IAMD STUDENT CO-CURATES COME UP TO MY ROOM AT THE GLADSTONE

“Fall of The Walled Garden,” by Also Collective and Mason Studio. Photo by Sarah Mulholland

Robert Cram, a student in the Interdisciplinary Master’s in Art, Media and Design program at OCAD U, was one of the co-curators for the annual Come Up To My Room alternative design showcase held January 23 to 26 at Toronto’s iconic Gladstone Hotel. Together with Jaclyn Blumas, Elise Hodson and Britt Welter-Nolan, Cram curated the work of 65 artists and designers who created 25 provocative installations.

“The focus of this year’s show was to include both digital and analog work and find connections and integrations between the two,” said Cram, who was invited to join the team of curators as a result of some of the work he’s done with theHeretical Objects Arts Cooperative. A good example of the digital-analog combination was in the “Fall of The Walled Garden,” an installation by Also Collective and Mason Studio that invited people into a light and sound structure to find a place of stillness within the busy exhibition.  

Cram, who also works at the landscape architecture group The Planning Partnership, often focuses on outdoor and public works, and as a result, part of the Come Up To My Room exhibition spilled outside the building onto the West Queen West streetscape, with one of IAMD student Ana Jofre’s life-sized marionettes on the balcony and a projection by Sarah Keenlyside and Nathan Whitford on the outside of the building. The Escapespace team polled Torontonians prior to the event and created an outdoor 3D representation of how we choose to disconnect with daily realities and escape.

Cram and the team of curators also thought carefully about how to make the best use of the hallway and foyer spaces in the Gladstone this year, not limiting installations to rooms only. In addition to larger works in the halls like “Hanging Matters,” hundreds of abstract piñatas made by students at Ryerson’s School of Interior Design that people pulled at timed intervals, Cram pointed out a series of tiny installations called “Creatures of Comfort” throughout the hotel by OCAD U alumni Sisley Leung. Leung miniaturized everything from an art gallery to hot air balloons, a gondola and a miniature hotel. 

Come Up To My Room was started 11 years ago by Christina Zeidler and Pamila Matharu to encourage the design and art community to take risks and begin new dialogues. It’s associated with the Toronto Design Offsite Festival.

Learn more

Blog TO slideshow

Watch artist installations in progress 

IAMD student Ana Jofre’s life-sized marionettes

Trailer for Illustration alum Andrew Foerster’s “Tin Canyon” short film

Keywords: 

ELISHA LIM TALKS ABOUT THEIR INCLUSION IN GENERATIONS OF QUEER

Claudette by Elisha Lim. Photo by Melissa Clark.
100 Crushes by Elisha Lim. Book cover art courtesy Koyama Press.

Elisha Lim’s work is a part of the Generations of Queer exhibit at Onsite [at] OCAD University. Curated by Lisa Deanne Smith, the exhibition (which also features the work of Robert Flack, John Greyson and Kiley May) is about storytelling and raising a public voice, exactly as you are. 

Lim and May both situate themselves between genders using the pronouns they, them and their to define themselves rather than she or he. Lim is an artist and storyteller known for combining writing and drawing in sensitive, perceptive portraits. They exhibit illustrations and animated shorts internationally, and their work includes comic series 100 Butches, the calendar diary The Comfort of Queer Family Wisdom, drawing series Sissies and the Femmes that Inspire Them and graphic novel 100 Crushes

Lim wrote about the opportunity to exhibit in Generations of Queer at Onsite Gallery [at] OCAD U:

I never got into art school. I applied and got rejected three times in a row. So the consistent invitations I get to exhibit my art really blow my mind. When curator Lisa Deanne Smith asked to come over to my house for a studio visit, I thought holy, I’d better make myself a studio to visit. Everyone in my house helped out. We emptied the guest room and acted like it had always been my art gallery. 

Six months later I was sitting on a panel in the OCAD U auditorium, explaining my process next to legendary queer artist John Greyson. There’s also a “Generations of Queer” billboard at Yonge and Dundas, advertising our exhibit as if it was a blockbuster movie. How the art world works is amazing to me. 

