Writing for Between Cellar and Attic

For our past show at XPACE (Ryan Lord, Genevieve Robertson and mine) Elizabeth Underhill wrote accompanying poems for each person’s body of work (they’re each quite fantastic).  Czech em out here.

birch effect & glass effect install

XPACE install

new work – function mute

Group Show @ XPACE Cultural Centre – Between Cellar and Attic

Between Cellar and Attic

14 October 2011 – 5 November 2011
XPACE Cultural Centre
58 Ossington Ave.
Toronto, ON – 11:00 pm

Opening reception: Friday October 14th from 7:00 pm
Artist Talk:  Saturday November 5th at 1:00 pm

(Image: Ryan Lord, 2009)

“Between Cellar and Attic” engages in a dialogue with domestic space and its social, psychological and intimate implications. The work of artists Genevieve Robertson, Paola Savasta, and Ryan Lord imagines a series of domestic spaces and objects that are a rich source of inquiry into memory, attachment, nostalgia, psychology and consumer culture.

As a collective, they are invested in discovering how to alter the state of domestic objects and environments so that new systems of understanding are possible.  Seemingly fantastic, yet tethered to the real, their work reminds us of our own nostalgic relationship to intimate home spaces of past and present, yet calls to question the complexities of our associations. Through their creation of both concrete and fictive environments, the artists assert a non-material abstract (and fundamental) kind of reality.   Issues regarding the idealization of form are evident in the work of each artist respectively: Paola’s work sets out to interrogate a highly consumer driven ‘design lifestyle’; Ryan is interested in the idealized male body and its relationship to the Freudian bereft cabin; Genevieve’s work questions subjective aesthetics and reverence verses banality. Thus, each artist seeks to understand the fundamental human-object relationship and it’s bearing on our cultural obsession with the idealization of the inanimate.

Install @ KWT

Photo cred: Jessica Vallentin (thanks!!)

Emerging Artist Forum @ KWT Contemporary

Couches for the Liberated installation at KWT Contemporary

Up at KWT Contemporary until July 30th
Address: 624 Richmond Street W (at Bathurst and Richmond)
Hours: Wed-Sat, 12-6pm

Couches for the Liberated at KWT Contemporary

CZECH IT
Opening: July 7th, 5-7
Facebook event here
KWT Contemporary website here

ELEVENTH ANNUAL WILLIAM HUFFMAN AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE

The faculty of the Art and Art History Program – a joint BA offered by the University of Toronto at Mississauga and Sheridan Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning (Oakville) – is pleased to announce Paola Savasta as the 2011 recipient of the William Huffman Award for Excellence in Studio Practice. Savasta explores relationships and systems between people and their trea…tment of space. She is a recent graduate from the Art and Art History Program. Savasta will present a new body of work in a solo exhibition entitled “Couches for the Liberated” at KWT Contemporary.

Curator and arts administrator William Huffman created this award in 1999 to recognize an especially gifted student graduating from Art and Art History. Huffman has had an extensive involvement on both local and international cultural fronts and has worked with a number of arts organizations such as Blackwood Gallery, Arts Toronto, The Power Plant, A Space, Canadian Art Foundation and Art Gallery of Sudbury. He is currently Associate Director with Toronto Arts Council, a post he has held since 2004. Huffman is a 1991 Art and Art History Program alumnus.

Since its inception the award has recognized Sebastian Koever (2010), Jessica Vallentin (2009), Jaclyn Quaresma (2008), Marko Bursac (2007), Alison Kobayashi (2006), Tejpal Ajji (2005), Carolyn Tripp (2004), Jared Carlson (2003), Tannis Nielsen (2002), Erin Finley (2001), Amie Tolton (2000) and Heather Robinson (1999).

new work sneak