VISUAL ARTS AT HARBOURFRONT CENTRE

There is an assumption that the relationship between the viewer and the art work is passive; that you enter the gallery, stand in front of the work, and look at it for an appropriate amount of time, then move to the next work and do the same. The work in this exhibition is asking more from you as a viewer. You have to stop because the works pique your curiosity. You have to look because the works dynamically change over time. You have to listen because the works are multisensorial. Like the eponymous road safety programme, Stop. Look. Listen. asks you to be actively aware. The viewer in turn becomes a witness to the ideas expressed by the artists.

– Patrick Macaulay
Head, Visual Arts

time and again is a yearlong time-lapse video composed of still images shot from a fixed vantage point looking down into a garden and an adjacent yard. Working within a predetermined process, I photographed the same scene every half-hour for a period of one year. The viewer witnesses both small incidental changes of isolated localized movement – the sudden appearance and disappearance of a squirrel, or branches succumbing to the weight of rain – and major changes such as the destruction and reconstruction of a garage. Randomness meets order while nature and culture mix.

The key concerns in this work are time and duration. In the genre of landscape photography/painting one observes the passage of time through the four seasons as a subtle meditation on temporality – a still life in motion. In contrast to this subtlety is the mechanical movement of one image following the other, processed with only a slight video transition, to create a staccato movement like a clock ticking. The decision to have the movement more pronounced than fluid and filmic is a nod to early Eadweard Muybridge motion studies – freezing and releasing time.

— Lois Andison

Lois Andison, time and again, 2005-07.
Still image from time-lapse video.
Image courtesy of the Artist.

Lois Andison is a sculptor/installation artist based in Toronto, Ontario. Her art practice ranges from kinetic sculpture to video and photography which she uses to document and interpret motion. Her sculptural works address the mediated body and the performative and often involve an element of humour. Lately her conceptual interests in language as a medium, and kinetic type as movement, have led to her incorporate text in her sculptures. Andison is represented by the Olga Korper Gallery, Toronto, and Galerie Art Mûr, Montreal and is currently a a tenure-track assistant professor at the University of Waterloo.

The artist would like to acknowledge the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council.

Water seeks the low places.
– Leonardo da Vinci

This is a levitating machine. A black, 55-gallon drum is suspended from the ceiling. It is full of water and rests on the floor. An identical barrel sits on top of a seven-foot tall tower.

The hanging barrel is gradually levitated as a small pump sips away at the water, moving it up to the tower. When the vessel is raised a distance equal to its own height, the pump stops. An electric leak valve opens, and gravity makes the water trickle back down from the tower, lowering the barrel to its initial position. The cycle repeats.

The system is solar-powered and is therefore intermittent, depending on the weather. Things move at a lethargic pace. It may take days or weeks for levitation to occur.

Small things can work to eventually act upon forces larger than they. This is how trees work: many small pumps slowly move masses of water from the ground up to the top leaves of the tree. A tree moves many times its own weight in water over its lifetime.

I make the electro-mechanical equivalents of short stories. Naturally, every good story needs some tension to keep it going. In my machinic 'texts,' I create tension by intermixing different systems. Organic ones blend with technological ones, old ones with new, and the handmade with the machine-made. And rather than words, sentences and paragraphs, I use bolts, batteries, metal and custom electronics.

My work is rooted in hands-on experimentation in the studio. By constructing automata that make use of subtle and/or repetitive actions, I hope to open a small space for contemplation in which the audience can become temporarily absorbed.

— Peter Flemming

Peter Flemming, Leak to Lower Lazy Levitating Load, 2008.
Custom electronics, modified Montreal-Saskatoon Miller solar engines, aluminum, super capacitors, custom solar panels, sunlight, wire, cinder blocks, 55 gallon drum, shock cord, hardware, miniature pumps, plastic tubing and connectors, modified 18L water bottles, rope, ratchet tie-downs, water.
Photography: Paul Litherland.

Peter Flemming is an artist who makes machines. His work has been featured across North America and Europe. He currently resides in Montreal, where he teaches electronics for artists at Concordia University. He has held workshops in electronics and programming at artist-run centres around the world.

peterflemming.ca

The artist would like to acknowledge the support of Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Canada Council for the Arts.

