Friday
Thursday
Awesome news
The Aleksandra Mir piece we commissioned at Mercer has gotten picked up by the Whitney Museum for this winter.
This film I was working on in 2009 is finally finished! So excited!
Going to Don Blanche residency This summer to work on a project.
ok thats it for now
This film I was working on in 2009 is finally finished! So excited!
Going to Don Blanche residency This summer to work on a project.
ok thats it for now
new news!
Summer has been pretty exhausting, But things are still happening!
Last week we Installed Brette Gabel's Piece, Tapestry at the window of Gallery 1313 for this series I curated, pretty nice!
Come Play with Us, Danny
JULY 6th to 31st, 2011
Tapestry by Brette Gabel
Curated by Xenia Benivolski
Brette Gabel is a not so recent graduate of the University of Regina. While avoiding schoolwork Brette began embroidering, quilting and watching horror movies. Following school, Brette moved to Toronto where she participated in the Toronto School of Art’s Independent Studio Program. After which she became a contributing member to the White House Studio. Currently Brette is researching farming accidents, taxidermy and organizing alternative community interventions. Brette’s work strives to connect love, fear, heartache and the grotesque with craft and social interventions.
Brette Gabel’s obsession with classic horror movies is explored through a series of quilted wall hangings. By softening the most frightening scenes Gabel invites the viewer to stare the monster head on. Handmade textiles connote warmth, safety, and the domestic sphere – when combined with uncomfortable subject matter, a productive tension is created: the work both comforts and provokes with empathetic humour.
In other news, I was helping Jon and Amy a little with the movie they're making
Buggy babes
Whoops
Last week we Installed Brette Gabel's Piece, Tapestry at the window of Gallery 1313 for this series I curated, pretty nice!
Come Play with Us, Danny
JULY 6th to 31st, 2011
Tapestry by Brette Gabel
Curated by Xenia Benivolski
Brette Gabel is a not so recent graduate of the University of Regina. While avoiding schoolwork Brette began embroidering, quilting and watching horror movies. Following school, Brette moved to Toronto where she participated in the Toronto School of Art’s Independent Studio Program. After which she became a contributing member to the White House Studio. Currently Brette is researching farming accidents, taxidermy and organizing alternative community interventions. Brette’s work strives to connect love, fear, heartache and the grotesque with craft and social interventions.
Brette Gabel’s obsession with classic horror movies is explored through a series of quilted wall hangings. By softening the most frightening scenes Gabel invites the viewer to stare the monster head on. Handmade textiles connote warmth, safety, and the domestic sphere – when combined with uncomfortable subject matter, a productive tension is created: the work both comforts and provokes with empathetic humour.
In other news, I was helping Jon and Amy a little with the movie they're making
Buggy babes
Whoops
Bunny Party
So the other day it was My friend Chris's birthday?? So Jeremy rented two Bunny suits and we went to surprise him at this show umm
Hello
Exactly
I'm the Little one!
Surprise!
Then we went to the moshpit
No you go first k
Aaaahhahah
Shit
Hahahahaha ok
Look at the 3 minute Mark! We're dying!
OK SO ANYWAY!
Tonight a show I've curated opens! Come ok!
10 Degrees Mouth:
A solo exhibition by jonathan edward mayhew
Curated by Xenia Benivolski
...
The Legend is Black: 10 Degrees Mouth at gallerywest is an exhibition of recent paintings by Jonathan Edward Mayhew. While Mayhew follows a self taught tradition of painting about sexual situations associated with a queerpunk aesthetic, his work projects a genuine quality that comes from a real possessive desire and a tenderness towards his subject matter. The paintings appear almost earnest, albeit gratuitous and hilariously didactic in their content: the dream-like palette betrays a sensitivity that mellows the sassiness of his subjects. This departure from aestheticised politics towards an emotional ground is a central theme in the curatorial project The Legend is Black, which encompasses the Butcher Gallery, the Whitehouse and gallerywest.
The Legend is Black is an independent Curtorial Project by Xenia Benivolski concurrent with This Is Paradise/Paradise Now.
http://www.mocca.ca/exhibitions/upcoming-exhibitions/
http://paradisenow.ca/
Paradise Now is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the City of Toronto, CARFAC and OCAD University.
