Akin Vitrine St. Clair + Elsie Nisonen

We are delighted to introduce our current Akin St. Clair Vitrine Gallery artist, Akin River artist Elsie Nisonen. Elsie's work will be on exhibit in our galleries beginning at 1747 St. Clair Avenue West for the month of June and then 1485 Dupont for the month of July.

Consumption is a series of images that explore the idea of Gender, Consumption, Collecting and is also about positive and negative space. By combining the digital aesthetic with handcrafted details, I blur the lines between the digital world and the human hand, gendered stereotypes, the truth vs. folktale. I have photographed old paper dolls that were mouse-eaten as a metaphor for gender confines, consumption and collection. The use of botanicals references work done by women illustrators and photographers during the Victorian era. The curiosity of the Victorians along with their sickening approach to collections, i.e. killing the thing you are studying, invokes the idea of capture, consumption, decay, and death. 

By playing and using old tropes, I have created new visuals to push against patriarchal hegemony. I have used older/fixed icons such as a dress as a frame to re/view the world. 

Elsie Nisonen is a lens-based artist in Toronto. Her works explores light, materiality, humanity, layering, and storytelling. It resides between memory and truth, the liminal spaces where reality and fantasy are intertwined.

Consumption
Mixed media
Dimensions Variable
2020

To contact the artist:
Instagram: @elsienisonen

#Akinvitrine

Akin Collective + Akin Projects are excited to present our 2020 programming in two Vitrine Galleries located at Akin St. Clair and Akin Dupont. 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 St. Clair and second month at Dupont. For more information about our artists and our programming, join us on Instagram @akinvitrine.

Elsie’s work will be on view for the month of June in our St. Clair Avenue West Akin Vitrine Gallery, 1747 St. Clair Avenue West. Gallery is street level and can be viewed at any time.

The exhibition will then travel to the Akin Dupont Vitrine Gallery where it will be on view for the month of July. 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.

Future Retrospectives featuring work by Jessica Thalmann

‘Future Retrospectives’ is a group exhibition featuring the work of eleven local and international artists and designers, unified by a shared methodology: using the past as a lens through which we imagine the future. It asks, “what will the future look like, and how did we get there?”

Creative acts are, by their nature, future-oriented. Creativity brings to fruition that which did not previously exist and, in doing so, builds the future. What is this future-world that we are building? What does it look like and how does it work? How do we prepare for it? ‘Future Retrospectives’ proposes that in order to have a meaningful understanding of relationships in the future and our role in them as creators of material culture, we have to look at how the past, present, and future are interconnected. By considering the past, we are able to holistically imagine the future.

The exhibition features the work of Graysha Audren, Mia Cinelli, Hannah Claus, Cassandra Ferguson, Tsēmā Igharas, Andreas Krätschmer, SHATTERED MOON ALLIANCE, Studio Björn Steinar, Adhavan Sundaramurthy, Sage Szkabarnicki-Stuart, and Akin Ossington member, Jessica Thalmann.

This exhibition is curated by DesignTO, and co-presented with Harbourfront Centre. It is generously supported by Lemay. Thank you to our external jurors Farah Yusuf and Melanie Egan.

Participants
Graysha Audren, Mia Cinelli, Hannah Claus, Cassandra Ferguson, Tsēmā Igharas, Andreas Krätschmer, SHATTERED MOON ALLIANCE (Christina Battle and Serena Lee), Studio Björn Steinar, Adhavan Sundaramurthy, Sage Szkabarnicki-Stuart, Jessica Thalmann

Photorama at 33 — Save the Date!

Preview Hour
Thursday, November 21, 2019 5:00 – 6:00 pm

Sale and reception
Thursday, November 21, 2019, 6:00 – 10:00 pm

Dance party
10 pm – late

Exhibition and Sale Continues
November 22 – December 7, 2019
Gallery hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 12:00 – 5:00 pm

Save the date for the 33rd edition of Photorama, Gallery TPW’s annual fundraising exhibition, which features contemporary photography and lens-based art by over 80 artists.

The public sale and reception will be the first opportunity to purchase artworks by such exciting artists as Steven Beckly, Anique Jordan, Paul Butler, Maggie Groat, Isabel M. Martinez, Jennifer Murphy and Edward Burtynsky. The full list of participating artists will be announced in early November – stay tuned!