Two unseen performers unfurl a paper bag, slowly. The paper bag is suspended in midair by four nylon lines that are attached and threaded through the bag to two machines. One machine rests on the floor and the second machine is attached to the ceiling. Using these machines, the performers control the bag's movements – the top four corners of the bag pulled upward by one performer, the bottom four corners pulled downward by the other. The performers are asked to make their movements as slow as possible, the resulting sounds as slow as possible. As the bag is unfurled, the nylon strings tighten.

The sounds made by the unfurling bag and the tightening of the nylon lines are amplified by a contact microphone and guitar amplifier. The video is one bag, two simultaneous views and five attempts at unfurling as music.

— Marla Hlady

Marla Hlady, Paper Bag Machine, 2010.
Video (55 min). Image courtesy of the Artist.

Marla Hlady draws, makes sculpture, works with sites and sounds, and sometimes makes video. Hlady's kinetic sculptures and sound pieces often consist of common objects (such as teapots, cocktail mixers, jars) that are expanded and animated to reveal unexpected sonic and poetic properties often using a system-based approach to composition. She has shown widely in solo and group shows. Hlady is represented by Jessica Bradley ART + PROJECTS.

marlahlady.com

The artist would like to acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council.

Inflatables have had an important place in my work since 1989. In most of these sculptures and installations I have used industrial fans and simple valve mechanisms to animate sewn forms with lifelike gestures. Most of these works have been made of lightweight and papery fabrics such as Tyvek or nylon spinnaker. The weightlessness of these materials allows them to respond with surprising subtlety to the action of air within and around them.

Generally inflatables are an expression of naive optimism. In an art context they signal popular culture, anti-art, and irony. I play with and against these expectations. The movement of air within my forms recalls our own sensation of breath – of breathlessness, of holding our breath, etc. My work exists in moments of kinesthesia, when the movement of air within a form causes something to stir within the physical being of the viewer. This response is to more than just the obvious action of inflation and the robust occupation of space. What I feel is even more moving is the recognition of deflation, shrinking, vulnerability, silence and dying. My choice of extremely light and papery materials enhances this sense of absence and transience, of the nearly not there at all. Thus, the awakening comes more in our awareness of the tenuousness and fleeting nature of our existence. My work with the inflatable medium is about moving the viewer from a playful and ironic headspace toward a physical connection to his or her most vital forces.

— Max Streicher

Max Streicher, Sextet.
Image courtesy of the Artist.

Max Streicher is a sculptor and installation artist from Alberta, now residing in Toronto. Since 1989 he has worked extensively with inflatable technology in kinetic sculptures and installation works. He has shown widely across Canada in solo exhibitions in museums such as the Art Gallery of Ontario, Edmonton Art Gallery, and Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon. He has been part of group exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei; the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto; and The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto. His inflatable works are in the collections of museums such as the ESSL Museum, Vienna; the Hara Museum, Tokyo; and Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton. He was a founding member of the Nethermind collective of artists who organized four large exhibitions in alternative spaces in Toronto between 1991 and 1995. Streicher is currently represented by Eric Mircher, Paris; Gallery Maskara, Mumbai; and Ricco/Maresca Gallery, New York.

maxstreicher.com

Photographers are constantly scanning the world around them—observing, composing and thinking of possible images that could be created with their cameras. Some have their camera at the ready to capture an image at a moment's notice. Others construct their images through planned setups that are orchestrated with every detail under consideration. The image that the photographer creates is based in observation and presented as a document, but the truth in what is presented should always be questioned.

The eight photographers chosen for this exhibition were selected because the idea of truthfulness is central to the images that they create. Photographic technology has advanced to the point that the image now can be altered and changed completely through digital processes. I Witness offers a look through the photographer's viewfinder just as the button was pressed. The images presented here are created within the camera in front of a subject, not on a computer screen after the fact. These images presented here are truthful documents. The photographers act as observers of events, chroniclers of the world around them and witnesses to lives lived.

