Art Metropole

Aulls’ psycho-spiritual landscapes locate themselves somewhere between sensory perception and cultural constructs of wilderness. Trying to find a way out of dualistic perceptions of self vs. other and Nature vs. Culture, landscape becomes a site of passage from the material to the spiritual and back again. Landscape is depicted as a place of physical and material dissolution, and it’s images and symbols are in turn the psyches’ site of transcendence. Images act as a kind of interface between real space and psychic space. As part of the landscape we inhabit, they allow full passage for the psyche to venture into material space and vice -versa. The liquid and dissolving nature of the images, reflects their refusal to remain in any fixed state of being or closed ideology. The only constant is the persistence of an open-ended potential.

Having been offered her first solo show at p|m Gallery in Toronto, Tasha Aulls’s work has entered the collection of the Centre d’Art Contemporain de Baie Saint-Paul in Quebec and has been regularly exhibited at Toronto International Art Fair. Graduating from MFA Fine Art at Goldsmiths in 2009, Aulls has since exhibited in South Korea, Austria, Canada and England.

Michael Bartosik is an architectural designer practicing in Toronto. His architectural working process regularly generates stand-alone exercises and investigations which subsequently lend themselves to a coincident art practice. His work has been shown at the Toronto Free Gallery, YYZ Artists’ Outlet, Mercer Union and Solo Exhibition.

Cecilia Berkovic is an artist and graphic designer living in Toronto. She has been a member of service-oriented artist collective, Instant Coffee since 2001 and currently sits on the board of directors at Gallery TPW. Upcoming projects include a solo photo-based show at Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects in September 2007.

Based in Toronto, James Carl is one of the city’s leading artists. He creates small- and large-scale sculpture, made from a wide range of materials, from cardboard to marble, to venetian blinds. In the early 1990s Carl entered the art scene in Montreal by crafting expensive consumer goods (washing machines, stoves) from inexpensive materials such as found cardboard, only to place the finished sculptures back on the streets where their materials were originally retrieved. In a subsequent body of work, Carl carved replicas of disposable electronics out of marble – a traditional sculptor’s material with connotations of permanence. Most recently, Carl constructs large-scale, amorphous sculptures by intricately weaving brightly coloured venetian blinds in a series titled jalousie.

Carl has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally. Most recently, the first major survey of his work, entitled do you know what, was presented at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery at the University of Toronto, the Cambridge Galleries Queen’s Square and the MacDonald Stewart Art Centre in Guelph. Other recent shows include: jalousie at Galerie Heinz-Martin Weigand in Karlsruhe, Germany; negative spaces at Florence Loewy in Paris; plot at Vancouver’s Contemporary Art Gallery, and bottom feeder at Mercer Union in Toronto. Carl earned his MFA from Rutgers University and has degrees from McGill, the University of Victoria and the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing. His work is in public and private collections across North America and Europe. Currently, Carl is an Associate Professor of Studio Art at the University of Guelph.

Rob Clarke was born in 1964 in Edmonton (Canada). At the age of 23, he moved to the United States where he graduated in 1991 from Rutgers University (New Jersey). He lives today in the Queens (New York USA). For a long time, Rob Clarke has been working as an book illustrator. His working for children’s literature did not prevent him from developing aside a completely different part of his work: gay erotic art. He started becoming famous by being published in gay magazines such as Honcho and Unzipped and exhibiting in galleries throughout the United States. Year after year, Rob Clarke has invented a whole new universe among gay artists

Tom Dean’s work eludes categories. He has made paintings, videos and multiples, but is best known for his sculpture. His art plays upon the tensions between ordinary and mythical, with works varying in scale from miniature to monumental, their subject matter ranging from familiar, everyday objects to classical icons. His epic subjects allude to the dream world of the psyche and matters of the soul, but always reside in the intensely material world of desire and the body.