For Information about Paradise Now please contact Rae Johnson, Artistic Director of Paradise Now at : info@paradisenow.ca
About the Gallery
gallerywest is a space for contemporary art, located at 1332 Queen Street West, Toronto, Ontario. This project space is intended to facilitate exciting new contemporary art shows in the Parkdale area. Our programming direction focuses on works that are thoughtfully engaged in a contemporary geographical dialogue.
Gallery hours are Tuesday-Sunday 1pm-7pm.
For all media/pr inquiries please contact:
Kathryn Kyte
PR & Media Coordinator | gallerywest
E: kathrynkyte@1332queenwest.com
T: 416.909.2577
Also CLICK HERE to see Aleksandra new work commissioned by Mercer Union - The Seduction Of Galileo Galilei. It was the best time!
We went to a race track and tried to make a big pile of tires.
Other piles were also made
thar she blows!
Ok Bye!
Hello
Exactly
I'm the Little one!
Surprise!
Then we went to the moshpit
No you go first k
Aaaahhahah
Shit
Hahahahaha ok
Look at the 3 minute Mark! We're dying!
OK SO ANYWAY!
Tonight a show I've curated opens! Come ok!
10 Degrees Mouth:
A solo exhibition by jonathan edward mayhew
Curated by Xenia Benivolski
...
The Legend is Black: 10 Degrees Mouth at gallerywest is an exhibition of recent paintings by Jonathan Edward Mayhew. While Mayhew follows a self taught tradition of painting about sexual situations associated with a queerpunk aesthetic, his work projects a genuine quality that comes from a real possessive desire and a tenderness towards his subject matter. The paintings appear almost earnest, albeit gratuitous and hilariously didactic in their content: the dream-like palette betrays a sensitivity that mellows the sassiness of his subjects. This departure from aestheticised politics towards an emotional ground is a central theme in the curatorial project The Legend is Black, which encompasses the Butcher Gallery, the Whitehouse and gallerywest.
The Legend is Black is an independent Curtorial Project by Xenia Benivolski concurrent with This Is Paradise/Paradise Now.
http://www.mocca.ca/exhibitions/upcoming-exhibitions/
http://paradisenow.ca/
Paradise Now is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the City of Toronto, CARFAC and OCAD University.
For Information about Paradise Now please contact Rae Johnson, Artistic Director of Paradise Now at : info@paradisenow.ca
About the Gallery
gallerywest is a space for contemporary art, located at 1332 Queen Street West, Toronto, Ontario. This project space is intended to facilitate exciting new contemporary art shows in the Parkdale area. Our programming direction focuses on works that are thoughtfully engaged in a contemporary geographical dialogue.
Gallery hours are Tuesday-Sunday 1pm-7pm.
For all media/pr inquiries please contact:
Kathryn Kyte
PR & Media Coordinator | gallerywest
E: kathrynkyte@1332queenwest.com
T: 416.909.2577
Also CLICK HERE to see Aleksandra new work commissioned by Mercer Union - The Seduction Of Galileo Galilei. It was the best time!
We went to a race track and tried to make a big pile of tires.
Other piles were also made
thar she blows!
Ok Bye!
Friday
Cold Cold Water
Hi Friends!
Tonighth there is a screening of Jamie Ross's collective works - entitled Cold cold water, at the whitehouse. This sreening is part of THE LEGEND IS BLACK.
Cold cold water: a screening of complete works by Jamie Ross
The Whitehouse, 277.5 Augusta, 8 PM.
Curated by Xenia Benivolski.
THE WHITE HOUSE
277.5 AUGUSTA AVENUE
JUNE 17TH 8 PM – 10 PM
Jamie Ross is a multi-disciplinary artist interested in personal psycho-geography, Land and Place. The ways in which people establish connections and meaningful relationships with their powerful places – their linkages to the landscape and topography and to the specific non-human persons who inhabit these landscapes drive his art practice.
Ross’ work deals with mythology, genealogy, storytelling and dreams; the numinous as is approached by a young, urban queer man largely isolated from the powerful magical cultures from which he sprung.