Gallery TPW is pleased to announce that the Photorama fund for the Ryerson Image Centre (RIC) will be sponsored through the generosity of Toronto Image Works (TIW). For this exciting initiative, TIW will be underwriting an acquisition fund, enabling the curators at RIC to purchase work from the Photorama exhibition for its world-class photography collection. The selected artworks will be announced at the beginning of the public sale and reception at 6:00 pm.

The evening will include food and a cash bar, stay late and celebrate this wonderful community with us on the dancefloor!

Proceeds from sales support Gallery TPW’s mission and the participating artists.

Admission to the Photorama Reception and sale is FREE and open to the public.

Call for Submissions: CONTACT 2020

The Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival in Toronto invites participation from photographic artists for May 2020, either as a Featured Exhibition or an Open Call Exhibition.

The Featured Exhibitions program showcases exceptional photo-based projects. Featured Exhibitions are subject to a juried submission process, and are eligible for The Gattuso Prize, a $5,000 award that acknowledges an outstanding exhibition in this program.

The Open Call Exhibitions program provides a valuable opportunity to have photographic work exhibited in conjunction with other emerging and established artists. Open Call Exhibitions are non-juried and are therefore accessible to all interested participants and exhibition spaces.

All artists/organizers must have a confirmed exhibition space in order to participate in CONTACT.
A participation fee applies:

Early bird fee (available until November 11, 2019)
$275 + HST

Regular registration fee
$350 + HST

Photography by Akin Sunrise artist Janne Reuss at Artscape Youngplace until June 1

There is still time to check out the Gallery 44 group show ‘Spectra’ in the Artscape Youngplace 3rd floor Hallway Gallery! ‘Spectra’ showcases work that represents a variety of photographic concepts and techniques, celebrates artistic practice, and reveals ways seemingly disparate work can intersect. Spectra reflects the spirit embodied by the community of Gallery 44.

Akin Sunrise artist Janne Reuss is exhibiting photography in this exhibition along with other members of Gallery 44 as a part of the CONTACT Photography Festival. ‘Spectra’ runs until June 1, 2019.

Artscape Youngplace
Hallway Galleries, 3rd Floor
180 Shaw Street, Toronto
Hours: 8:00am-8:00pm

About Janne Reuss:
Janne Reuss is a multidisciplinary and conceptually driven artist. Her work addresses the existential and cultural human conditions of freedom, confinement, as well as identity; especially from the female point of view, which she often performs and photographs. The spaces she creates are ambiguous and multilayered inviting the viewer to contemplate. Reuss cuts her photographs and rearranges the fragments manually. The resulting handmade collages are then scanned and printed as photographs. The final work consists of the initial original photomontage and a small edition of 3-5 digital prints. www.janneart.net

Ming Smith, June Clark and Suzy Lake in Conversation - today at 7pm at the AGO - FREE!

June Clark, pur laine, 2004, mixed media, Collection of Peter Caldwell + Stephen Mader, Toronto. © June Clark

Join Akin Sunrise artist June Clark, along with Ming Smith and Suzy Lake this evening at 7pm the Art Gallery of Ontario for a conversation about photography, career, and critical reception for the CONTACT Photography Festival. This is a free event.

About June Clark
June Clark has earned a national and international reputation for her photo-based image works, installations and interventions. Clark’s works explore the intersection of family history, recollection and identity. Clark grew up in Harlem, a major centre of Black cultural and artistic excellence. In 1968 she moved to Toronto, where she continues to live and create art. She has exhibited widely throughout Canada and abroad, including exhibitions in Ecuador, Austria, Paris and New York. She has taught studio and academic visual arts courses at York University, the University of Guelph, and the Ontario College of Art and Design. Clark has an MFA in visual arts from York University. www.juneclark.ca

an endless, formless ruin by Jessica Thalmann

Jessica Thalmann

Such Places as Memory (Seattle I)

Folded archival pigment print, unique

22" x 17"

Enquire about this work

ANGELL GALLERY is pleased to present Toronto-based artist and Akin MOCA member Jessica Thalmann’s second solo exhibition at the gallery. Titled an endless, formless ruin, the exhibition presents new photographs and photo-based sculptural works, and opens on Saturday, May 4, with the public reception and artist talk on Saturday, May 11 from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. The exhibition runs until Saturday, June 1.