– Patrick Macaulay
Head, Visual Arts

This work explores the resettlement of residents of this coastal town during its last few days. Grand Bruit was settled in the 1800s and now, after making the hard choice to resettle, the people began preparing to move to new homes across Canada in June 2010. Year after year, more and more young people left their town and its heritage due to lack of fishing. This now aging population found it hard to survive the hard winters, isolation and lack of proper medical care. The future is absent there, the past lingers in the frozen hands of the fishermen; trades and skills are no longer passed down generation to generation. What is left is the present: ruddy, calloused skin worked hard yet alive. Their hearts are heavy, their children have left, the fairy tale village now sits deserted; no roads in or out, the lights are off and the last ferry has left.

— Johan Hallberg-Campbell

Johan Hallberg-Campbell, Grand Bruit, Newfoundland, 2010.
Image courtesy of the Artist.

Born in 1978 and raised near Loch Ness in the Highlands of Scotland, Johan Hallberg-Campbell is a freelance photographer, living and working in Toronto since immigrating to Canada in 2006. He is a graduate of the Glasgow School of Art, where he received the prestigious Portrait Photographer Award. Hallberg-Campbell has exhibited his work widely in Canada and Scotland. He was one of five artists selected to exhibit their work at the first international Magenta Flash Forward Festival, Canadian Exhibit (Toronto, October 2010), from his series Grand Bruit. He has photographed for publications and institutions such as Red Cross Canada, The Big Issue, Scots Magazine, and The Walrus.

His documentary work focuses on capturing the visual manifestation of the latent concept of "place." Exploring what it means to belong to a community and have traditions rooted in heritage, and alternatively what happens when one's "place" is altered, removed, distorted and shifted – leading to the individual or communal experience of diaspora. His ongoing body of work documents not only what is but also speaks to what was. The aim is to photograph the environment without prejudice, creating images that are an honest representation of what he sees, hoping his approach to photography will create sincere, almost quiet depictions that illustrate powerful themes of the human condition.

johanhallbergcampbell.com

Photographs for Still Life were made in and around Boston, Massachusetts, my former home city. For this series I was interested in bringing together a wide array of photographs such as constructed imagery, landscape, portraits and self-portraits. The work looked at the landscape around me, my personal history and people that were close to me. I wanted these photographs to integrate the intimacy, magic and mystery of photography in an attempt to construct a moving visual narrative dealing with migration, multiple border-crossings, geographical and metaphysical mapping. In Still Life, as in my other works, loss, memories and the passage of time are reoccurring themes.

— Surendra Lawoti

Surendra Lawoti was born in Nepal and now based in Toronto, where he teaches as a sessional faculty member at the Ontario College of Art & Design University. Lawoti's work centers on issues of migration, memory, loss and human frailty. He received his BA from Columbia College Chicago and MFA in Photography from Massachusetts College of Art & Design in Boston. He has received awards from Ontario Arts Council, Artadia, Somerville Arts Council and CAAP Grant through City of Chicago. His work has been exhibited in Toronto, Montreal, Chicago, and Medellin, Colombia and in Kathmandu, Nepal.

surendralawoti.com

These pictures are part of an on going series exploring people in the workplace and how professions shape character. "What do you do for a living?" The answer to this question often determines a perception others have of us as people. Our job says a lot about us, but the intimate details of our everyday lives can still be completely foreign to those who know us outside of our work, even to our closest loved ones.

This project is trying to bring the viewer to a place and moment in time that is unique and beautiful, yet might be everyday to the subject. My goal is to show employees in a place that gives insight into what they do, while still provoking thoughts about who they really are.

— Jesse Louttit

Jesse Louttit, The Giraffe Keeper, 2010.
Image courtesy of the Artist.

Jesse Louttit is a fine art photographer based in Toronto, Canada.

jesselouttit.com

Historically, the Rocky Mountains and their neighbouring ranges have filled many roles in Western Canada. The landscape has helped to shape a collective identity, provided seasonal work opportunities, and offered recreational pleasures to countless visitors. But the histories of the Mountain National Parks are as varied as this geographic terrain and, in its many facets, the Canadian Parks Service reflects that diversity.