Creating and documenting queer community based on a sincere engagement with magic, grafting myself onto the rich artistic traditions of my cultural ancestors is fundamental. Overt references to things queer and punk are often present.
This show is Part 2 of THE LEGEND IS BLACK: a three-part curatorial project by Xenia Benivolski concurrent with THIS IS PARADISE/PARADISE NOW.
http://www.mocca.ca/exhibitions/upcoming-exhibitions/
http://paradisenow.ca/
PART 1: THE LEGEND IS BLACK
PART 3: 10 DEGREES MOUTH
Jamie Ross was born in a little house on Pendrith Street, just north of Toronto’s Christie Pits Park. He is a red haired film/video artist, working primarily in time-based media, working at the farthest-flung edges of narrative film and video. His work has screened in nationally and in Europe and Asia. His fiction has been anthologized, self-published in the form of a zine, and his most recent work, a novella entitled Coldwater, was published this year. Ross now lives in Montreal.
With generous support from the Canada Council for the Arts and CARFAC.
Paradise Now is a series of art, music, and theatre from the downtown Toronto art community. Paradise Now, although a separate entity, is intended to complement the historical exhibition at the MOCCA – This is Paradise, which runs from June 25 – Aug 21, by bringing emerging and established artists together, to connect the dots from our rich history from the early ‘80s on Queen Street West to today.
Paradise Now acknowledges the generosity of the artists, performers and musicians who have donated their time and creative energies to create programming that reflects the ecology of the street.
Paradise Now acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the City of Toronto and OCAD University.
For Information about Paradise Now please contact Rae Johnson, Artistic Director of Paradise Now at : info@paradisenow.ca
For information about the exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, This is Paradise | Place as a state of mind The Cameron Public House and 1980’s Toronto. And NGC@MOCCAThis is Paradise | From the National Gallery of Canada Collection, please go to http://www.mocca.ca/exhibitions/upcoming-exhibitions.
Stephanie Fielding was nice to write the follwoing essay for the screening:
FINDING ONES PLACE : The retelling of myth in the work of Jamie Callum Ross
Stephanie Fielding
Our thirst for the exotic and fantastic remains unquenched, humanity has created an amazing array of unseen or rarely seen creatures, forces and entities to populate the world and describe animate its mysteries. Taping into this thirst, weaving tales of myth and punk-rock absurdity, artist and writer Jamie Callum Ross presents a stream of videos that enter into our unconscious and conscious desires. Curated by Xenia Benovoski, Cold Cold Water: A Screening of Complete Works by Jamie Ross, gives us a view of the artist’s video work from the last five years.
Ross has a particular interest in the personal and psychological geography of land and place. The ways in which people establish connections and meaningful relationships with location, their link to landscape and topography, and to specific spirits who inhabit such landscape drive his art practice. There is a clear sense in his work of someone claiming their identity through their history and personal mythology. As a queer Metis man, Ross asks who has written his history, his identity? In Ross’ videos the supernatural is expressed in the vernacular of the everyday, recognizable locations and members of his social network link the work to actual people and events. His sequences, edited together rapidly and layered with streams of dialogue and imagery present striking but obscured narratives. Vivid, visually textured dreamscapes, shot primarily in super-8, are layered with sharp DV sequences, lending the videos an elusive poetry, especially to their most debaucherous scenes.
Ross’ films place great stress on sexuality, each film is punctuated with at least one cum-shot. The more perverse the sexuality, the more it strays from the norms of society, the more potent it is liable to be, and more disruptive of though patterns inhibiting the non-conformist. Sex and violence are used as forms of access to the spirits of chaos. As sex can, humour has the power to unlock the unconscious and release spiritual forces through its sudden associations of what the rational mind keeps separate; through its wild, anarchic amateurism and tongue-and-cheek, a certain sacredness is induced.