It is the desperate moment when we discover that this empire, which had seemed to us the sum of all wonders, is an endless, formless ruin…

                                                                        — Italo Calvino: Invisible Cities (1972)

In the novella Invisible Cities, we find about fifty short impressions of mythical cities relayed to the Mongolian emperor Kublai Khan by the Italian explorer Marco Polo. Polo describes the different sensory, physical and psychological affects these cities have on their inhabitants, which have been interpreted as different aspects of one city – Venice. But, ultimately, the book is about more than a single city; rather, it raises ideas about what it means for a city to be ‘home’, and how we can feel either ‘in possession’ or ‘possessed’ by a place through our memories and experiences of it. Polo is the book’s main narrator, but we sympathize with Khan, a man who can’t rule his homeland effectively because he doesn’t truly understand it.

Jessica Thalmann is an artist, curator and writer currently based in Toronto and New York City. She received a Master of Fine Arts in Advanced Photographic Studies from ICP-Bard College and a BFA in Visual Arts from York University. She has worked at the Doris McCarthy Gallery, Toronto International Film Festival, C Magazine, the Art Gallery of York University and Yossi Milo Gallery.

CONTACT Photography Festival: BENEATH US at Only One Gallery

Beneath Us is a photographic and sonic installation, produced by the collaboration of Radha Chaddah and Dan Bédard. The subject matter is the hidden realms that exist at a scale invisible to us. Chaddah removed tiny specs of wax from the bottom of a beehive, coated them in gold and photographed them using a scanning electron microscope that can see 180,000 times life size. Bédard created the sonic score by morphing traditional instrument sounds with bee sounds and then filtering this blend through Chaddah’s photographs using software that brings out hidden resonances. Beneath Us is titled to reflect the difference between the perception and reality of our place in nature. Humans largely behave as though all other creatures are beneath us in a hierarchy of life. In reality, humans rely on bees for our survival. Bees are a supportive foundation beneath us. This work symbolizes the invisibility of non-human narratives, the essential interrelatedness and interdependency of living things, and the beauty and fragility of these relationships.

Beneath Us

Where: Only One Gallery, 5 Brock Avenue, Toronto, ON

When: May 16th-29th

Opening Reception: May 16th, 7-11PM

CONTACT 2019 showcases an outstanding selection of Canadian and international lens-based artists. The Festival’s Core Exhibitions are comprised of collaborations with major museums, galleries, and artist-run centres as well as site-specific public art projects. These are cultivated through partnerships and commissions, and frame the cultural, social, and political events of our times. The Featured and Open Call Exhibitions present a range of works by local and international artists at leading galleries and alternative spaces across the city. The Festival also includes a wide range of Programs including a book fair, a symposium, lectures, talks, panels, and workshops. CONTACT exhibitions and programs are free and open to the public, with some exceptions at major museums.

Period of Adjustment an Exhibition by Carrie Perreault

Working primarily in sculpture and performance, Akin St. Clair member Carrie Perreault balances resistance and restraint in onerous actions that recount long-term precarity. In making her work, she expends great effort to achieve minimal results. This isn’t about labour; she prioritizes process to reflect on systems of abuse and their connection to emotional and psychological experiences. Through gestural, often repetitive acts and narratives that resist closure, she alludes to complex trauma and its residual effects. By exploring, in a visceral way, failures, vulnerabilities, and the limits of her body, Perreault makes viewers keenly aware of their own.

NAC’s Show Room Gallery
Opening Reception Friday 10 May 2019 7PM-10PM
On display until Saturday 17 August 2019

Presented as part of NAC’s Homecoming Series.

Carrie Perreault is an artist based in Toronto and New York. Her work has been included in exhibitions and projects at Idea Exchange, Cambridge Galleries, curated by Iga Janik (2019); Deathnastics, as part of Gymsick, curated by Hazel Meyer and Lucy Pawlak, Toronto (2018); Hamilton Biennale (2017); Strange Beauty, Tangled Arts +Disability Festival, Toronto (2015); Treasure Hill Artist Village, Taipei (2014). Perreault has been awarded residencies at Open Studio (Toronto), The Banff Centre and Taipei Artist Village.