With this as a point of entry, I began the series of photographs, Range in 2008. These photographs represent my travels through, and interpretations of, Revelstoke, Glacier, Kootenay, Yoho, Jasper, Banff, and Waterton Lakes National Parks.

Range is sectioned into two distinct categories: people and places. Portraits of individuals at work or play within these park boundaries are paralleled with photographic landscape studies focusing on the condition of wilderness preservation.

Though by no means exhaustive in its definition of our relationship to the Mountain National Parks, my intentions for this project and its resulting photographs remain constant: to better understand the historical complexities and provide a contemporary perspective on these mountain landscapes.

— Mike Andrew McLean

Mike Andrew McLean, Laura on Iceline Trail, Yoho National Park, BC 15:10 August 13th 2009 (PC#149) 290°.
Image courtesy of the Artist.

Originally from Lethbridge, Alberta, Mike Andrew McLean lives and works in Victoria, British Columbia. McLean's work has recently been shown in the group exhibition Sentimental Journeys at Vancouver's Contemporary Art Gallery, and in the solo exhibition Range: Mountain National Parks Photographs (LAB 9.1) at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and the Kamloops Art Gallery. In June, McLean's series The Whites will be included in Proof 18 at Toronto's Gallery 44. He is preparing for upcoming solo exhibitions at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Lethbridge, Republic Gallery in Vancouver, and Open Space in Victoria.

mikeandrewmclean.com

The series Alive and Well tells a story of urbanization in cities on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. These images draw influence from the contemporary work of Dutch landscape photographers such as Bas Princen and Hans Aarsman. While their images primarily focus on the Netherlands, they depict common topographical changes happening in cities worldwide. In a city with a rapidly growing population there is no luxury of space. The result is a landscape where the artificial and natural blend into one another. There is a blurry line between what is being constructed and what is being destroyed. We make modern additions in order to accommodate industrial and social demands. And yet, a unique beauty remains in this landscape cultivated by construction and our contemporary expectations.

— Meghan Rennie

Meghan Rennie, Jardins de Mossen
Costra i Llojobera, Barcelona, 2011.
Image courtesy of the Artist.

Meghan Rennie was born in 1979 and received her BFA from Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. During the 2010 Contact Photography Festival she had her first solo show and was recently nominated as a semi-finalist for the Hey Hot Shot! photography competition held by the Jen Bekman Gallery in New York, NY. She currently lives and works in Toronto.

cargocollective.com/mrennie

Erin Riley, Lest We Forget, 2010.
Image courtesy of the Artist.

Erin Riley is a photographer based in Toronto. Very much rooted in the traditions of documentary photography, Riley's work examines how conceptual strategies borrowed from the world of fine art can function as tools in contemporary documentary practice. Her work has appeared in many national newspapers and magazines. It is the storytelling aspect of photography that is the driving force in her work.

fotographer.ca

In the series Goodnight, Sleep Tight, I am focusing on the process of losing a loved one and the accompanying emotional landscape. The work addresses my grief over losing my mother as well as the way our culture finds the final stage of life so difficult to confront. The images represent the final moments I was able to spend with my mother, when time seems to stand still and the smallest things take on enormous meaning. These images reflect an attempt to make sense of my mother's dying moments and the complexity of feelings associated with being caught—literally—in between life and death.

— Kate Subak

Kate Suback, Goodnight, Sleep Tight VI, 2010.
Image courtesy of the Artist.

Kate Subak has exhibited in the 2009 and 2010 Headwaters Arts Festival, where she won the Juror's Prize. She has done extensive commercial work. She holds a Master's Degree in Finance from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a degree in photography from the Ontario College of Art & Design, and a Bachelor's Degree in Economics from Smith College. She lives with her four children, vegetable gardens, and a rotating assortment of animals in Caledon, Ontario.

katesubak.com

Since 2008 I have gone on a series of road-trips throughout Eastern Europe and India. While on the road, each day brings a new departure, leaving old faces and places as fading imprints. I have tried to capture the traces of myself that I have left behind, shedding my skin on the road, as solitude becomes my most faithful companion. Each mile takes me both closer and further for the home I seek amongst the shadows of so many cities, roadside cafes and emptiness strung out along my route, like pebbles guiding me on, that I have sown many years ago on some long forgotten journey.

