Gareth Bate and Sandra Gregson at loop Gallery

loop Gallery is pleased to announce exhibitions by loop members Gareth Bate entitled Floating World, and Sandra Gregson entitled the year my dog died.

Gareth Bate, Floating World: Tsunami 1, acrylic on wood, 4 x 4 feet, 2011

Sandra Gregson, Ulysses (detail), shredded pages of book, thread, book cover, 21 x 45 x 62 cm, 2010
(photo credit: Toni Hafkenscheid)

Gareth Bate’s Floating World is a response to the Japanese tsunami. These paintings are a kind of Vanitas - scenes of great beauty suddenly engulfed by devastation. The tsunami represents total sublime horror. It spreads through entire cities and farmlands, demolishing and consuming everything in its path. Indiscriminate and inescapable. Gareth’s recent work explores our ultimate scale in the universe, and an existential terror of our final insignificance. Floating World represents the Earth itself, fragile and barely staying afloat. These paintings could be seen as bleak, but it is impossible for an artwork to be nihilistic. Making art is inherently about creating meaning out of life.

Gareth Bate’s practice includes painting, photography, installation, performance, video and set design. He graduated from the adult program at Central Tech, and OCAD where he won the 401 Richmond Career-Launcher Prize, a free studio for a year. He represented emerging artists in the Toronto Star’s series “Artists in Real Life: The Up and Comers”. Recently Gareth organized the 401 Richmond Artists Open Studio and launched Gareth Bate Art Projects a new studio/exhibition venue at 401 Richmond, Toronto. Upcoming shows include "Fleshed Out" for Nuit Blanche an installation dance performance called David Pressault Danse, and Gareth's curated group show "Studio Detritus: Art Artifacts" featuring remarkable objects from artists’ studios.

Sandra Gregson’s the year my dog died includes sculptures and a video projection. Overwhelmed by the never ending accumulation of pay statements, house bills, photographs, credit card and ATM receipts, Sandra, after shredding documents to eliminate personal data, began sewing them into sculptural forms. These works consider how accumulation defines us. Other works, one made from a shredded novel, another from a shredded dictionary, refer to the accumulative nature of language and culture. Impermanence is deliberated in the process of shredding and making: undoing and redoing.

Sandra Gregson works with drawing, sculpture and video, often combining these media. Her work is about noticing everyday things, and events, in a playful, subtle, critical way, and with an intent of linking art and life. She studied at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (BFA) and at York University (MFA). Her videos and artwork have been shown throughout Canada and internationally, including the Alternative Film/Video Festival, Belgrade; champ libre, Montreal; Ontario Crafts Council Gallery, Toronto; Nuit Blanche at the Gladstone Hotel, Toronto.

Please join the artists in celebrating the opening reception on Saturday, June 25th from 2-5 pm.

The show will run until July 17, 2011.