This body of work echoes the punky-transgressions of historically underground Queer filmmakers such as Kenneth Anger and Gregory Markopolous; each sharing a rebellious appropriation of ritualistic and humour-filled symbolism. Much like many of Anger’s films, Ross’ works are heavily influenced by esoteric systems of belief and the sacramental, although here there is a strong sense of a unified and affirmative self that isn’t necessarily present in his predecessors’ work. These rituals invoke vital forces that are sometimes symbolized and sometimes embodied in gods and goddesses; in this case, the figures are drawn from the artist’s Ojibwa and Scottish heritage as well as Nigerian and Greek folklore. As film historian Richard Dyer remarks, ‘Queer cinema often co-ops narratives involving supernatural forces of chaos and disruption, joyously celebrated but also actively employed to cause change in conformity.’ In The Bakkhai, 2008, Ross adapts the gruesome Euripides tragedy describing the vengeful return of the God Dionysus to the kingdom of Thebes. Like all of his work, the actors in the film are friends and the setting is specific and recognizable- in this case the Leslie Spit in Toronto’s east end. The video, part gruesome bloodbath, part hedonistic love-fest, retells the mythic story but also gives a mischievous real portrait of Toronto punk-subculture.
More recent work explores Jamie Ross’ personal genealogy, tracing his own connections to the myth and paths of his ancestors. Biboon Geamhradh, 2010, presents an earnest search for ones place in the lineage of oral storytelling. Cras Valde Facessite, 2009, created in collaboration with Derek Muehlgassner, combines myths of both filmmakers’ cultures, creating a hybrid tales of two fathers. By deconstructing the two myths, Muehlgassner and Ross re-claim their heritage and place their own visions within its rich history. Ross’ work is a cry for us to engage with our storytelling pasts and develop our own personalized sense of our heritages.
Tonighth there is a screening of Jamie Ross's collective works - entitled Cold cold water, at the whitehouse. This sreening is part of THE LEGEND IS BLACK.
Cold cold water: a screening of complete works by Jamie Ross
The Whitehouse, 277.5 Augusta, 8 PM.
Curated by Xenia Benivolski.
THE WHITE HOUSE
277.5 AUGUSTA AVENUE
JUNE 17TH 8 PM – 10 PM
“When everything else has gone from my brain – the President’s name, the state capitals, the neighborhoods where I lived, and then my own name and what it was on earth I sought, and then at length the faces of my friends, and finally the faces of my family – when all this has dissolved, what will be left, I believe, is topology: the dreaming memory of land as it lay this way and that.”
-Annie Dillard, An American Childhood
Jamie Ross is a multi-disciplinary artist interested in personal psycho-geography, Land and Place. The ways in which people establish connections and meaningful relationships with their powerful places – their linkages to the landscape and topography and to the specific non-human persons who inhabit these landscapes drive his art practice.
Ross’ work deals with mythology, genealogy, storytelling and dreams; the numinous as is approached by a young, urban queer man largely isolated from the powerful magical cultures from which he sprung.
Creating and documenting queer community based on a sincere engagement with magic, grafting myself onto the rich artistic traditions of my cultural ancestors is fundamental. Overt references to things queer and punk are often present.
This show is Part 2 of THE LEGEND IS BLACK: a three-part curatorial project by Xenia Benivolski concurrent with THIS IS PARADISE/PARADISE NOW.
http://www.mocca.ca/exhibitions/upcoming-exhibitions/
http://paradisenow.ca/
PART 1: THE LEGEND IS BLACK
PART 3: 10 DEGREES MOUTH
Jamie Ross was born in a little house on Pendrith Street, just north of Toronto’s Christie Pits Park. He is a red haired film/video artist, working primarily in time-based media, working at the farthest-flung edges of narrative film and video. His work has screened in nationally and in Europe and Asia. His fiction has been anthologized, self-published in the form of a zine, and his most recent work, a novella entitled Coldwater, was published this year. Ross now lives in Montreal.
With generous support from the Canada Council for the Arts and CARFAC.
Paradise Now is a series of art, music, and theatre from the downtown Toronto art community. Paradise Now, although a separate entity, is intended to complement the historical exhibition at the MOCCA – This is Paradise, which runs from June 25 – Aug 21, by bringing emerging and established artists together, to connect the dots from our rich history from the early ‘80s on Queen Street West to today.
Paradise Now acknowledges the generosity of the artists, performers and musicians who have donated their time and creative energies to create programming that reflects the ecology of the street.
Paradise Now acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the City of Toronto and OCAD University.