— Sami Siva

Sami Siva, Departures.
Image courtesy of the Artist.

Sami Siva was born and raised in rural Tamil Nadu, India. He studied electronic engineering and worked as a software engineer during India's dotcom boom before immigrating to Canada in 2000. He is currently working on a long-term project about the socio-political construction of India.

Siva's work has been published by The New York Times, Globe and Mail, Report on Business Magazine, Macleans, The National, The Caravan, Medecins Sans Frontiers and others. He is currently represented by Redux pictures and based in New Delhi.

samisiva.com

Alex McLeod constructs hyperrealistic 3D environments filled with crystalline mountains, fiery lakes, and rotund clouds, all rendered in a sickly sweet and gooey candy-coloured palette. Recalling the wide-open vistas of Romantic landscape painting while at the same time staging otherworldly dystopias, McLeod's CGI prints act as hybrid spaces that imply an almost infinite recombination of the past and present, the real and virtual. Beneath their seductively polished surfaces of glimmering fortresses and floating geometric abstractions, lies a haunting stillness that comes forth in the aftermath of cataclysmic events. The cause of destruction remains unknown in these depopulated spaces – there are no people in these images, however many human traces remain in the rickety railways and empty fortresses. And yet, from the twilight of devastation shown in these strange dioramas lies possibilities for hope and rebirth in our own digital milieu through the artist's new approaches to concepts as varied as ecological responsibility and the shared intersections between photography and painting.

Alex McLeod, White Woods, 2010.
Computer generated image.
Image courtesy of the Artist.

Alex McLeod lives and works in Toronto. This past year he has exhibited in New York, Philadelphia, San Jose, Denver, Sao Paulo, Barcelona, Toronto and Sweden.

alxclub.com

The idea for this exhibition came from a rather disparaging question, "Is anything going on in Canadian jewellery?"

Haruummph, yes there are 'goings-on' in Canadian jewellery!

The beauty of contemporary Canadian jewellery is that it's in flux (no pun intended). We are a large, expansive country with a tiny population and our collective jewellery activity cannot be easily classified. Too often we have looked to other places to define ourselves, yet only now realize our strengths are varied and that's what needs to be cultivated. Jewellers, like other designers and artists, are in an evolving field. Sublime skill and rigorous thought are influenced by developing technologies, global marketing, and burgeoning means of production. New work and new paradigms are being created! The diversity contained within the Canadian psyche is reflected in this exhibition.

These eight jewellers yield up the goods and provide insight into the 'goings-on' in Canada.

— Melanie Egan
Head, Craft

This exhibition is organized in anticipation of Meta-Mosaic, the Society of North American Goldsmiths' 2013 conference in Toronto, hosted by George Brown College and Harbourfront Centre.

Jewellery's proximity to the body and relationship with the surface of the skin lends itself to creating a dialogue between art and biology. The human body provides both the site and context for my jewellery. I work with our common internal biological structures as sources of uncelebrated beauty and inspiration constructing jewellery pieces that are a marriage between art and science. In this instance the Yield is the output or outcome of natural processes, specifically biology.

— Catherine Allen

Catherine Allen is a jewellery artist living and working in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She holds a BSc from Dalhousie University (1995), and a MFA from Nova Scotia College of Art & Design University (2007). Her combined studies in psychology, architecture and metal provide her with a unique foundation for jewellery design.

After completing the jewellery arts program at George Brown College in 2000, Allen was awarded a residency at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto. In 2003, she opened a working studio and retail gallery, Fishbowl Studio, in Toronto, creating an inspiring and educational environment shared with other artists. In addition to her professional practice Catherine has taught at both the Ontario College of Art & Design and Nova Scotia College of Art & Design University.

catherineallen.ca

The artist recognizes the support of the Province of Nova Scotia through the Department of Communities, Culture & Heritage.

