Thursday, April 26, 2012

Nancy Oakes and Adrienne Trent at loop Gallery


Top: Thursday, February 9, 2012 Queen from Soho to Spadina by Nancy Oakes
Bottom: Illustration from Paddle-to-the-sea by C.Holling, 1941

loop Gallery is pleased to announce exhibitions by artist Nancy Oakes entitled Walking Drawings and loop member Adrienne Trent entitled Ground Classification: Without a Trace.

In 2006, Nancy Oakes began experimenting with “Walking Drawings,” navigating the city streets while simultaneously producing drawings that captured her lived experience as it happened. Later enhanced with graphite, and stained with tea and wax, the final drawings are believable urban scenes composed of elements encountered separately over time and space. This experiential peripatetic strategy exists at the intersection of all four of Oakes’ key interests: human beings, the urban environment, walking, and drawing.

Nancy Oakes is a Toronto-based artist and has exhibited at artist-run centres and public and commercial venues including Propeller Centre for the Visual Arts, A.W.O.L. Gallery, Lehman Leskiw Fine Art, Visual Arts Centre of Clarington (Clarington Gallery), Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition and Gallery 1313. Her drawings were included in the First National Juried Drawing Exhibition at White Water Gallery and Drawing 2012 at the John B. Aird Gallery. Her walking drawing practice was featured on CBC Radio's "Here and Now".

Inspired by the children's book "Paddle-to-the-sea" by C. Holling, Adrienne Trent’s newest exhibition, Ground Classification: Without a Trace, sets up a poetic, and at the same time actual representation of a catastrophe. An ancient handmade canoe with large holes in the bottom becomes a survival kit/getaway vessel. The boat is packed with obsolete and some state-of-the-art equipment for survival against the elements (both natural and human created) and is oriented towards the St. Lawrence Seaway awaiting its imminent escape.

Adrienne Trent is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art, co-founder of Republic, and former member of the Red Head Gallery. She has had exhibits in commercial galleries such as Robert Birch, Edward Day, Deleon White, Lonsdale and V.Macdonnell; in public galleries including the Art Gallery of Clarington, Koffler Gallery, Justina M. Barnicke at the University of Toronto, Robert Langen at Sir Wilfred Laurier University, and the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa; and in various artist-run spaces.  Her work can be found in the collections of The Art Gallery of Ontario, CBC, University of Toronto, and numerous private collectors.


These exhibitions will run from April 28 to May 20, 2012. The opening reception will be Saturday, April 28th, 2012 from 2-5 PM.


Image credits:
 (top) Nancy Oakes, Thursday Februrary 9, 2012 Queen from Soho to Spadina, gel pen, graphite, tea and wax on paper, 6 X 8.5in, 2012              
 (bottom) Illustration from Paddle-to-the-sea by C.Holling, 1941