For Information about Paradise Now please contact Rae Johnson, Artistic Director of Paradise Now at : info@paradisenow.ca
For information about the exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, This is Paradise | Place as a state of mind The Cameron Public House and 1980’s Toronto. And NGC@MOCCAThis is Paradise | From the National Gallery of Canada Collection, please go to http://www.mocca.ca/exhibitions/upcoming-exhibitions.
Stephanie Fielding was nice to write the follwoing essay for the screening:
FINDING ONES PLACE : The retelling of myth in the work of Jamie Callum Ross
Stephanie Fielding
Our thirst for the exotic and fantastic remains unquenched, humanity has created an amazing array of unseen or rarely seen creatures, forces and entities to populate the world and describe animate its mysteries. Taping into this thirst, weaving tales of myth and punk-rock absurdity, artist and writer Jamie Callum Ross presents a stream of videos that enter into our unconscious and conscious desires. Curated by Xenia Benovoski, Cold Cold Water: A Screening of Complete Works by Jamie Ross, gives us a view of the artist’s video work from the last five years.
Ross has a particular interest in the personal and psychological geography of land and place. The ways in which people establish connections and meaningful relationships with location, their link to landscape and topography, and to specific spirits who inhabit such landscape drive his art practice. There is a clear sense in his work of someone claiming their identity through their history and personal mythology. As a queer Metis man, Ross asks who has written his history, his identity? In Ross’ videos the supernatural is expressed in the vernacular of the everyday, recognizable locations and members of his social network link the work to actual people and events. His sequences, edited together rapidly and layered with streams of dialogue and imagery present striking but obscured narratives. Vivid, visually textured dreamscapes, shot primarily in super-8, are layered with sharp DV sequences, lending the videos an elusive poetry, especially to their most debaucherous scenes.
Ross’ films place great stress on sexuality, each film is punctuated with at least one cum-shot. The more perverse the sexuality, the more it strays from the norms of society, the more potent it is liable to be, and more disruptive of though patterns inhibiting the non-conformist. Sex and violence are used as forms of access to the spirits of chaos. As sex can, humour has the power to unlock the unconscious and release spiritual forces through its sudden associations of what the rational mind keeps separate; through its wild, anarchic amateurism and tongue-and-cheek, a certain sacredness is induced.
This body of work echoes the punky-transgressions of historically underground Queer filmmakers such as Kenneth Anger and Gregory Markopolous; each sharing a rebellious appropriation of ritualistic and humour-filled symbolism. Much like many of Anger’s films, Ross’ works are heavily influenced by esoteric systems of belief and the sacramental, although here there is a strong sense of a unified and affirmative self that isn’t necessarily present in his predecessors’ work. These rituals invoke vital forces that are sometimes symbolized and sometimes embodied in gods and goddesses; in this case, the figures are drawn from the artist’s Ojibwa and Scottish heritage as well as Nigerian and Greek folklore. As film historian Richard Dyer remarks, ‘Queer cinema often co-ops narratives involving supernatural forces of chaos and disruption, joyously celebrated but also actively employed to cause change in conformity.’ In The Bakkhai, 2008, Ross adapts the gruesome Euripides tragedy describing the vengeful return of the God Dionysus to the kingdom of Thebes. Like all of his work, the actors in the film are friends and the setting is specific and recognizable- in this case the Leslie Spit in Toronto’s east end. The video, part gruesome bloodbath, part hedonistic love-fest, retells the mythic story but also gives a mischievous real portrait of Toronto punk-subculture.
More recent work explores Jamie Ross’ personal genealogy, tracing his own connections to the myth and paths of his ancestors. Biboon Geamhradh, 2010, presents an earnest search for ones place in the lineage of oral storytelling. Cras Valde Facessite, 2009, created in collaboration with Derek Muehlgassner, combines myths of both filmmakers’ cultures, creating a hybrid tales of two fathers. By deconstructing the two myths, Muehlgassner and Ross re-claim their heritage and place their own visions within its rich history. Ross’ work is a cry for us to engage with our storytelling pasts and develop our own personalized sense of our heritages.
Wednesday
part 3!
oh hey and this is the third part on my curatorial adventure at 1313, this month an installation by Anna May Henry!