Silvie Altschuler, T-rex, 2010.
22k gold and plastic, 8cm x 12cm x 3 cm.
Photography: Anthony McLean.

Silvie Altschuler received a gold star for attending art class in middle school. Since then, she tries and sees as many art shows as possible.

galerienoelguyomarch.com

Colleen Baran is a multidisciplinary artist working in Vancouver. Baran has exhibited in galleries and museums in eleven countries and been widely published. Notable exhibitions include The Ring Show at the Georgia Museum (Georgia, USA) and The Northern Lights at The Design Exchange. By the end of 2011 she will have been published in 16 books including 500 Plastic by Lark Books and the upcoming New Rings by Nicolas Estrada, Barcelona, Spain.

Her work is inspired by the exploration of preciousness, writing and hidden messages.

Colleen Baran, Golden Letters 1, 2011.
23.5k gold leaf, gold size, gold pencil crayon,
sterling silver. 5.5cm x 1.9cm x 0.6 cm
Image courtesy of the Artist.

In Golden Letters 1 a gold-coloured pencil crayon is gilded in 23.5 carat gold. To be used it must be sharpened. What is more important: the layer of gold or a message? Gold object or gold thought?

Recent projects included a daily ring project; starting January 1, 2010 and ending December 31 in 2010 she made 365 rings. It was an experiment with recycled, repurposed and alternative materials and December was a consideration of preciousness. Golden Letters is a further development and continuation of that exploration.

colleenbaran.com

My current body of work explores the icons, symbols and clichés of Canada. While these symbols are often nostalgic and romantic, they are symbols that I reluctantly embrace and identify as being Canadian. These works explore an "idea" of Canada and allude to the souvenir.

For Yield, I exploited the anonymous souvenir pendants that you find in any souvenir shop. This series of brooches incorporate a singular vintage element and reconstructs the souvenir to create a new icon of Canadiana. In this case, a CN tower souvenir becomes a trillium, the provincial flower of Ontario, and the maple leaf pendants become snowflakes.

The desire to take a "piece" of a place home with us and to somehow authenticate a journey is a shared one. This common need allows us, as Canadians, to relate to one another despite our distance across such a vast nation.

— Anneke van Bommel

Anneke van Bommell, Trillium Brooch, 2011.
Sterling silver, 10cm x 10cm.
Image courtesy of the Artist.

Anneke van Bommel is a graduate of Nova Scotia College of Art & Design University (BFA 2001), and former artist-in-residence at Harbourfront Centre. She is the recipient of various grants including the Ontario Arts Council, the Ontario Crafts Council and the Canada Council of the Arts. She has exhibited her work throughout North America and internationally and has work in private collections. Her work has been published in a number of magazines, both online and in print and in Lark Books' 1000 Rings and 500 Brooches.

She has taught as sessional faculty with the Ontario College of Art & Design, and the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design University. Van Bommel currently teaches at George Brown College and has an active studio practice in downtown Toronto.

etsy.com/shop/touchthedutch

The Buoys symbolize safety on the water and on the surface convey assurance and direction. Living in Vancouver, the Pacific coastal waters have held a special place for me as a place of reflection and change. Along my shoreline walks, I see and collect plastic as if it were a natural extension of the marine ecosystem. As a result of this observation, an unsettling polemic of opposites exists in Buoys: safety and direction represented by the nautical markers and clinging to it the uncertain future of plastic detritus in our oceans.

— Bridget Catchpole

Bridget Catchpole, Flotsam and Jetsam, 2011.
Sterling silver, upcycled plastic, model paint, oxidized.
Photography: Anthony McLean.