If you come down to the gallery you’ll see my friends. I make art in order to archive and celebrate the amazing, creative avant-garde that is my queer people of colour community. I’ve transcribed and illustrated these people and their stories because they have shaped the best parts of me. 

They call me on my mistakes and celebrate me in my achievements. Leroi and I used to throw Gladstone parties for queer people of colour. Kama and I helped direct Montreal’s first Racialized Pride Week. Claudette tells me the only stories I know about non-white queers in Toronto in the 70s.

Come down and see them. When you read their stories hanging in the gallery, you’ll be looking at the best school I’ve ever been to.

Submitted by Elisha Lim

Find out more
Elisha Lim’s website 
Generations of Queer

Chroma & Hue Group Art Exhibition

Multi-coloured poster with white text
Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - 4:00am to Wednesday, October 22, 2014 - 4:00am

Opening Reception: Saturday, October 11, 6:00 to 11:00 p.m.

People see colours everyday in the world around them. Everyone sees them and feels differently about them. Visually and historically, different colours and combinations of colours applied in general in artwork mean different things visually and symbolically.

It is our intention to have people appreciate and celebrate their experiences in the world around them both past and present in relation to the idea of colour in more ways than they could think imaginable after they’ve seen this exhibition.

Featuring works by:
Mahtab Abdollahi 
Banafsheh Erfanian
Kelly Hu
Hajar Moradi 
Afsaneh Safari
Diana Tran
Mehdi Dana
Vahid Fazel
Samuel Taheri
Anson Liaw

 

Venue & Address: 
Rebellion Gallery and Art Academy 914 Eastern Avenue Toronto, Ontario M4L 1A4
Website: 
http://rebelliongallery.com/
Email: 
angelina@rebelliongallery.com
Phone: 
(416) 469-1777
Cost: 
Free
Keywords: 

Small Space: Coco's Frosting Shack

Coco's Frosting Shack Poster
Wednesday, September 10, 2014 - 5:00am to Saturday, September 13, 2014 - 4:00am

OUTDOOR BLOCK PARTY
feat. DJ sets by GlitClit + Petra Glynt,
and Ice-Pop Art by Lisa Paul
September 11, 2014 (7-11pm)

This September, the OCAD U Student Gallery launches Small Space, a converted tollbooth in our south parking lot that will host one week-long entrepreneurial or performance project every month for the coming academic year.

Our inaugural Small Space is Coco's Frosting Shack by Corey Moranis, who'll be serving up baked treats and a new line of plastic, colourful candy-like jewelry from September 10-13, 2014. Each sculptural, wearable art piece is fun, hawt, kool, elegant, dazzling, glowing and ONE OF A KIND.

**FROST YOURSELVES**
Hours & Schedule:
Wednesday (12-6pm) rainbow chocolate chip cookies for $2
Thursday (7-11pm) cupcakes for $3
Friday (12-6pm) big sparkly shortbread for $4
Saturday (12-6pm) mini junk cakes for $20*
*Pre-order cakes by September 5!

Venue & Address: 
Student Gallery 52 McCaul St.
Cost: 
Free
Coco's Frosting Shack Poster
Keywords: 

ULTIMA: Nicholas Di Genova

Image: Boreas, Guardian God of the Northern Tundra, ink and watercolour on paper, 24"x34", 2014
Friday, September 5, 2014 - 4:00am to Sunday, September 28, 2014 - 4:00am

An exhibition by OCAD U alumnus Nicholas Di Genova

LE Gallery is pleased to announce the return of Toronto based artist Nicholas Di Genova. On the heels of exhibitions in New York City and Paris, Di Genova returns with ULTIMA, a new focus, and the addition of sculptural elements to his exploration of the chimera. Ultima will feature the first three dimensional manifestation of one of Di Genova’s city states. At 1:87 scale, Di Genova turns his unique brand of splicing and mutation from his drawings and paintings, to form a capsule of life in a day of his grotesque menagerie. The sculpture will be accompanied by the inclusion of his signature, ultra detailed manga meets Nat Geo drawings, detailing the taxonomies of species included. The urban area is large enough to include separate ethnic regions, such as the Homo-Avian Quarter, wherein the landscape, architecture, and local businesses have evolved to accommodate a type of resident who possesses both human and bird-like anatomy and habits.