Boredom Party Banner
Installation by Anna May Henry.
Curated by Xenia Benivolski
BORED BEYOND BELIEF
When we’re promised excitement and intrigue at every mall, nightclub, basement apartment and laptop, boredom is a pitiful shame. It is said that only boring people get bored. To state one’s ennui, then, is potential condemnation to a dull persona. The Boredom Party Banner acts like a celebration, but is perhaps a cry for help from behind the entrapment of windowpane glass.
“We don’t want a world where the guarantee of not dying of starvation brings the risk of dying of boredom.”
-Graffiti from May 1968
BIO
Anna May Henry works in a variety of mediums in an endless exploration of the co-existence of everyday life with the fantastic. She is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design. She lives and works in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Reception Saturday June 11 3-6pm
Gallery Hours are Wed- Sun 1-6pm
1313 Queen St. West 416-536-6778 www.g1313.org
Media call Phil Anderson 416-525-7688
The Legend is Black
Hello!
at the Butcher Gallery
June 4-18 2010
there's more! but I'm at work.
This weekend we are screening the 2nd component of this show at The Whitehouse.
Cold cold water: a screening of complete works by Jamie Ross
Curated by Xenia Benivolski.
THE WHITE HOUSE
277.5 AUGUSTA AVENUE
JUNE 17TH 8 PM – 10 PM
“When everything else has gone from my brain – the President’s name, the state capitals, the neighborhoods where I lived, and then my own name and what it was on earth I sought, and then at length the faces of my friends, and finally the faces of my family – when all this has dissolved, what will be left, I believe, is topology: the dreaming memory of land as it lay this way and that.”
-Annie Dillard, An American Childhood
Jamie Ross is a multi-disciplinary artist interested in personal psycho-geography, Land and Place. The ways in which people establish connections and meaningful relationships with their powerful places – their linkages to the landscape and topography and to the specific non-human persons who inhabit these landscapes drive his art practice.
Ross’ work deals with mythology, genealogy, storytelling and dreams; the numinous as is approached by a young, urban queer man largely isolated from the powerful magical cultures from which he sprung.
Creating and documenting queer community based on a sincere engagement with magic, grafting myself onto the rich artistic traditions of my cultural ancestors is fundamental. Overt references to things queer and punk are often present.
This exhibition is Part two of THE LEGEND IS BLACK commissioned by THIS IS PARADISE. Organized by the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art and the National Gallery of Canada.
PART 1: THE LEGEND IS BLACK
PART 3: 10 DEGREES MOUTH
Jamie Ross was born in a little house on Pendrith Street, just north of Toronto’s Christie Pits Park. He is a red haired film/video artist, working primarily in time-based media, working at the farthest-flung edges of narrative film and video. His work has screened in nationally and in Europe and Asia. His fiction has been anthologized, self-published in the form of a zine, and his most recent work, a novella entitled Coldwater, was published this year. Ross now lives in Montreal.
With generous support from the Canada Council for the Arts and CARFAC.
at the Butcher Gallery
June 4-18 2010
there's more! but I'm at work.
This weekend we are screening the 2nd component of this show at The Whitehouse.
Cold cold water: a screening of complete works by Jamie Ross
Curated by Xenia Benivolski.
THE WHITE HOUSE
277.5 AUGUSTA AVENUE
JUNE 17TH 8 PM – 10 PM
“When everything else has gone from my brain – the President’s name, the state capitals, the neighborhoods where I lived, and then my own name and what it was on earth I sought, and then at length the faces of my friends, and finally the faces of my family – when all this has dissolved, what will be left, I believe, is topology: the dreaming memory of land as it lay this way and that.”
-Annie Dillard, An American Childhood
Jamie Ross is a multi-disciplinary artist interested in personal psycho-geography, Land and Place. The ways in which people establish connections and meaningful relationships with their powerful places – their linkages to the landscape and topography and to the specific non-human persons who inhabit these landscapes drive his art practice.
Ross’ work deals with mythology, genealogy, storytelling and dreams; the numinous as is approached by a young, urban queer man largely isolated from the powerful magical cultures from which he sprung.