Bridget Catchpole is a jewellery artist who lives and works in Vancouver, British Columbia. She received a Jewellery Art and Design Diploma from Vancouver Community College in Vancouver and a BFA, with distinction, in Studio Art at Concordia University in Montreal. Catchpole incorporates plastic from empty beauty product packaging as a raw material in her work. The process of up-cycling non-recyclable plastic acts as a commentary on the culture of consumerism. Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. She is a recipient of both Canada Council of the Arts and British Columbia Arts Council grants.

bridgetcatchpole.com

In engineering and material sciences, the term "yield point" is defined by the point at which a material, put under a certain amount of stress, is permanently deformed. Metalsmiths face the breaking point of materials through experimentation, trial and error. Even having mastered a technique or process, one cannot always control the outcome; the material may break due to unforeseen circumstance. Likewise, things beyond our control can compromise the state of the body, a physical structure under constant wear and tear. Often the cause of stress is slight, but yields an overwhelming sense of pain or illness. Without good stress we grow complacent, indifferent or simply bored. We tend to ignore that a challenge can be euphoric and exhilarating. In this sense, stress can be a healthy catalyst to help materialize a crazy idea.

— Emily Gill

Emily Gill, The Hole In My Stomach, 2011.
Copper, vitreous enamel, paint, patina, cultured pearls,
steel cable; hand and die formed, pierced and
fabricated. 10.2cm x 14cm x 4cm.
Photography: Kate Heron.

Emily Gill grew up in Montreal, Quebec. After attending Concordia University in object and graphic design, she completed her BFA at Nova Scotia College of Art & Design University in 2009 with a degree in Jewellery Design and Metalsmithing. Her work is inspired by a long time curiosity about biology, botany, science fiction and the microscopic world. She enjoys the discovery of aesthetic qualities inherent to certain material processes and limitations, incorporating concepts that spark curiosity on a technical, emotional and intellectual level. Gill's award-winning jewellery has been featured in shows by the Society of North American Goldsmiths, the Enamelist Society as well as local and Canadian group exhibitions. She creates and teaches from her studio in Toronto, Ontario.

emilygill.ca

As an artist, I constantly seek to bring my art expression closer to the people, their environment and allow them to interact more directly with the artwork. In this series, I have 'surrendered' to my inner child and created a fantasy world. Sometimes we need to let the magic in and awaken a delight in the whimsical and surreal. I hope to draw viewers into my world and open the doors to their own inner child.

— Shannon Kennedy

Shannon Kennedy, Emerging, 2011.
Copper branch brooch, felt cocoon with fine
silver winged rabbit pendant. 7cm x 7cm x 7cm.
Image courtesy of the Artist.

Shannon Kennedy graduated in 1996 from the Ontario College of Art & Design and furthered her jewellery making skills by attending George Brown's Jewellery Arts Program from 1996 to 1998. Recognition for her unique artwork came when she won 'Best in Show' in national competition for Quotation, at Zilberschmuck Gallery, in 2006. She also was awarded an 'Honorable Mention for Jewelry' in 2009 at the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition and in 2010 she was a finalist in the Gold/Platinum Category for the Saul Bell Award. She finds the most enjoyment from designing her uniquely expressive pieces and exhibiting at galleries.

cynosure-jewelry.com

The LOVE icon of the 1960s by American artist Robert Indiana has been appropriated and re-imagined as an icon for our genetic age. G, A, T and C are the symbols used to denote the four nucleotides that make up the genetic code of the DNA molecule: Guanine, Adenine, Thymine and Cytosine.

GATC is a biological acronym for the code of life and a reflection on what it means to be human.

Each metal tag is a piece of jewellery. Take one. Fold it. Wear it.

Paul McClure, GATC – Pile of Genetic Tags, 2011.
Edition of 5000 wearable metal tags.
Printed steel, 3 x 2 cm (each).
Photo: Paul Ambtman.

Paul McClure received his training from NSCAD University, Halifax, Canada (BFA, 1989); Escola Massana, Barcelona, Spain; and National College of Art and Design, Dublin, Ireland (MA, 1999). He has been a practicing studio jeweller for over twenty years and he exhibits internationally. His work is represented in many publications as well as private and public collections including the Barcelona Museum of Decorative Arts, the National Museum of Scotland, and the Canadian Museum of Civilization.

In addition to his studio practice, McClure is an educator, curator and community arts organizer. Since 2000 he has been a professor in Jewellery Studies at George Brown College in Toronto.

Paul McClure is represented by Galerie Noel Guyomarc'h in Montreal.

paulmcclure.com

The artist gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council.

Special thanks to Zab Design & Typography.