CAS Lab: Documenting & Archiving Artwork with Jessica Thalmann

Artist and curator Jessica Thalmann will discuss the importance of clear, accurate, and striking documentation of artwork. Various technical and logistical issues will be broached while photographing paintings, ceramics, sculptures, installations, performances, and various print based media. Artists will learn best practices for photography including, lighting, placement, camera techniques, digital workflow, editing, export settings, and scanning. Archival and cataloguing practices will also be lightly discussed, focusing on data management software, long term storage, preservation, and creating an easy catalogue of current inventory to find and locate items.

After providing advice on each of these topics, Thalmann will offer a demonstration on techniques for photographing 2D and 3D media. This workshop is ideal for artists and makers of all skill levels who have some experience with a digital camera and tripod. Workshop will be followed by a Q&A.

Where: Gardiner Museum, 111 Queens Park, Toronto, ON

When: Wed, 8 May 2019, 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM

Cost: FREE

CAS Lab is a series of skills-building seminars co-presented by Gardiner Museum and neighbourhood hubs The 519, Akin, and Art Starts as part of the Community Arts Space project. These seminars, running from April 23 to May 22, are available to past and present Community Arts Space participants as well as artists and staff from The 519, Akin, and Art Starts. All workshops are free but require pre-registration. Space is limited.

Akin is a Toronto-based arts organization that provides affordable studio space as well as arts-based programming through its sister non-profit organization, Akin Projects. Their studios provide a working environment that maintains a friendly and inspiring atmosphere where people can work on creative endeavors and entrepreneurial undertakings of all kinds. Akin builds community through monthly art critiques, workshops, open studio events, gallery tours, exhibitions, as well as various other art projects.

Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival 2019 Programming Announced!

Renowned American artist Carrie Mae Weems will headline the 23rd edition of the citywide event spanning the month of May. As Weems’ first solo presentation in Canada, her exhibition in five parts will include an array of pivotal, celebrated works, some in unique new iterations. Her work will be shown at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, at CONTACT Gallery, and at three outdoor sites in Toronto’s Entertainment District, including the exterior of the TIFF Bell Lightbox. Weems will also give a public lecture discussing her practice.

Festival Launch Party
Ryerson Image Centre
33 Gould St
Wednesday May 1, 7-11pm
Free and open to the public

On view:
Scotiabank Photography Award: Moyra Davey
Meryl McMaster, As Immense as the Sky
Adrian Raymer, Rejects
Maximum Exposure 24

Throughout Toronto every May, CONTACT presents lens-based works by acclaimed and emerging artists, documentary photographers, and photojournalists from Canada and around the world. The core programming of Primary Exhibitions (co-presentations with major museums, galleries, and artist-run centres), and Public Installations (site-specific public art projects), are a central focus of the Festival. These are cultivated through partnerships, commissions and new discoveries, framing the cultural, social, and political events of our times. The Featured and Open Exhibitions present a range of works by local and international artists at leading galleries and alternative spaces across the city. The Festival also includes a wide range of Events including the CONTACT Photobook Fair, a symposium, lectures, talks, panels, and workshops.

Being Scene 2019 featuring work by Stephanie Avery

Workman Arts presents BEING SCENE, a sweeping exhibition encompassing over 100 artworks by 60+ artists, including work by Akin MOCA member Stephanie Avery, that give shape to compelling ideas and narratives from the sublime to the absurd to the fearless. Being Scene covers a wide range of conceptual and material approaches, giving voice to diverse life experiences.

Location: Toronto Media Arts Centre

Dates: February 28 - March 23, 2019

Exhibition is FREE and open daily from 12-6 PM.
Toronto Media Arts Centre is an accessible venue.

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AdHack by Stephanie Avery. More on view at Being Scene.

About Stephanie Avery:

Stephanie Avery is a Toronto-based artist currently working out of Akin’s MOCA location. She is best known for her ongoing project Ruins, a photographic journey through abandoned buildings around the world. Abandoned buildings possess a unique and surreal beauty that is completely unlike any other environment. Within the confines of abandoned spaces, time is in limbo. We are able to glimpse a lost vision of the past, as well as a potential future where human life is absent. Their combination of time, nature and vandalism imbues each image with a chaotic beauty, effectively transforming the familiar into the surreal, the every-day into the extraordinary.

New work by filmmaker and photographer Andrew Budziak of Akin Lansdowne on the Algonquin Wolf

Andrew Budziak is a filmmaker and photographer and owner of the video production company 8 String Media. Andrew has worked in media production and story telling for over a decade and has shot and produced video around the world including Pakistan, India, Philippines, Bosnia, and Japan. His most recent work focuses on species threatened by human-wildlife conflict.

