RE: ARRANGE @ Harbourfront Centre

Loop members John Abrams and Elizabeth D'Agostino are part of the York Quay - Harbourfront Centre's RE: ARRANGE exhibition. The show is on display until December 23, 2012. 

RE: ARRANGE

Michael Abraham, John Abrams, Elizabeth D’Agostino, Vanessa Maltese, Lorna Mills, Luke Painter, Craig Porter, David Trautrimas

Curated by Patrick Macaulay

The title of this exhibition is Re: Arrange but it could have also been called Re: Purpose or Re: Think or even Re: Start, as all of these descriptors aptly portray the creative process of the artist in their studio. Artists spend a lot of time playing around. Not “playing,” playing, but being creatively playful. Trying new materials, switching things up, moving things around, all in search of inspiration and resolve in the artistic process. What happens when something is removed or added could be the answer to making something work. The artistic process is all about experimentation; trying new approaches. This exhibition brings eight artists together who are playful in their artistic practice.

– Patrick Macaulay

Images and artist profiles can be found here. 

Suzanne Nacha at Harbourfront Centre Project Room

 Not only does Suzanne Nacha have her show "Signs for Travellers" on at loop Gallery, but she also has a concurrent exhibition at Harbourfront Centre called "In Deep" which opened in Harbourfront's Project Room on September 30 and runs until December 1, 2011.

Her Harbourfront exhibition "In Deep" is an installation that uses underground imagery as a metaphor for the human condition. Utilizing a narrow range of visual logic that hovers between illusion and abbreviated sign, a subtle, dark humour guides the viewer through a landscape both physical and psychological.

Held together by a common water level - a dialogue around the language of painting and the nature of the human psyche playfully unfolds in this installation of large-scale painted objects.

Suzanne Nacha is a Toronto based artist working in painting, sculpture and installation. Through the systematic abstraction and anthropomorphism of industrial and natural landscapes, she seeks to make iconic images that act at times as psychological mirrors to human experience. Her work has been exhibited in Canada, the United States and Europe and represented in private and public collections including the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the National Bank of Canada and the Robert McLaughlin Gallery. Born in Hamilton, Ontario, she holds degrees in both Fine Art and Geology. She has taught in the Fine Art departments of OCAD University, Sheridan/UTM and York University and for the past fifteen years, has worked in the mining industry mapping geographies of fortune and need.

Image: In Deep, installation detail, oil on panel, 2011, image courtesy of the artist

Harbourfront Centre
235 Queens Quay West
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5J 2G8
(416) 973 4000

Lorene Bourgeois Interview

Loop member Lorene Bourgeois was recently interviewed by Patrick Conners about her exhibition of work called Vestiare/Cloakroom at Toronto's Harbourfront Centre. The link to the interview is here.

Lorene's exhibition continues at Harbourfront until September 25, 2011.

Lorene Bourgeois at Harbourfront Centre

Blitz Child I by Lorene Bourgeois

Loop member Lorène Bourgeois exhibit of her work Vestiaire/Cloakroom opened  at the Harbourfront Centre, project room on the weekend and will run until September 25, 2011.

Vestiaire /Cloakroom presents a series of large-scale drawings and a video, based upon the subject of clothing and its relation to the human body and head.

"Recently, I have been exploring the territory of head and face protection, including gas masks and military helmets. I am interested not only in the social and utilitarian functions of these artifacts, but also in their qualities as physical objects - the way they frame or envelop the body, and the way they disclose or conceal the human form.

"Isolated from their original context, these objects seem to oscillate between functionality and theatricality, between absurdity and threat. It is this tension, the moment when the function of clothing slips into something less recognizable, that I wish to investigate."
Harbourfront Centre
235 Queens Quay West
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5J 2G8
(416) 973 4000

LOOP Members at Harbourfront Centre Winter Exhibition

LOOP Gallery members Martha Eleen, Suzanne Nacha and David Holt are participating in the Big/Small exhibition curated by Patrick Macaulay at Harbourfront Centre and invite you to see their work which will be on display January 23 to April 4, 2010. This exhibition "brings together eight Ontario-based painters to reveal each participants' unique approach to realizing the landscape".

Suzanne Nacha: Focused on imagery from underground mine shafts, cave systems and rail tunnels, my current body of work entitled Origin seeks to present landscape as an intimate location. In many of these shaped paintings a struggle exists between the architecture of the space, the shape of the canvas and the abbreviated marks that define it. With this particular image I was interested in creating a space that would appear as though it was carved out of the darkness by the very lights it contained. 

Underground 7, Oil on Canvas, Copyright of Suzanne Nacha, 2009

David Holt: My recent paintings depict subjects from natural history, architectural history, antiquities collections, and botanical gardens. The garden landscapes are influenced by my love for the classical landscapes of Poussin, Asian landscape painting and calligraphy, and children’s drawings. Although I make many small drawings of the subjects, the paintings themselves are derived purely from imagination and memory. I try to evoke the motifs playfully with abbreviated forms and an economy of means. I also try to make each brushstroke convey something of nature’s energy while serving both representation and composition.

    Big Hedge 2009

    Acrylic on Canvas, 30x24, Copyright of David Holt, 2009

Martha Eleen is also in the community-centred show in the Harbourfront Centre Architecture Gallery opening the same night (guess she has to be in two places at once!). This show involves three architects and one painter on the topic of how architecture shapes the community. Martha's series Necessities of Life is about the poetics of using box mall signage.

The artists invite you to join them at the openings at Harbourfront Centre on Friday, January 22, 2010 from 6-10 pm.