In the early 2000's Di Genova shot to prominence as one of Canada's first artists working at a time when the influence of illustration, comic arts and graffiti were beginning to find their way into contemporary art practice. His unique ability to draw a menagerie of evolved creatures with unique skill and ability helped capture the attention of not only comic nerds and Japanese toy freaks but also devotees to Bosch and the study of Biology. ULTIMA brings together a long term dream to build out a province from his menagerie, utilizing many techniques learned through artists and experts, but also informed by childhood model making and Warhammer strategy.

Nicholas Di Genova has garnered many levels of press, featuring reviews in Artforum, Canadian Art Magazine, The Globe and Mail, and The National Post. Nicholas Di Genova is represented in Toronto by LE Gallery, in New York by Fredericks +Freiser Gallery, and Galerie Dukan in Paris. Di Genova is included in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, and has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art. Works by Di Genova have been and included in exhibitions and reviewed in New York, Singapore, London and Berlin.

Venue & Address: 
LE Gallery 1183 Dundas St. W. Toronto, Ontario 416-532-8467
Website: 
http://le-gallery.ca
Email: 
<p><a href="mailto:wil@le-gallery.ca">wil@le-gallery.ca</a></p>
Cost: 
Free

By Hook or by Crook

Image of Items on the wall
Thursday, September 4, 2014 - 4:00am to Thursday, September 11, 2014 - 4:00am

Opening Reception: September 11, 6 to 9 p.m.

An exhibition of works by Faculty of Art Associate Professsor, Ginette Legaré

Ginette Legaré’s recent mixed-media works continue her exploration of one's relationships with surrounding objects, whether these are images, texts, or things. Her interest revolves around how such objects can reinsert themselves into the world as abstractions and as hints of what was once missed or taken for granted-- a re-enactment that redeems the partly hidden from obscurity, like a brief insight momentarily lost and recaptured. Thus, Legaré’s work searches for new links in the ‘given’, using an ‘already available’ visual vocabulary-- a line, a gap, a solid, a space-- to question, or find, the visible that seems inherently hidden.

Gallery Hours:
Wednesday to Saturday: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The artist would like to acknowledge funding support from the City of Toronto through Toronto Arts Council, and from the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.

Venue & Address: 
Birch Contemporary 129 Tecumseth Street Toronto, Ontario
Website: 
http://birchcontemporary.com/exhibition/ginette-legare-by-hook-or-by-crook
Cost: 
Free

Sculptural Felt International

Rocky surface
Sunday, September 7, 2014 - 4:00am to Saturday, November 29, 2014 - 5:00am

A traveling exhibition with work by Chung-Im Kim, Associate Professor, Material Art & Design

Featuring seven felt pieces by Chung-Im Kim and the works of twelve international artists from the USA, the Netherlands, Australia, Japan and Canada.  

Venue & Address: 
Traveling Exhibition Venues: Museum Nagele, The Netherlands, Sept 7 - Nov 23, 2014 Museum de Kantfabriek, The Netherlands, Jan 18 - Apr 12, 2015 Tamworth Regional Gallery, Australia, June 6 - July 18, 2015 Wollongang Art Gallery, Australia, Sept 5 - Nov 29, 2015
Cost: 
Free

Let's Get Lost - A Walking/Reading Group on the Dismantling of Subjects and Spaces

Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - 10:00pm to Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - 12:00am

Hosted by Scapegoat: Architecture/Landscape/Political Economy

Responding to the proposition that we ‘get rid of ourselves’, this biweekly walking/reading group explores the spatial construction of subjectivity. Discussions focus around selected articles that highlight the contradictory values of individual freedom and private property underpinning the principle of the autonomous modern subject, as they appear in our contemporary moment of neoliberalism.

The belief in the free, autonomous subject, which emerged with 19th century Liberalism, produced the two great modern subjects: the proletariat, a worker “freed” from his or her obligations to the land, and the bourgeois owner who controlled the means and sites of production. While in our contemporary period the clear distinction between these two subjects as been blurred, we call this moment Neoliberalism because it involves of a return to Liberalism’s core principles. Contemporary economies emphasize individual creativity and self-reliance, while at the same time privatizing all public assets. It is no wonder that in the face of this contemporary political landscape, we are exploring new ways of dismantling, dissolving and erasing the self.