In his recent article for Earth Island Journal, Andrew follows Hannah Barron, a wolf researcher and director of Wildlife Conservation Campaigns for Earthroots, and her research assistant Adrienne Chalaturnyk in Ontario’s Killarney Provincial Park as they as they hunt for DNA samples of Algonquin wolves in and around the park to help better understand the population distribution of the threatened species of canid. 

Read the full article and view the photo slideshow to learn more about Algonquin wolf research in Ontario by clicking the link below:

Want to learn more about Ontario's efforts to save the Algonquin wolf? Andrew and his team have also produced a video for CBC Radio's Quirks and Quarks series on the subject. Click the link below to check it out: 

Follow Andrew on Instagram to keep up with his latest projects: @andrew_budziak

'Buckshot Deli and Diner' by Katie Sadie this month in the Akin Vitrine Gallery

Akin Vitrine Gallery is excited to present November’s exhibition, “Buckshot Deli and Diner’ by Akin St. Clair member, Katie Sadie! 

“The Buckshot Deli and Diner is set in the Sonoran desert, in the town of Niland, California, just about 4.5 miles from Slab City. Slab City is a place where people learn to live off the grid and choose to be left alone. There is no official electricity there and many of the residents use generators or solar panels. Peter, sits quietly reading the paper, and the couple nearest to the television do not acknowledge its existence above. The Buckshot Deli and Diner’s atmosphere felt like a by product of the vast desert surroundings and the way that nearby residents choose to live.”

Katie Sadie is a graduate of the Applied Photography program at Sheridan College. She was recently announced as a winner of the Flash Forward Emerging Photographers Competition presented by The Magenta Foundation, 2017. Katie’s current personal practice has involved using primarily colour negative film. Her work is inspired by the great photographers of the past and the  people she surrounds herself with in the present. Katie aims to question ideals and start conversations by covering a wide variety of topics through documentary photography. 

'Buckshot Deli and Diner' 
Shot using a Pentax 6x7, 120mm film
Niland, California, 2016.

The Akin Vitrine Gallery is located at 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 Friday, or to arrange a viewing outside of those hours please contact the artist: gbstudiotoronto@gmail.com

www.katiesadie.com
Instagram: @katiesadiephoto
#AkinVitrine

Akin artist Katie Sadie selling prints to support people affected by Hurricane Harvey

Akin artist and photographer Katie Sadie is offering for a limited time 8"x11" matte prints of her work: "Corpus Christi, Texas 2015" to support those affected by Hurricane Harvey. 

Katie spent some time in Port Aransas, Texas in 2015. She parked her van on the beach and slept there for weeks. She is devastated to see the destruction done by #HurricaneHarvey and wants to try and help by doing a limited time print offer with 80% of proceeds going to the American Red Cross.

Here's a link to where you can purchase the print: http://goldenboystudio.bigcartel.com/p…/corpus-christi-texas. 

BURTYNSKY GRANT: Supporting the Creation of Photobooks

Renowned Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky and the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival are accepting submissions for the 2017 Burtynsky Grant - a $5,000 annual grant to support a Canadian artist in the creation of a photobook. Burtynsky generously donated his 2016 Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts of $25,000 to create the grant and foster the careers of Canadian artists.

This grant is intended to support artists who are in the advanced stages of developing a photobook. The jury is looking for submissions from those that have created a book dummy, are currently seeking funding to work with a publisher or to self-publish, and who have had little to no prior experience publishing a photobook. The winner will be announced at the end of May 2017.

Deadline: May 15, 2017

Four more days to submit to the SNAP! 2017 Contemporary Photography Competition!

Feeling inspired after an amazing weekend at Art Toronto? The SNAP! 2017 Contemporary Photography Competition closes THIS FRIDAY!

A juried competition for all photographers, there are cash prizes for top entries. Selected images will feature in the SNAP! silent auction, part of Toronto's most exciting gala celebrating contemporary art photography.

A total of 7 prizes will be awarded as follows:
    •    $1,000 grand prize, the Jim P. Shea Award for Best Overall Submission
    •    Six $500 Awards of Merit

For more details, and for contest rules and regulations, click here.

Click here to check out the SNAP 2016 silent auction gallery.

Contest closes 11:59 pm EST Friday, November 4, 2016.