Exhibitions 2011

CAROLE FREEMAN

December 1, 2011 – January 7, 2012
Main Gallery

Opening Reception
Thursday, December 1, 2011, 6–9 PM

Edward Day Gallery is pleased to present new work by artist Carole Freeman. With this exhibition, Freeman focuses on the portrait, a subject matter that she has pursued through various series, this time taking the social networking megasite Facebook as her frame of reference. Having originally joined Facebook as a means of maintaining a connection with distant family, Freeman quickly discovered the vast community that ceaselessly uploaded images, words and sound to a constant audience, an audience of “friends.” As her group of Facebook friends grew, largely comprising fellow artists, cultural producers, art dealers, critics, and educators, Freeman found the (mostly) faces of people’s profile pictures, irresistible. She undertook to paint each of her Facebook friends, and here exhibits the near two hundred portraits completed to date.

Collectively, the portraits weave a unique tapestry of a global art world—as the population of friends shifts between Facebook devotees—while individually, the works mine a compelling trajectory from individual choice to painted countenance. The Facebook profile picture is a considered image, whether idealized, typical, flaunting, ironic, or clever, and the painted portrait carries its own idiosyncratic proposition. With her largely taxonomical approach, Freeman liberates the portrait from its characteristic obligation to please, but perhaps achieves a legitimate equivalent as it returns a portrait of the face one shares among friends.

The gallery is pleased to welcome Jordan Banks, Managing Director of Facebook Canada, and Ilana Landsberg-Lewis, Executive Director of The Stephen Lewis Foundation as special guests at the opening. In honour of World Aids Day coinciding with the opening of the exhibition, a portion of sales will be donated to support The Stephen Lewis Foundation Arts Fund. The exhibition continues until January 7, 2012.

LINDA MARTINELLO

November 10–26, 2011
Main Gallery

Opening Reception: Thursday, November 10, 6-8 pm

Edward Day Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Linda Martinello, opening on Thursday, November 10 from 6-8pm. Martinello's paintings on mylar record "remembered landscapes"—she has travelled extensively to ancient sites in Italy, Turkey and Greece, to Mexico and the American Southwest—with the triggers to memory comprising notes in journals, anecdotal in situ sketches, photographs, sound recordings of the sites, as well as the ephemeral bits that trace her route to and from a place. This gathered evidence of a visit combines with experiential recall back in the studio in works that embody both abstract fluidity and meticulous detail, in much the same way one might define the mechanics of memory. Each site will result in several works as she intuitively reconstructs, across multiple paintings, the lingering, dimensional impressions of an area and her time there. Gestural washes of colour envelop both loose and finely rendered peaks, vistas, architectural structures and pathways to culminate in landscapes that document atmosphere more than they transcribe relative proportion. For Martinello, the landscape is a site of experience, becoming a persistence in the mind's eye, and her painting inscribes a recognition that then every landscape holds the potential of shared memory.

LEONARD BROOKS

November 10–26, 2011
North Gallery

Opening Reception: Thursday, November 10, 6-8 pm

Please join the gallery in celebrating Leonard Brooks' 100th year with an exhibition of his paintings. Born in London, England in 1911, Brooks arrived in Toronto at a young age, and stayed until the early 1940s. He attended the Ontario College of Art, went on to teach, and was a member of the RCA, OSA and the Arts & Letters Club of Toronto. Brooks was appointed as an official war artist toward the end of World War II, and following that, in 1947, went on to help form an artists' colony with his wife, photographer Reva Brooks, in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Brooks still lives in San Miguel where he continued to paint until quite recently. The landscape emerged as a favourite subject, and provided him an inexhaustible resource as he relentlessly pursued his painting, working in oil, acrylic, watercolour, casein, wax and collage, techniques on which he has published extensively.

In recognition of Leonard Brooks’ 100th birthday on Monday, November 7, Stephen Bulger Gallery is pleased to present a selection of photographs by Reva Brooks, as well as use its screening room, CAMERA, on Saturday November 5 at 11:30am and again on Saturday, November 12 at 11:30am, to present interviews with Leonard and Reva in their San Miguel home, conducted in 1985.

Jason Edward Lewis

Vital to the General Public Welfare

October 6 – October 30
Main Gallery

We are pleased to announce that this exhibition has been extended to October 30. If you haven't seen this exhibition yet, your chances just improved. And a reminder of the Artist Talk and Reception with Steven Loft tonight, Thursday, October 20 from 7:30 to 9:30 pm.

