FREE CONTEMPORARY ART BUS TOUR
Sunday, October 20, 2013
12 – 5:30 pm
Tour begins at 12 pm at Koffler Gallery Off-Site at Jack Layton Ferry Terminal (9 Queens Quay West) and continues to the Blackwood Gallery, Art Gallery of York University and Doris McCarthy Gallery. Guided exhibition tours will be offered at each venue. The bus will return downtown at 5:30 pm.
The bus tour is FREE, seats are limited. To reserve, contact the Doris McCarthy Gallery at 416.287.7007 ordmg@utsc.utoronto.ca no later than Friday, October 18.
Please note that light snacks and refreshments will be provided throughout the tour; guests are welcome to pack their own lunches.
KOFFLER GALLERY OFF-SITE
Jack Layton Ferry Terminal
Iara Freiberg
where I'm waiting from
June 13, 2013 – October 27, 2013
Curated by Mona Filip
Brazilian/Argentinean artist Iara Freiberg creates site-specific interventions that explore the ways in which urban spaces are used, playing with perceptions of the built environment. Intimately entwined with the structures they occupy, her spatial drawings rely on the rigors of geometry, revealing harmonious or opposing tensions within the architecture and soliciting the viewer's awareness. where I'm waiting from, Freiberg's first project in Canada, is a site-specific intervention engaging one of Toronto's main civic portals – the Jack Layton Ferry Terminal. This monumental yet minimalist vinyl installation responds to the complex architecture of the site, examining the public use of the urban environment.
BLACKWOOD GALLERY, U of T MISSISSAUGA
Red, Green, Blue ≠ White
September 18 – December 1, 2013
Curated by Johnson Ngo
Works by Golboo Amani & Manolo Lugo, Chun Hua Catherine Dong, Aryen Hoekstra, Brendan Fernandes, Kika Nicolela, Jude Norris and Kristina Lee Podesva
Red, Brown, Yellow, Black, White: all colours used to describe people, somewhat contentiously, of culturally diverse backgrounds. Coined by Alice Walker, colourism, or discrimination based on skin colour, is the impetus to examine the relationship between race and colour. Red, Green, Blue ≠ White investigates this fraught territory through the formal considerations of colour offered by colour theory. But that is only its point of departure. The selected works share a sensibility for subtle performative gestures; the marking of bodies through the accumulation of light, the action of a lick, the construction of identities through the application of makeup, the gradation of the skin tone through light exposure, and the critique of white—white, the colour and the race. The performative elements of the works instill shifts in the relationship between the viewer's body, vision, and consequent understanding. As an ensemble, they encourage reflections (in both senses of the word) on the politics of colour. The symbol '≠' is not just presented as a negation here, it engenders a generative conversation about race, extending from an awareness of inequalities to the artistic presentation of shifting perspectives.
ART GALLERY OF YORK UNIVERSITY (AGYU)
Wael Shawky: The Cabaret Crusades
September 11 – December 1, 2013
Curated by Philip Monk
Wael Shawky: Cabaret Crusades is the first full-scale exhibition in Canada of this Egyptian artist from Alexandria. The exhibition is comprised of the first two of a projected series of three films collectively called the Cabaret Crusades. At the AGYU, The Horror Show File (2010) and The Path to Cairo (2012) are shown.
The West knows the Crusades through its own history, and lore that has suffused our culture, but here the story is told from the Arab point of view, which spoke of the Crusades, beginning in 1096 and lasting two centuries, as "the Frankish invasions." The series is based on the book The Crusades through Arab Eyes, by Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf, amongst other sources. Not only told from the Arab point of view (in Arabic with English subtitles), the story is performed by puppets. One soon realizes that a violent history actually can be told effectively and movingly through puppets and even be given the Hollywood treatment—in HD and surround sound.
DORIS McCARTHY GALLERY, U of T SCARBOROUGH
Wafaa Bilal
3rdi
September 3 – October 19, 2013
For the recent project 3rdi, Iraqi-born artist Wafaa Bilal had a camera surgically implanted in the back of his head to spontaneously transmit images to the web, at the rate of one image per minute, 24 hours a day – a statement on surveillance, the mundane and the things we leave behind. Drawing attention to the mostly forgotten, or ignored, fact that cameras exist in most public and many private spaces. 3rdi serves as a reminder that it has become commonplace for our lives to be monitored. The project is also deeply personal for Bilal, arising from a need to objectively capture his past. As a refugee and immigrant, Bilal reflects upon the people and places he was forced to leave behind during his journey from Iraq to Saudi Arabia, to Kuwait and then the U.S. By documenting every moment with the 3rdi, Bilal is able to build an archive of memories, as he could not before.
IMAGE CREDIT (clockwise from top left):
Chun Hua Catherine Dong, Hourglass, 2010, photo: Toni Hafkenscheid; Iara Freiberg, where I'm waiting from (installation), 2013, photo: Toni Hafkenscheid; Wafaa Bilal, 3rdi, 2010-2011, courtesy of the artist; Wael Shawky, Cabaret Crusades: The Path to Cairo (video still), 2012, HD video, color, sound, 59:04 min, courtesy the artist and Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut / Hamburg.
----------
Koffler Gallery
4588 Bathurst Street
Toronto ON M2R 1W6
416.638.1881
*Exhibition off-site at Jack Layton Ferry Terminal, 9 Queens Quay West
Doris McCarthy Gallery
University of Toronto Scarborough
1265 Military Trail
Toronto ON M1C 1A4
416.287.7007
Art Gallery of York University
Accolade East Building
4700 Keele Street
Toronto ON M3J 1P3
416.736.5169
Blackwood Gallery
University of Toronto Mississauga
3359 Mississauga Rd. North, Kaneff Building
Mississauga ON L5L 1C6
905.828.3789