Dean was recognized in 1999 with the honour of being chosen as the Canadian representative at the 1999 Venice Biennale. A catalogue accompanied Dean’s Venice Biennale exhibition.

Tom Dean was born in Markdale, Ontario (1947) and settled in Montreal in the late 1960s, where he studied visual art at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) and became a well-known figure in the city’s alternative scene. He was a founding member of Véhicule Art Inc (and Véhicule Press), a renowned centre of avant-garde activity at the time. From 1972 to 1974 Dean published Beaux Arts magazine with fellow artist Stephen Lack. Over the next decade he produced works in several media, including texts, video, sculpture and prints, and gained a reputation for his elaborate multidisciplinary performances.

In 1976 Tom Dean moved to Toronto and shortly thereafter began his monumental sculpture project, The Floating Staircase (1978-81), whose remains were resurrected in an installation at Mercer Union, Toronto (1983). The various sections of Dean’s extended serial sculpture Excerpts from a Description of the Universe (1984-88) were widely exhibited through the latter half of the 1980s, including in Aurora Borealis at the Centre international d’art contemporain, Montréal (1985) and in a solo exhibition at the 49th Parallel Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art, New York (1985). In 1988 his work was included in the group exhibition All That Matters, which travelled across the country. From 1986 to 1989 Dean lived in New York, participating in exhibitions there as well as in Canada, including in 1990 an exhibition of his drawings and sculptures at the Agnes Etherington Arts Centre, Queen’s University, Kingston (with catalogue).

Throughout the 1990s his artworks have been presented in several important group and solo exhibitions in Canada and Europe. A selection of his works from the early 1980s to the present were exhibited at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (Tom Dean: Selected Works Past and Present, 1999).

He has been collected by such major institutions as the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and the Musée des beaux arts de Montréal.

Janis Demkiw is a Toronto-based artist who uses found objects and materials to stage spatial disruptions, absurd shifts in scale, and approaches to display ranging from strategic to ridiculous. She gets along well alone and in groups.

Recent projects include 11:11 at the AGO’s Young Gallery (in collaboration with Christine Swintak, Olia Mishchenko, Sandy Plotnikoff & Sebastian Butt), as well as implication in the shenanigans of Terrarea (with Emily Hogg & Olia Mishchenko). She holds a BFA from York University with general fondness.

Andy Fabo is an artist, critic, curator and activist living in Toronto. Born and raised in Calgary, he attended the University of Calgary and the Alberta College of Art before he moved to Toronto in 1975. He has also lived in Paris, France (1972-73) and New York (1984-86) where he held the residency of the Canada Council studio at P.S.1. He first exhibited at Toronto’s A Space in 1978 and has since shown extensively locally, nationally and internationally. He has received numerous grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council.

Andy Fabo first became known as a painter, in association with ChromaZone, the collective that spearheaded Toronto’s figurative painting movement of the early eighties. Since the mid-eighties, however, he has made a shift in media and is now working primarily in drawing, installation, video and digital imaging. He considers drawing and collage to be the central pillars of his art practice. His work has always dealt with personal identity, often in a social context, focusing on his position as a gay man in this society.

As an art writer he has published in Parachute, Mix, Fuse, C magazine, Lola, Parallelogram, M5V, and Dance Connection in addition to numerous commissioned catalogue and brochure essays that have accompanied exhibitions by various artists. Most recently he wrote Parachute’s cover feature, The Meaning of Flux in the Art of Tom Dean, about the artist chosen to represent Canada at the 1999 Venice Biennial

As one of the co-founders of ChromaZone (1981-85), Andy Fabo co-curated several exhibitions with other members of the collective. Most notoriously, Tim Jocelyn and Andy Fabo collaborated as the curators of monumental Chromaliving, exhibiting more than 250 artists in 10,00 sq. ft. of retail space in the Colonnade on Bloor Street. While a board member of Mercer Union (1987-91) he curated several exhibitions including Horror Vacuii, Belief Structure and Discordia Concors. In 1984 he mounted a survey of Toronto drawing (Desire ) for Gallery 101 in Ottawa. More recently he curated Declarative (1997) as part of the Ghostwriter series at Mercer Union and Spirited Away (1998), in collaboration with Michael Balser for A Space in Toronto.

Andy Fabo, in collaboration with his life partner of fifteen years, Michael Balser, has recently exhibited two digital data projection installations: Blue Convergence (2000, Eyelevel, Halifax, Nova Scotia) and The Motion of Light in Water (2001, SWG Gallery, Cornerbrook, Newfoundland). His last solo exhibition was Time Machine, a series of 24 silkscreen and acrylic paintings (the film for the screens was made from digital files) that reflected the collapsing of personal memory and media nostalgia in our media-saturated age.

Randy Gledhill has an international history of artistic recognition spanning over three decades, including his ground breaking and influential collaborative partnership as one half of Randy & Berenicci (with Berenicci Hershorn). His chameleon oeuvre of activities includes performances, installations, public art commission, videos, sculptures, critical writing, curation and cultural activism. He is currently Executive Director and Curator of Vancouver’s LIVE Performance Art Biennale; and is researching new global performance art manifestations, movements, and networks.

Filmmaker, video maker, performance artist. Mostly known for her association with the Canadian neo-folk queer band The Hidden Cameras, Gratland’s visual art practice tends to center around queer celebrities, gossip and the actualization of queer sexuality. Her most famous piece Celebrity Lezbian Fists is a series of silicone fists cast from the actual hands of queer cultural icon (JD Samson, Eileen Myles and Jack Halberstam, just to name a few). Her video work gravitates around similar concepts. Her 2004 video The Fabulous Life of Raige and Payne is a mockumentary about the rise and fall of dance-sensations-turned-lesbian-couple Raige and Payne, from luscious lifestyle to their ultimate demise. In Tit Pin (2004), she asked her friend to show their breasts anonymously on camera, made a short film out of it and created pins for everyone to trade.

Ladyfag (born September 11, 1976) is a New York City based writer, performer, and nightlife personality.

Born Rayne Baron in Toronto, Canada, where she ran a store selling vintage clothing and antiques. After becoming involved in the Toronto club scene, she was a resident performer at Will Munro’s Vazaleen parties. Canadian writer R.M. Vaughan in his article Generation V, about gay and lesbians revolutionizing the city’s underground art scene says, “Rayne Baron, a statuesque model and vintage clothing dealer who dominated the stage like a Russian Jewish Grace Jones.”

In 2006, she relocated to New York City assuming the name Ladyfag. Moving to New York in 2006, she was discovered by NYC nightlife icon Kenny Kenny and started dancing at famed party Happy Valley thrown by him and Susanne Bartsch. She has since become a New York nightlife personality and producer, known for holding parties for the downtown and international fashion scene.

Ladyfag has been a prominent figure in New York nightlife, both hosting a variety of events, and producing her own parties. In the spring of 2010, she started East Village based party Family Function with her resident DJ and friend Michael Magnon, a neighborhood favorite that thrived for a year. In the fall of 2010 she produced the now infamous Clubber Down Disco party with resident DJ Honey Dijon. It was one of the last of the parties at the legendary Hotel Chelsea before it was sold in the summer of 2011. Clothing store Opening Ceremony selected the party as one of the top six of the decade, and had her help host their 10 year anniversary celebration at Webster Hall.

Besides weekly parties, she also produces and hosts special events. For a party celebrating the launch of Toilet Paper Magazine and the unveiling of their billboard on the High Line, she produced an evening for Maurizio Cattelan and Pier Paolo at the famed leather bar The Eagle. In 2012, she co-emceed with Legendary Vogue Ball MC Jack Mizrahi at the AmfAR and the W Hotel’s inaugural Love Hangover Ball fundraiser event. The event was hosted by Kelly Osbourne, and included judges such as Edward Enninefel, Fergie, Mickey Boardman, Pat Magraff, Simon Doonan, Carley Cross, Lily Doaldson, Zac Posen and Jason Wu.

Since the fall of 2011, she has organized the popular daytime bazaar, Pop Souk, a one day market place with the tagline “where downtown sells, not sells out”. Sponsored have included Patricia Field, VFILES, Oak and Perrier, with vendors at the event including the likes of Fabilloa, House of LaDosha, Amanda Lepore, and designer Asher Levine. The event is a biannual tradition, taking place with fall and spring editions at such venues as the Hiro Ballroom, Greenhouse, and the Standard Highline.

Beyond New York, Ladyfag has also been apart of events and parties internationally, including many fashion weeks events globally. Along with one of her usual partners, producer Josh Wood, they throw a popular party called Pacino during men’s fashion week in Paris every season. She annually attends a variety of functions at Art Basel in Miami, as well as annually partakes in the Lifeball party in Vienna, helping raise money for HIV and AIDS research.

As a result of her work in nightlife, she was voted Most Welcome Party Presence in the Best of New York City 2009 by the Village Voice, as well as named Queen of the Scene by New York Press. Paper Magazine awarded her the Future Face of Nightlife award at their 2009 Nightlife Awards.

Ladyfag also works as an artist, lending her personal style and aesthetic to a variety of exhibitions, museums, and lectures.
For the art exhibit I Want to Go to Africa, curated by Sook-Yin Lee, she wrote and performed a cabaret act entitled Ladyfag, A Love Story. A multi-media artist, her collaboration with artist Paige Gratland on the Donut Ho’s exhibitions, leading to a piece being acquired by the National Gallery of Canada’s Library Collection. She was selected by the Gladstone Hotel to design one of their artist-designed rooms. The room is based on a Victorian aesthetic with pieces on display crafted by the artist.

In late 2006, she returned to Toronto for a nearly sold-out multimedia solo show at Paul Petro Multiples and Small Works gallery entitled Ladyfag: Saint of Female Faggotry.

In 2011, she was awarded the FUN Fellowship in the Social Practice of Nightlife by the Museum of Arts and Design. She also acted as a key speaker about nightlife at MAD’s Nightlife: An Oral History of NYC Club Culture program.

After many years of referencing the artist Frida Kahlo in her art and style, she was invited to be the key speaker at the opening night gala of the show Frida & Diego: Passion, Politics and Painting at the Art Gallery Ontario.

Ladyfag’s presence in nightlife, fashion, and the arts has made her an iconic figure in New York. She has appeared in numerous advertising campaigns, and is involved many publications.

Her involvement in nightclubs led her to become a spokesmodel for Bulldog Gin’s Brazen Breed print ads, along with other nightlife icons including Cazwell. She has appeared in music videos, such as The Ones video and Cazwell’s Watch Your Mouth, and well as in short films like Sephora’s Cherchez La Femme to promote its Film Noir Fall 2009 collection, and in the There Is No Tomorrow ad for Built that was played before every film in the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival. Recently, she appeared in a video for her good friend Marcel Burlon’s Country of Milan t-shirt line. She also was featured as a guest in a video for the art publication Toilet Paper, which was done in collaboration art studio Kreemart.

She has been shot for a host of fashion editorials in publications such as V Mag, Hercules Mag, Blackbook, Love, Rolling Stone Russia, Dutch, Candy, New York Times, Hunter, Interview, Out, Hunter and Cook, and Visionare. In the past she has been shot by such photographers as Peter Best, Bruce La Bruce, Patrick Demarchelier. Terry Tsiolis, and Laurence Ellis.
As a writer, she is a regular contributor to Paper Magazine’s online blog, as well as Candy Magazine, and 25 Magazine. Her relationship with Paper started in 2007, after she was one of Paper Magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People. In late 2009 she joined the blogosphere with LaLaLa Ladyfag

Anitra Hamilton is a Toronto-born artist. Her work has been shown here, stateside and abroad. Her solo show The Future Has Been Decided is on view at Georgia Scherman Projects until April 23. Her first animation, Jump! (a collaboration with Ken Ogawa), is on view at the Thessaloniki Centre of Contemporary Art. She will be participating in 9-5 at the Art Gallery of Ontario at the end of April.

Born in London, Ontario, on September 1, 1948. Lives and works in London, Ontario.

Political conflict, social activism and cultural displacement are some of the themes woven through the work of Jamelie Hassan. Whether using watercolour, photography, ceramics or installation, Hassan heightens awareness of one’s sense of geographic, societal and political location, while also suggesting the fragility, tenuousness or relativity of any such sense. Early watercolours reproduce rejection letters relatives received from Canadian immigration officials. Later, during the first Gulf War, Hassan made a billboard of a photo of she had taken in Iraq in the late 1970s, adding the text “Because… there was and there wasn’t a city of Baghdad.” Born to Lebanese immigrant parents in London, Ontario, Hassan studied art in Rome, Beirut and Windsor. Though grounded in the regionally focused London art scene of the 1960s—and having co-founded key area art centres Forest City Gallery and Embassy Cultural Centre—Hassan’s perspective has also been shaped by lifelong international travel. A recipient of Governor General’s Award, Hassan has been collected by the National Gallery of Canada and the Art Gallery of Ontario, among other institutions.

Jay Isaac (b.1975, St John, NB,) studied at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Vancouver, BC (1993-1997) and at the Cardiff Institute of Art and Design, Cardiff, Wales (1996). His work has been widely exhibited, with notable exhibitions at Galleria d’art moderna di Bologna, Bologna; MOCA Toronto; Mercer Union, Toronto; Galerie Kunstbuero, Vienna; The Power Plant, Toronto; White Columns, New York; Cue Art Foundation, New York; Agnes Etherington Art Center, Kingston, ON; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; The AGO, Toronto; CAG, Vancouver; Night Gallery, LA; Monte Clark Gallery, Toronto/Vancouver; Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, NB; soon.tw, Montreal; David Risley Gallery Copenhagen; McIntosh Gallery, London, ON; Paul Petro Contemporary Art, Toronto. He was co-founder and publisher of Hunter and Cook Magazine (2009-2011) and founded and ran the @nationalgalleryofcanada Instagram account (2015-2016). He has been the recipient of numerous awards including, most recently, Canada Council project grants (2017 and 2018) an Ontario Arts Council grant (2018), and the Chalmers Art Fellowship funded by the Ontario Arts Council (2019). Isaac’s work can be found in numerous public and corporate collections in Canada. Isaac lives and works in Toronto, Canada and is represented by Paul Petro Contemporary Art.

(from Paul Petro Contemporary Art)

Luis Jacob is a Peruvian-born Toronto-based artist and curator whose work destabilizes conventions of viewing and invites a collision of meanings. He studied semiotics and philosophy at the University of Toronto. Since his participation in documenta 12, Kassel, 2007, he has achieved an international reputation with exhibitions at venues such as: Museum der Moderne Salzburg, 2019; Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, 2019; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, 2018; Museion Bolzano, 2017; La Biennale de Montréal, 2016; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York City, 2015; Taipei Biennial, 2012; Generali Foundation, Vienna, 2011; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, 2010; Kunstverein in Hamburg, 2008; and Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, 2008.

Hannah Jickling is from the Canadian north and currently lives and works in Toronto. Her project interests look at sport, outdoor recreation and education as models for performance, participation and feminist engagement. Together with Helen Reed, she is artist-in residence and visiting scholar at the Ontario Institue for Studies in Education, supported by The Pedagogical Impulse, a SSHRC-funded research project.