Artist Talk with Steven Loft | Reception
Thursday, October 20 7:30–9:30 pm

In collaboration with the 2011 imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival, we are pleased to present the work of digital media artist Jason Edward Lewis. Using interactivity and creative computation, Lewis invites the viewer to participate directly in the activation of his works. Touchscreens and mobile devices, digital prints and video projection all incorporate textual fragments—whether the artist’s own poetic verse or the 'found' text on your hard drive—to illuminate the visual and linguistic structure of language. The texts he has written look at the interpretive and contextual mechanisms we rely on to find a place in the world, and the visualization of those texts point to the possibilities of new ways of reading. The deep integration of technology in Lewis' practice amplifies and comments on how central digital technology has become to our every attempt at communication.

Diana Menzies | Nada Sesar-Raffay

Chromatic Shifts

September 8 – October 2, 2011
Main Gallery

Opening Reception: Thursday, September 8, 6-8 pm

Diana Menzies and Nada Sesar-Raffay approach colour with almost dimensional intent. Diana Menzies manipulates the painted surface by literally pushing paint at different intervals, creating an elasticity that alludes to a landscape in motion, whereas Nada Sesar-Raffay presents a combination of gestural and compartmentalized blocks of colour that layer upon one another to create a kind of topographical labyrinth. In each painting, colour is a central element, with transitional and abutting hues encouraging their reading as documents of space in constant flux.

Derek McLarty

Public Space, Private Space

September 8 – October 2, 2011
North Gallery

Opening Reception: Thursday, September 8, 6-8 pm

Derek McLarty’s work examines the ambiguity surrounding public and private space brought on by the constantly shifting boundary between the two spheres. Here, taking deserted university halls, stairwells, offices and classrooms as subject, McLarty proposes a near eerie intimacy—perhaps in some measure fed by nostalgic attachment—complicating the view of the evacuated institutional interior with a kind of contemplative familiarity.

Margaret Sutherland &
Pat Dumas-Hudecki

Conventional Transcendence

June 9 – July 3 (Extended to August 31, 2011)
Main Gallery

Opening Reception: Thursday, June 9, 6 - 8 pm

Edward Day Gallery is pleased to present the two-person exhibition, Conventional Transcendence. Painters Margaret Sutherland and Pat Dumas-Hudecki incorporate everyday elements of life, that through their observations are poised for re - interpretation.

Whether it be through paintings of social gatherings or portraits with dollar store tiaras, Sutherland lifts her subjects into a dramatic realm that freezes the moment in a classic representation of contemporary society. Dumas-Hudecki suspends scenes of overlooked domestic disorder, transcending the ordinary and routine to a realm of contemplation and familiar reminiscence.

Stan Repar

April 16 – May 15, 2011
North Gallery

Opening Reception: Saturday, April 16th, 2 - 4 pm

Edward Day Gallery is pleased to present new paintings by Stan Repar. His work conveys the intrusion of technology within familiar, universal frames of reference.

Dianne Bos

March 5 – April 10, 2011
North Gallery

Opening Reception: Saturday, March 5, 2 - 4 pm

Combining old and new photography technologies Bos’ work explores the history of photography and the science of light using pinhole cameras. In this new body of work, books have been repurposed into cameras that in turn photograph their own content. Rome Nouvelle photographs the Pantheon and the Petit Larousse captures the image of an apple. Included in this exhibition are also pinhole images of dark rooms or ‘camera obscura’s’ where windows are apertures through which light pours.

Melissa Doherty & Jennifer Walton

March 10 – April 10, 2011 (extended)
Main Gallery

Opening Reception: Thursday, March 10th, 6 - 8 pm

New paintings by Melissa Doherty & Jennifer Walton. Both artists investigate the alchemy of changes through nature.

MAIN GALLERY

Jesse Boles
Peter Hill
Sonja Scharf

Saturday, February 12, 2 - 4 pm
Main Gallery

Opening Reception: Saturday, February 12, 2 - 4 pm

An exciting selection of photographs from Edward Day Gallery artists.

Introducing NED PRATT

February 12 – March 6, 2011
North Gallery

Opening Reception: Saturday, February 12, 2 - 4 pm

The Edward Day Gallery is pleased to present the photographs of Ned Pratt in the north gallery.