Adrian Fish and Jenn Law's Q & A

New ehibitions by loop artists Adrian Fish and Jenn Law

May 24^th  – June 15^th, 2014                

Reception:  Saturday, May 24^th, 2- 5PM

Q&A:  Sunday May 25^th, 2PM   

  Adrian Fish

The Aquaphilia Project: Part III                                          

The third iteration of The Aquaphilia Project documents the behind-the-scenes machinations of the Georgia Aquarium - the world’s second largest by volume, located in Atlanta, Georgia. Through increasingly advanced technologies, the consequence of sustained attempts at transfixing attention is not only confusion between what is real versus what is convincingly represented, but also our preference for and addiction to illusion.  By attempting to convincingly represent a ‘natural’ ecosystem, the simulacrum lies within aquarium-goers who, by virtue of paying admission, tacitly support an easily digested model of reality.

Adrian Fish’s photographic practice documents the physical and psychic spaces integral to the habituation to 21^st century life.  Employing the visual vocabulary of anthropology, Fish’s images are the product of casting a decidedly unscientific gaze on the spheres of education, recreation, and entertainment through architecture and portraiture.

Adrian Fish is a Toronto-born photo-based artist and educator currently living in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  He holds an MFA from York University, as well as undergraduate accreditation from OCAD University in Toronto and the Sheridan Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning in Oakville, ON.  His work has been shown nationally at numerous public institutions, artist-run centres, and commercial galleries in cities such as Calgary, Halifax, Hamilton, Ottawa, Toronto and Winnipeg, as well as internationally in Atlanta GA, Brooklyn, NY, Chelsea, NY, Columbus, OH, Lishui City, China and Tokyo, Japan.  He is currently Associate Professor in the Division of Media Art at NSCAD University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and is represented by loop Gallery in Toronto and Hermes Gallery in Halifax. 

Learn more about Adrian Fish’s work during a Q & A session on Sunday May 25^th @ 2PM with artist Jenn Law, moderated by loop Gallery director, Stephanie D’Amico. 

The Aquaphilia Project: Part III is programmed as part of the Scotiabank CONTACT photography festival.

Jenn Law

Library

Inspired in part by Jorge Luis Borges’ contention that a book is “an axis of innumerable relationships”, Law continues her examination of print culture, bibliophilia, and textuality through the close material readings of several key books in her personal library. Working with hand-cut and altered found books, 3-D printed objects and lithographically printed illustrations, Law endeavours to tease out the links between the literal and the literary, the linguistic and the visual, engaging the familiar tropes of lightness and weight and their association with the making of meaning through material practice.  

In both writing and drawing, the line is considered as both a technically rendered material trace and a conceptual conduit, capable of demarcating boundaries, drawing connections, and creating illusions.  The line simultaneously reveals and conceals meaning.  In Library, the outline of the book acts as frame and lure, drawing us into a promise of some truth or other, so often assumed of the published, bound and printed text.  In the face of contemporary debates surrounding the purported crisis in print culture, Law contemplates the future of the book, our fetishization and attachment to its physical object-form, and our desire to collect and possess the knowledge contained therein.  A ravenous and ever-growing collection, the library as a living archive – both bibliographic and biographic – exceeds its material boundaries, facilitating and revealing the connections of books, ideas and readers across time and space.

Jenn Law is an artist, writer and researcher living in Toronto. She is the Chair of Open Studio, where she works in print media, hand-cut paper and book work.  Law holds a PhD in Anthropology from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, England, a BA in Anthropology from McGill University and a BFA from Queen’s University.  She has worked as a lecturer, editor and curator in Canada, the UK and South Africa, and has published on South African, Caribbean and Canadian contemporary art and print culture.  Law has shown her work internationally and has received numerous fellowships, grants and awards for her research, including from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada, the British Council and the British Academy. 

Left Image: Adrian Fish's 'Aquaphillia' 

Right image: Jenn Law's 'LightReadingOpenBook'

Last Week to see these shows WED - SAT 12 to 5 , SUN 1 to 4 MOIRA CLARK and YVONNE SINGER

 Moira Clark Colour Complex 

Colour Complex debuts new abstract paintings which build on Clark’s longstanding fascination with colour harmonics, composition, and the formal elements of painting. These large and vital paintings transform varied representational references into amorphous puzzle pieces squeezed together and fine-tuned to produce paintings that are simultaneously tense and harmonious. 

Clark was born, lives and works in Toronto. She was included in the exhibitions Art School {Dismissed} curated by Heather Nicol; and The C Word, curated by Richard Mongiat. She was a founding member of loop Gallery, and has also been represented in Toronto by XEXE Gallery/KWT Contemporary. Her work was granted a retrospective exhibit at the Cambridge Galleries in Preston, and was also selected for inclusion in the 2008 Magenta publication Carte Blanche Vol. 2: Painting 

 Yvonne Singer just in time (or hanging by a thread) 

Just in time (or hanging by a thread) follows Singer’s ongoing exploration of the cultural nuances and sculptural qualities of everyday language. The installation features 24 hourglasses, a metronome, and a blue neon text reading: "so I watched him take his last breath and I was relieved. I needed the certainty that he was gone". Placed alongside signifiers of the demarcation of time, this enigmatic passage about loss functions as both text and object. 

Singer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Visual Arts, and the former Graduate Program Director in visual arts at York University. Her community activities have included board membership on the Toronto Arts Council, C Magazine and the Koffler Centre for the Arts. Recent exhibitions include The Game of Life;1 step forward, 10 steps backwards, art sourterrain and Nuit Blanche Montreal; jst wrds at the Cambridge Galleries; and I do, I undo, I redo, at Critical Mass, Port Hope. 

Left image: Selvedge( detail), oil on canvas, 36" x 48", 2014
Right image: Hourglass, 2014

loop Thanks 

AUDAXlaw Sumac.com 

loop Gallery 

1273 Dundas Street West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M6J 1X8 (3 doors west of Dovercourt). 

Gallery Hours: Wed - Sat 12 to 5 pm, and Sun 1 to 4pm. Artist is in attendance on Sundays and for the reception. 

For more information please contact the gallery director at 416-516-2581 or visit: www.loopgallery.ca