The journal Scapegoat: Architecture/Landscape/Political Economy has been exploring these ideas for the past four years, through its first eight issues: Property, Service, Materialism, Realism, Currency, Excess, Mexico DF/NAFTA and Incarceration. The reading group, facilitated by Adrian Blackwell and Marcin Kedzior, will examine the relationship between subjectivity and space by reading texts that have appeared in Scapegoat. For the first hour of each meeting, we will walk in the city, discussing the readings in pairs (a technique modeled on the Walking / Reading Group on Participation developed in 2013 by Ania Bas and Simone Mair). For the second hour, we will assemble in the gallery on Adrian Blackwell’s sculpture Circles Describing Spheres to connect the initial conversations.

The group will meet at Onsite Gallery, 230 Richmond St. W. from 6-8pm, every second Tuesday: August 5, August 19, September 2, September 16. Meet at Onsite Gallery, 230 Richmond St. W. To register and receive the readings please email onsite@ocadu.ca

Readings:

August 5 - The Origins of Property in Liberal Individualism
Brett Neilson and Sandro Mezzadra, Fabrica Mundi: Producing the World by Drawing Borders
Shiri Pasternak, Property in Three Registers

August 19 - Precarious Actors of Neoliberal Urbanization
Irmgard Emmelhainz, The Mexican Neoliberal Conversion and Differentiated, Homogenous Lives
AbdouMaliq Simone, Water, Politics and Design in Jakarta

September 2 - Opened by the World
Georges Bataille, The Economy Equal to the Universe
Jane Bennett and Alexander Livingston, Philosophy in the Wild: Listening to Things in Baltimore
Jesse Boon, Kids on Buildings: Echos, Mirrors, and Ghosts

September 16 - Commonism, or Caring With Others
Wendy Jacob and Gina Badger, In the Presence of Another Being
Paige Sarlin, Vulnerable Accumulation: A Practical Guide
Isabelle Stengers and Erik Bordeleau, The Care of the Possible

The reading group will be facilitated by Scapegoat’s Adrian Blackwell and Marcin Kedzior.

Venue & Address: 
Onsite [at] OCAD 230 Richmond St. W. Street Level Toronto, Ontario
Website: 
http://www.ocadu.ca/onsite
Email: 
onsite@ocadu.ca
Phone: 
416-977-6000 Ext. 265
Cost: 
Free
Keywords: 

Getting Rid of Ourselves: Onsite Exhibition Tour with Paulette Phillips

Wednesday, September 24, 2014 - 10:30pm

Paulette Phillips is an artist and educator based in Toronto. Currently she is creating an archive of artist portraits using a polygraph, a camera and series of questions that frame the basis of self-representation.

Getting Rid of Ourselves presents artists and artistic collaborations whose work variously obscures, delegates, withdraws or in other ways complicates the conventional signs of authorship and identity. By questioning investments in art as proof of self-expression — through tactics of anonymity, collective agency, shared authorship, appropriated identities, delegated curating and art making, and financial speculation — works in the exhibition highlight how subjectivity has been treated as a form of living currency to exploit, market and sell to.

Venue & Address: 
Onsite [at] OCAD 230 Richmond St. W. Street Level Toronto, Ontario
Email: 
onsite@ocadu.ca
Phone: 
416-977-6000 Ext. 265
Cost: 
Free
Keywords: 

National Aboriginal Day celebrated at OCAD University

Monday, June 14, 2010 - 4:00am

(Toronto—June 14, 2010) OCAD University’s Aboriginal Visual Culture Program celebrates National Aboriginal Day with the launch of the exhibitions Passages: First Peoples at OCAD at the University, and Endaian at the McMichael Canadian Collection. The University will also hold Portage: A symposium on Aboriginal Visual Culture with guests Duke Redbird, Robert Houle and Susan Dion.

