Here’s your mid-week pick up! This week’s newsletter features exhibit listings from across Southern Ontario, and highlights from our visual arts newsletters.
Christine Davis | Feb 10—Mar 9 | TORONTO — This inferno of transformation becomes the core of Christine Davis’ most recent work, The Incandescent, a poignant journey though the field of physical cosmology following the death of her mother. This ‘second attempt at understanding’ leads to a realm where pigments mimic prisms, black swallows all luminosity and butterfly wings write with light.
Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch | Feb 10—Mar 26 | HAMILTON — Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch is the first major retrospective exhibition of the multi-media work of Mohawk artist Shelley Niro, who is based in Brantford, ON. Spanning four decades of her photography, film, painting, installation, sculpture and mixed media practice, the exhibition highlights themes she constantly returns to: Matriarchy, Past is Present, Actors, and Family Relations.
The Saddest Circle is a Square | Feb 10—Mar 9 | TORONTO — The Saddest Circle is a Square, Sara Graham’s sixth solo exhibition at MKG127 is the result of Graham’s exploration of the cut-out and the off-cast. Graham has pushed further into her persistent artistic preoccupations with drawing and collage, drawing lines, cutting, cutting out, rearranging, layering and repeating the process over and over again.
Prelude | Feb 2—June 1 | OAKVILLE — Tarik Kiswanson—the winner of the 2023 Marcel Duchamp Prize—produces sculpture, writing, performance, drawing, sound, and video works. Notions of rootlessness, regeneration, and renewal are central themes in his practice.
P is for Painting | Feb 8—Mar 9 | TORONTO — An essay has to begin somewhere; it might as well be with the letter A. In Stephanie Ligeti’s debut solo exhibition at Franz Kaka, P is for Painting, A isn’t for Apple like it was in Kindergarten, it’s for Ashtray. The included 26 paintings each depict an object that corresponds to a unique letter of the latin-alphabet.
Jason Lujan: Utopian Aesthetic | Feb 16—May 19 | BARRIE — Utopian Aesthetic addresses the process by which different cultures approach each other as a result of travel and communication. Sidestepping identity to focus on transnational experiences and aesthetics, the work relates the ways in which culture is exported and diffused into nations.
Bertram Brooker: When We Awake! | Feb 10—June 2 | KLEINBURG — Bertram Brooker: When We Awake! examines the career of Bertram Brooker (1888–1955), the first Canadian artist to exhibit abstract paintings, in 1927. Curated by Michael Parke-Taylor, the exhibition is the first comprehensive presentation of Brooker’s oeuvre in almost half a century, gathering his diverse work in painting, drawing, and sculpture and highlighting his activities as one of the country’s leading art critics and journalists.
42nd Annual Juried Art Show | Feb 3—May 14 | BOWMANVILLE — For over 45 years, the VAC has produced a variety of locally engaged exhibitions and public programmes that offer the community members an opportunity to learn and create through contemporary art. Tbe Juried Art Exhibition returns this winter, bringing together a collection of artwork from a growing circle of creators from across the Durham Region and Greater Toronto Area.
Convergence | Jan 27—Mar 2 | TORONTO — Lonsdale Gallery presents the Canadian premier of Vancouver based photographer Christina Germano’s new powerful series of composite analog film portraits.
For a broader view of the performing arts, check out highlights from our Visual Arts Newsletters, and consider becoming a member:
Splish Splash: Climate Activists vs. A Gallery Near You
As the global climate crisis worsens, activist groups across Europe have become increasingly aggressive in their demonstration tactics. Their methods have been condemned as “completely unacceptable” by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and at least one MP has called for certain environmental organisations to be labelled as “terrorist groups.” In a remark highlighting the ideological schism between these environmentalists and the state, former Home Secretary Suella Braverman labelled protestors “the tofu-eating wokerati.”
FLOWERS: Rebecca Louise Law
Rebecca Louise Law is a British visionary whose captivating floral installations blur the boundaries between art and reality, offering an immersive experience unlike any other. “Painting in the air,” as she describes it, allows her creations to transcend traditional mediums, where flowers replace pigments, and open space becomes her canvas. With installations spread all over the world, and comprising over a million preserved flowers, Law’s work serves as a gateway to a deeper understanding of our relationship with the natural world, provoking us to question the fragility of this bond and our responsibility to protect it.
CLOISTRAL: Kezna Dalz
What do you think of when you think of good art? Does it lift your spirits? Draw you deeper into the world of a creator you love? What form does it take? Is it a spoken word, a cracked face delicately outlined with egg-wash centuries old, or carved from ancient marble? Where does your sense of “art” come from? These are some of the questions borne of the conversation between Cannopy Magazine (formerly smART Magazine) and Kezna Dalz — AKA Teenadult — a multidisciplinary artist based in Montréal.
FACETIME: Heather McCleod
Heather V McLeod’s portraits are cause for pause. A realist painter born and raised in New York, she received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2016, her MFA from The New York Academy of Art in 2021, and has completed several artist residences on Nantucket Island and in Tribeca. Her signature style is straightforward: retro-hued combinations of flowers and faces. Her figures are often placed in neutral domestic settings, communicating a quiet intimacy through the use of muted tones that simultaneously seem to burst at the seams with narrative energy.
FACETIME: Jorian Charlton
One of the great historical debates concerning the photographic process is whether photography is best characterized as a dispassionate technology with a documentary function, or as a tool of narrative and artistic expression. The work of Toronto-based photographer Jorian Charlton spans the false divide between document and art. Her portraits are a record of her models and the Caribbean diaspora, but also visually striking and expertly composed works of art that employ a clear aesthetic sensibility.
For a broader view of the performing arts, check out highlights from our Performing Arts Newsletters, and consider becoming a member: