1985
(Jan.16-Feb.10) Mark Buckner and Alida Biasutti
'Little Girls Holding Dogs/ Politics' (Windsor)
(Feb.13-Mar.10) Sylvie Belanger
A multi-media, site-specific installation combining photographic assemblage, slide projection, video, and neon sculpture in a series of intriguing allegorical tableaus-- "Photo Montage", "Spectres", "Apocalypse", and "Les Monolithes".
"For me art cannot be a form empty of social meaning, history or humanity, nor a pure aestheticism... Art is inseperable from and contingent with life as written gestures, moments, manifestations and things constituting a history... Art is social because it resuscitates again and again, fears, desires, hopes, anxieties, beliefs and the struggle of beings acting at once in relationships to each other and in a world that has its own relationships... Art is inseperable from its context..." -- Sylvie Belanger.
(Mar.13-Apr.07) Patrick
Thibert: sculpture
Large scale steel sculpture and maquettes of works in progress by the London, Ontario, artist.
(Apr.10-May.05) Lee Bale, Lyn Carter and Bernice
Hune 'Clothing As Image'
(Multi-media group show of painting, sculpture
and installation / performance in conjunction with exhibit Apr.11)
A diverse overview of the way in which we literally wear our psyches on
our sleeves.
"Clothing functions as something beyond simple protection from the elements-- it is the primary means by which we visually communicate and assess each other's role and personal attitudes... sexuality, economic status, professional bent, cultural background and political stance can all be summed up (rightly or wrongly) with one quick look..." -- from the artists' statement.
(May.08-Jun.01) Michele Goulette 'Collotypes
and Collages' and Wikinanish 'Nootkan Erotic Arts': drawings and prints
(Jun.05-Jun.30) Synerge/Synapse 'Three is One'
(Dianne Bigelow, Johanne Fleury, Joan Woodward)
Homage to the ten year anniversary of the international Year of the Woman.
(Jun.22-Jun.23) Showcase of the Arts (at the
Cleary) w./ 25 participating Artcite members
(Jul.03-Jul.28) James Mercer 'Juxtaposition 1985'
"I seek a poetry of the imagination that unites the visible with the invisible in nature." -- James Mercer
Gallery Closed August
(Sep.04-Sep.29) Sheldon Iden 'Non Objective
Works On Paper'
"Richness of colour asserts an intense
depth of illusionistic space defined within the canvas, and reveals architectonic
symbols. The symbols employed in the paintings (ie. The Doge and Venetian
gondola) are simplified literal images alluding to universal meanings.
Duality of meaning/reality and illusion is a constant factor in Iden's
work.
The spirituality, meditative quality confronts the viewer from within the
surface of the canvas, forcing him / her to evolve as part of the work,
and demanding time and concentration." - Grace Manias
(Oct.02-Oct.27) Windsor Monuments (a juried
show for opening of new location at Mackenzie Hall)
Featured Artists: Gari Bernardi, Evelyn Broy, Christine Burchnall, Joseph DeAngelis, Clarke Ellis, Suzanne Konyha, Susan O'Neil, Christopher McNamara, Mark Sikich, Wayne Tousignant. Jurors : Bob Monks, Joan Krawczyk.
(Oct.30-Nov.24) Japan/
Korea in Canada (curated by Scott Gregory)
A special exhibition featuring works on paper created exclusively for this showing by contemporary Japanese and Korean artists. Working within the non-objective vein, these young Hokkaiso and Seoul-based artists established their reputations in the 1960s as members of the avant-garde groups Hokkaido Young Artists, New Woman Artists, the Odo, and Group-So-Shiki.
Artists participating: Tenei Abe, Go Chiba, Kazuko Goto, Mike Goto, Dong-chul Ha, Yoshinori Ichinohe, Yazaki Katsumi, Bongreal Lee, shinya Marufuji, Masao Okabe, Rumiko Sugiyama, Seung-won Suh, Katsuko Tamura, Shingo Tann, Kimio Ueda, Yuhei Yoneya, Yuong-Hee You, Hyung-jae Youn.
November Film and Video:
"Eye of the Mask Theatre: Nicarauga (1985 )" , Colour, Sound 16 mm, 59 mins.
In the winter of 1983-84, Doyle spent several months in rural Nicaragua with a travelling theatre group called Nixtayolero (Dawn Star). "Eye of the Mask" documents their perfomances in a country in revolution-- a country where the one secure thing in life is that nothing is secure...
"The Maelstrom" (1980), Colour, Sound, Super 8, 20 min. The maelstrom is a whirlpool off the coast of Norway fabled to have sucked in and swallowed up anything that passed through it....
"Purgatorioi, A Drinking Bout" (1981) Colour, Sound, Super 8, 11 min. "Smokey the bar. Lights dimly glow. It's good that way, 'Cause heartaches don't show'"-- from the song by W. Penix and H. Thompson. The 'bout' begins at the bar (a metaphorical purgatory) and is carried to the Rosengarten. Featuring a boxing match soliloquy.
"Aphasia: Caught in the Act" (1981), Colour, Sound, Super 8, 4 min. The main image is a person walking through the forest, constantly turning her head to look over either shoulder...."ShuffleShuffleShuffleShuffle. The cards will come out in the the order you put them in."
"The Western Gothic" (1984), Colour, Sound, 16 mm, 4 min. A premiere screening of Meigs' most recent work.
Franco's Bedtime Stories- Murder Clinic Chapter $19.99 (1985) Colour, Sound, Super 8, 55 min. 'Fast Wurms' is the corporate name used by collaborators Dai Skuze, Kim Kozzi and Nap B. Together since 1972, 'Fast Wurms' keeps busy giving regular film "wurmshops" and creating new art pieces in just about every medium imaginable. Fast Wurms productions tend to be "loosely cut Super 8 extravaganzas" that turn consumer culture into art, and art into consumer culture. Anarchic and irreverent, they owe more than a certain amount of their aesthetic to a kind of post-punk fetishism about mass-production. Nihilism and satirical wit at its best....
"Four years in the making, "Murder clinic" pulls rare original docudrama footage from Ohio, Alabama and New Orleans back to the dying minds of a diseased healing lodge that has run out of birch bark miracles. The last testament of O-AT-KA lodge Maynooth, Ontario, and a pyschological court of inquiry into the pathology of 20th century medicine." -- Peter Chapman
'General Idea' was the group name of three Toronto-based artists who began collaborating in 1968: AA Bronson, Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal. Using irony and 'myths" connected with mass media, their field of operations exploited all of the contemporary art channels and the most disparate materials and techniques. "Appropriators and manipulators" of cultural formats popular and otherwise, 'General Idea' constructed a language rife with double-entendre, metaphors, puns and anagrams to dissect the current fable so the art world and art-historical vernaculars.
"This is the story of General Idea
and the story of what we wanted. We wanted to be famous, glamourous and
rich. That is to say we wanted to be artists and we knew that if we were
famous and glamourous we could say we were artists and we would be. We
never felt we had to produce great art to be great artists. We knew great
art did not bring glamour and fame. We knew we had to keep a foot in the
door of art and we were conscious of the importance of the beret and paint
brushes. We made public appearances in painters' smocks. We knew that if
we were famous and glamourous we could say we were artists and we would
be. We did and we are. " -- General Idea
(Dec.) 4th
Annual DOIN' THE LOUVRE... Artcite's annual, unjuried Christmas fundraising exhibition