at Hashtag Gallery

Join Chris Harms of Akin Dupont at Hashtag Gallery on August 4 for the opening of his solo show, EXERTION.

Opening reception: August 4th from 7pm-11:30pm.
Show runs August 4th to 14th

About EXERTION
Celebrating the constant construction that shakes and shapes Toronto, Chris creates vibrant sculptures with Plexiglas that resemble earth-moving excavators. Through form and space he invites the viewer to enjoy the unique reflections, surfaces, and layering my works produce while considering the transformative time between what was and what is to become. Harnessing light and colour, Chris' work is intended to build a feeling of expansion and possibility, and functions as an exploration into our urban landscape.

melannie g campbell / Tangled Art + Disability Presents POINT OF ORIGIN

Tangled Art Gallery launches its inaugural season with Point of Origin by melannie g campbell or Akin Dupont.

Point of Origin, on display: July 15 - September 15, 2016

Opening: July 14, 7 - 9 PM
Artist talk: July 19, 5:30 - 7 PM

Live-streaming of both events available at: https://webinar.ryerson.ca/r7zh4a3tiqq/
Audio description of the materials discussed in the artist talk will be available.

Point of Origin draws on traditional, contemporary and afro-futuristic aesthetics and techniques. Using poetry, quilts and tapestries, campbell carefully examines dynamic embodied relationships - those between trauma and fibromyalgia, between capitalism and ableism, between legacy and wisdom, between Blackness and life, between freedom and place, and between dreaming and staying woke. The exhibit invites the visitor to consider - How would we think about our days if instead of squeezing our complicated bodies into others’ formulas for life, we were encouraged and supported to live our days in pulse to our own rhythm?

This exhibit features audio description for all works and will also have to touchable pieces. All events associated with this exhibit will be barrier-free and will have ASL interpretation. We request that you help us make these scent-free. This is a FREE event.


ABOUT TAG
Tangled Art Gallery (TAG), a unique new exhibition space dedicated to showcasing disability arts and advancing accessible curatorial practices in Toronto’s iconic arts building – 401 Richmond.

Audiences can expect to engage with art that reshapes understandings of disability, encounter disability artists who invigorate the art world, and interact with inclusive technologies that reimagine how we experience art. Point of Origin will be the first show of the inaugural 2016-17 season.

Jordan MacLachlan's Teracotta Opera / Radiance in Uncontrollable Worlds

Check out this stunning still motion film by Jordan MacLachlan of Akin Dupont.

Jordan MacLachlan's ceramic works are brought to life through film to present a raw emotional narrative of temptation, love and pain through the perspective of spirit animals.

These works and the video are part of the Art Gallery of Burlington's permanent collection of Canadian ceramics.