Sunday 17 January 2016, 12:00 pm–5:00 pm
Pick-up and drop-off at Mercer Union (1286 Bloor Street West, Toronto)
$10 donation includes admission to all galleries and afternoon refreshments by Trafalgar Brewing Company and Whole Foods Market, Oakville
For reservations, contact artbus@oakvillegalleries.com or 905.844.4402, ext. 24 by Friday 15 January, 4:00 pm
Ride the ARTbus and discover some of the winter’s best exhibitions in the GTA!
Mercer Union
The winter ARTbus begins at Mercer Union with Liz Magic Laser: Kiss and Cry. The exhibition presents a new video work commissioned by Mercer Union with leading support from Partners in Art. This is Laser’s first solo exhibition in Canada. Laser works across performance, video and installation. Emerging from an interest in movement and the body, her work explores the processes instrumental in forming opinion, engaging with the mechanisms of how we perform and how we are performed to through multiple modalities. She stages situations, dialogues, monologues or plays and uses the urban environment and its population as the context for her work.
Blackwood Gallery
At Blackwood Gallery, visit Maryam Jafri: The Day After. The exhibition takes root in the artist’s ongoing project Independence Day 1934-1975 (2009–present), an installation composed of photographs taken on the first independence day in former European colonies across Asia and Africa, between 1934 and 1975. Images are juxtaposed according to a broken grid around categories of events, emphasizing the generic character of the rituals and ceremonies that took place during that 24-hour twilight period when a territory transforms into a nation-state. The Day After takes this rare "collection of collections" as a starting point to question various artistic, historical, and political issues arising from these images and their historical and institutional backgrounds. The Day After was conceived by Bétonsalon - Centre for art and research, Paris, France and co-produced by Tabakalera, San Sebastian, Spain.
Oakville Galleries
Next, at Oakville Galleries at Centennial Square, visit the opening of The Green of Her. The exhibition features works that map out landscapes in unlikely sources—a fur muff, a floral carpet, the folds of a napkin—and imagine what new forms of life could be hiding within them. Like Loch Ness as described in Patricia Lockwood's “Nessie Wants to Watch Herself Doing It"—the poem from which the exhibition takes its name—these strange environments sustain their creatures, isolate them, and depend on them in turn, proposing new ways of understanding how we relate to the worlds we inhabit. The Green of Her is drawn from the permanent collection of Oakville Galleries.
Finally, at Oakville Galleries in Gairloch Gardens visit the opening of Sky Glabush: What Is a Self?, curated by Jon Davies. Glabush draws on a wide variety of practices—including painting, drawing and sculpture—to work through pressing questions of identity, history, faith, and the role of the artist. Charting a broad path through varying forms, materials and styles, Glabush's practice is anchored in ideas of autobiography, modernism and metaphysics. ForWhat Is a Self?, Glabush presents new mixed-media sculptures and dyed weavings. With each gallery in the show conceived as a distinct vignette juxtaposing the artist's 2D and 3D works, What Is a Self? explores architecture as a structure capable of ordering the self in all its manifestations.
SCHEDULE
12:00 pm: Mercer Union. Visit Liz Magic Laser: Kiss and Cry.
1:30 pm: Blackwood Gallery. Visit Maryam Jafri: The Day After.
2:30 pm: Oakville Galleries at Centennial Square. Visit opening of The Green of Her.
3:30 pm: Oakville Galleries in Gairloch Gardens. Visit Sky Glabush: What is a Self?. Opening reception with refreshments.
5:00 pm: Drop-off at Mercer Union.
In-kind support provided by Trafalgar Brewing Company and Whole Foods Market, Oakville
Mercer Union
1286 Bloor Street West, Toronto
416.536.1519
www.mercerunion.org
Blackwood Gallery
University of Toronto Mississauga
3359 Mississauga Road, Mississauga
905.828.3789
www.blackwoodgallery.ca
Oakville Galleries
Oakville Galleries at Centennial Square: 120 Navy Street, Oakville
Oakville Galleries in Gairloch Gardens: 1306 Lakeshore Road East, Oakville
905.844.4402
www.oakvillegalleries.com
Images (clockwise from top left): Liz Magic Laser, Kiss and Cry (video still), 2015, single-channel video. Featuring figure skaters Anna MacKenzie and Axel MacKenzie and coach Marie Jonsson MacKenzie; Maryam Jafri,Independence Day 1934-1975 (detail), 2009–present. Installation photo at Bétonsalon, 2015. Photo: Aurelien Mole; Wendy Coburn, The Divers (detail), 2006, fur muff, figurines and plastic. Collection of Oakville Galleries; Sky Glabush, Local Colour, 2015. Cotton weaving stained with acrylic and ink. Courtesy of the artist and MKG127, Toronto.