Creating and documenting queer community based on a sincere engagement with magic, grafting myself onto the rich artistic traditions of my cultural ancestors is fundamental. Overt references to things queer and punk are often present.
This exhibition is Part two of THE LEGEND IS BLACK commissioned by THIS IS PARADISE. Organized by the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art and the National Gallery of Canada.
PART 1: THE LEGEND IS BLACK
PART 3: 10 DEGREES MOUTH
Jamie Ross was born in a little house on Pendrith Street, just north of Toronto’s Christie Pits Park. He is a red haired film/video artist, working primarily in time-based media, working at the farthest-flung edges of narrative film and video. His work has screened in nationally and in Europe and Asia. His fiction has been anthologized, self-published in the form of a zine, and his most recent work, a novella entitled Coldwater, was published this year. Ross now lives in Montreal.
With generous support from the Canada Council for the Arts and CARFAC.
Monday
New Thing
Next week I am going to bike to Stouffville to help out Aleksandra Mir with her upcoming exhibition project for Mercer. EVERYONE PLEASE COME!
ALEKSANDRA MIR
ON LOCATION!Saturday 11 June 2011
The Seduction of Galilei Galilei by Aleksandra Mir is an action that will consist of building a tower of automotive tires as high as possible until it topples over, only to start over again. Several attempts will be made over the course of the day on Saturday 11 June 2011 from 10am to 6pm at Goodwood Kartways, situated 40 km northeast of Toronto.
ALEKSANDRA MIR
THE SEDUCTION OF GALILEO GALILEI
OPENING RECEPTION
Saturday 18 June 2011
Artist's talk at 3 PM, Reception 4-6 PM
For its banner summer exhibition, Mercer Union has commissioned international artist Aleksandra Mir for a new work titled The Seduction of Galileo Galilei. The event will take place at Goodwood Kartways in Stouffville, Ontario, and the resulting video documentation will be the centerpiece of Mir’s solo exhibition in our galleries. Mir is interested in the specific dynamics of popular myths and technologies, and she has proposed a directive for her work inspired by Galileo Galilei whose experiments with gravity are well known. As the apocryphal tale goes, Galileo dropped objects of differing mass off the Leaning Tower of Pisa in order to observe their rate of acceleration. In so doing, he discredited Aristotle's assumptions on the matter, giving us the Law of Falling Bodies. In The Seduction of Galileo Galilei, Mir ignites an intellectu al affair with the scientist, four centuries after the fact. Her proposed rendezvous takes place in a gravel lot adjacent to a racetrack, where she performs a gravitational feat of her own—the stacking of a single column of automotive tires that rise precariously to the heavens. Though the column may reach the height of the famed Tower of Pisa, Mir is more concerned with space of play that opens when failure is a permissible outcome. This impetus represents an inversion of the normal parameters and aims of construction. Though Mir relies on the highly skilled labour of the crane operator—his theoretical knowledge of physics combined with in-the-field experience of hoisting objects into space—her thrill is the tipping point between the expected results and the limits of control. For example, wind, the shape of the tires, the energy of the crew to gather the tires, all these determine at what point the construction will spill over. The impulse to stack is a primordial one, vis ible in the play of children handling building blocks, but also the most elaborate ancient architectural wonders. Mir’s experiment is experiment for experiment’s sake and, in The Seduction of Galileo Galilei, she indulges the delight of failure, making the tower topple over and over again, for the sheer joy of watching the fall.
Thursday
10 Degrees Mouth
Part 3 of The Legend is Black is opening at Gallerywest June 23rd!
jonathan edward mayhew
"10 Degrees Mouth"
Part of the project: "The Legend is Black"
June-23-30, 2011
Opening reception: Thursday, June 23, 7-10 PM
The Legend is Black is a three-part curatorial project by Xenia Benivolski
Commissioned by the MOCCA for THIS IS PARADISE.
jonathan edward mayhew
"10 Degrees Mouth"
Part of the project: "The Legend is Black"
June-23-30, 2011
Opening reception: Thursday, June 23, 7-10 PM
The Legend is Black is a three-part curatorial project by Xenia Benivolski
Commissioned by the MOCCA for THIS IS PARADISE.
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