Passages: First Peoples at OCAD is presented in On Site at OCAD, and showcases the work of OCAD’s Indigenous alumni, faculty, students and staff. An opening ceremony and reception will take place in the Great Hall on National Aboriginal Day, Monday, June 21, from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. The exhibition continues until July 2.

On June 22 from 2 to 4:30 p.m., Portage: A symposium on Aboriginal Visual Culture offers guests an opportunity to hear the first-hand accounts of artists and scholars who contributed to the reawakening of Aboriginal people and their culture in Canada. Portage speakers’ stories extend from the 1960s to the present and recount, from their unique perspectives, the key events in recent Aboriginal history — events that contributed to the emergence of a vibrant Aboriginal presence in the contemporary cultural scene. Speakers are Duke Redbird, poet, artist, actor, educator; Robert Houle, artist, curator, writer, educator; and Susan Dion, writer, educator. Portage takes place in the OCAD University Auditorium.

The exhibition Endaian (or “home” in Ojibwa) runs from June 19 to September 6, with an opening reception on Tuesday, June 22 from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. The exhibit includes work by OCAD Aboriginal students Violet Chum, Erika A. Iserhoff, Meryl McMaster, Antoine Mountain and Lisa Myers, all of whom are responding to the work of the Group of Seven.

To learn more about OCAD’s Aboriginal Visual Culture Program, visit www.ocad.ca.

Portage Symposium Speaker Biographies:

Duke Redbird, poet, broadcaster, artist
During the sixties and seventies Duke Redbird was in the forefront of Aboriginal political organizations and was a prominent public speaker on Native issues, providing First Nations people in Canada with new, young and aggressive leadership. He was president of the Ontario Métis and Non-status Indian Association and director of their land claims research, as well as vice-president of the Native Council of Canada. A prominent broadcaster and poet, Duke has appeared in numerous film and video productions and spoken on Native issues both nationally and internationally. Duke Redbird received his M.A. in interdisciplinary studies at York University, Toronto in 1978. He currently serves as mentor/advisor in the Aboriginal Visual Culture Program at OCAD University.

Robert Houle, artist, curator, writer, educator
Robert Houle has exhibited his work internationally since the 1970s, at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney), the Canadian Cultural Centre (Paris), the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), and many others. In Canada, he has shown work at the National Gallery, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Carleton University Art Gallery, and many more. His work is included in most major Canadian collections. Houle was the first Aboriginal curator of Indian Art at the National Museum of Man (now the Museum of Civilization) in Ottawa from 1977 to 1980 and co-curated the landmark exhibition Land, Spirit, Power at the National Gallery of Canada in 1992. Houle was the first Aboriginal faculty member at OCAD University, a position he held for fifteen years until 2005.

Susan Dion, scholar, educator
Susan Dion is an Aboriginal scholar who has been working in the field of education for 25 years. Her teaching and research focuses on understanding the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in Canada. Dion’s research interests include the social and political contexts of education; disrupting memories of post-invasion First Nations - Canadian Relations; resistance strategies of Aboriginal adolescent girls; Aboriginal Women and the policy of forced assimilation and violence prevention in Aboriginal communities. Dion’s recently published book Braiding Histories: Learning from Aboriginal Peoples' Experiences and Perspectives proposes a new pedagogy for addressing Aboriginal subject material, shifting the focus from an essentializing or "othering" exploration of the attributes of Aboriginal peoples to a focus on historical experiences that inform our understanding of contemporary relationships between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples. Dr. Dion is a professor in the Faculty of Education at York University.

About OCAD University (OCADU)
OCAD University (www.ocad.ca) is Canada’s “University of the Imagination.” The University is dedicated to art and design education, practice and research and to knowledge and invention across a wide range of disciplines. OCAD University is building on its traditional, studio-based strengths, adding new approaches to learning that champion cross-disciplinary practice, collaboration and the integration of emerging technologies. In the Age of Imagination, OCAD University community members will be uniquely qualified to act as catalysts for the next advances in culture, technology and quality of life for all Canadians.

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For more information or to request images, contact:

Sarah Mulholland, Media & Communications Officer
416.977.6000 Ext. 327 (mobile Ext. 1327)

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