There’s no place like home

October 27, 2019Member Education

Lisa Deanne Smith speaking behind Allison Akootchook Warden’s performance plinth work, siku.

Fall educations respond to home and place

In late September new Partners in Art members were invited to learn the inner workings of how PIA operates in an informational presentation by the organizations’s co-presidents Antonella Vergati and Arlett Tygesen at OCAD University’s Onsite Gallery. This was followed by a contemporary art primer and discussion, led by Onsite’s curator Lisa Deanne Smith, on how to appreciate, view and interpret contemporary art. Smith used the exhibition Among All These Tundras, which features work by 12 Indigenous artists from around the circumpolar world, to demonstrate her ideas. Among All These Tundras is on view at Onsite Gallery until Dec. 7, 2019

Adrian Stimson’s work Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? was generated in close dialogue with residential school survivors and leaders in Siksika. The work was commissioned for the TBA.

PIA members enjoyed a tour of the newly-opened Toronto Biennial of Art exhibition space on Lakeshore Blvd. Attendees were joined by three members of the Biennial curatorial team, Candice Hopkins, Tairone Bastien and Katie Lawson, and were led through the cavernous 4200 sq. ft. of space while being introduced to many of the newly-commissioned works produced specifically for the Biennial. Toronto Biennial of Art executive director Patrizia Libralato also spoke with members and emphasized the importance of the work being responsive to, and engaging in, a deeper reflection of place. PIA is a sponsor of the Toronto Biennial of Art, which runs until Dec. 1, and can be accessed at various locations along Toronto’s waterfront. 

Erika DeFreitas, work right there, between here and over there finds the artist engaging with her mother in her bedroom.

In early October PIA members were invited on a tour of the PIA-supported project Undomesticated at Koffler Gallery. Joined by curator Mona Filip and art director Nicolas Fleming, PIA members not only toured the gallery space but the entire Artscape Youngplace building which was transformed for the exhibition. The works, which explore the psychological, political and emotional layers that shape our notions of home, are on display until Nov. 17.

Fragile, absorbent and unforgiving is how Cat Lamora describes her chosen medium of paper.

The solo exhibition We Bathe Here by Cat Lamora at the Margin of Eras Gallery is an immersive paper installation experience. The exhibition explores themes of connection within the shared and vulnerable space, of the Korean bathhouse. PIA members toured the show with Lamora who described the intimacies and rituals that occur in the bathhouses of her homeland: “Naked, vulnerable, people gather together to silently pour out a river of emotions within the bathing ritual”.  We Bathe Here is on display until Oct. 26.

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