In recent years, Hannah has shown/presented at: Locust Projects (Miami), Transmission Gallery (Glasgow), the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture (Yukon), Dalhousie University Art Gallery (Halifax), YYZ Artists Outlet (Toronto), Dare-Dare (Montreal), the Or Gallery, Access Gallery, VIVO (Vancouver), apexart (New York), Portland Art Museum and the SFMOMA (San Francisco). She received her BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (2003), and her MFA (Art and Social Practice), from Portland State University (2010).

Andrew A. McLaren is an artist currently based in Calgary, Alberta.

Having recently graduated from the MFA program at the University of Calgary (2008), I am currently working on interactive cartographic animations, and a new bookwork, DCLXVI.

During the past several years my work has mostly involved self-publishing projects and experimental Cartographic design, or Paracartography. Other projects have been in multiple objects (Dice Calendars) and Installation. My other site www.paracartography.com showcases some of my experiments in animation (February 2007).

Scott McEwan was born in London, Ontario Canada on November 7th, 1970. He has an exceptional family comprised of a father (Chuck), and mother (Eileen), and an older sister (Colleen). His extended family includes friends in the visual arts, LGBT, social activist and pro wrestling communities who all have played an important role in his development of self. As an educator, he has taught at all levels of the education system from pre-school to university and incorporates the model of self-realization into the teacher/student dynamic.

Educational accomplishments include an Honours B.F.A. (Visual Arts), B.Ed. (Visual Arts), French as a Second Language, M.F.A. (Painting/Drawing and Theory), the Ontario Graduate Scholarship (The Ontario Ministry of Education and Training), and a nomination for Rhode’s Scholarship by the Faculty of Arts at The University of Western Ontario.

Scott has exhibited in public art institutions, commercial galleries, artist-run centres, alternative spaces and in publications throughout Canada and abroad. These include: Zsa Zsa Gallery, Edward Day Gallery, Headbones Gallery, Spin Gallery, Paul Petro Multiples, YYZ Artists Outlet, Sis Boom Bah Gallery, Forest City Gallery, The London Regional Art Gallery, McIntosh Gallery, Art Gallery of Brandt, Cambridge Art Gallery, NEMAA (Minneapolis), Toronto International Art Fair, and was the cover artist for the Toronto Alternative Art Fair International in 2005.

The artist’s work, reviews and social/political ideas can be found in art journals, national newspapers, magazines, radio and television. These media outlets include: Now Magazine, Eye Weekly, The National Post, The Globe and Mail, Xtra, Fab, Riverside Magazine, LOLA, Film Print, Xtra West, Toronto Life Magazine, Canadian House and Home, CTV News, Bravo Arts News, City TV, Jocko Homo Datapanik, Gay Calgary, Ontario Wrestlers Indy Elite, The London Free Press, Berlin 24, A Channel, The Londoner, and Wrestling Update Online.

_At one time I devoted extensive time to a PhD in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester. My dissertation was an extended discourse analysis of the discipline of art history, in particular looking at the rhetorical limits of art history, limits established in the acceptance of certain defining categorical concepts (style, period, and canon, of course, but by extension artist, history, work, and time) at the foundation of the discipline in the late nineteenth century.

This durance in academia was somewhat fated from the start, in that I was less interested in an academic career than I was interested in attempting, as far as possible, to stop making visual art. While the dissertation was abandoned in the final stretch, two lasting results came from this tenure. The first, academic credibility, which continues to grant me relatively easy access to various libraries and archives. The second, an invigorated studio practice that puts into concrete form much of the ideas and interests that I was pursuing in my formal studies.

In particular, my work entails a close reading of ‘classic’ texts from the Western philosophical tradition. Paying attention the structural forms of these texts (collectively as an class, and individually as specific instances), I undertake a form of rogue editing, drawing out structural themes and motifs that make the primary text possible. Important to my practice is that the work I produce is a secondary text, written ‘over top’ of existing texts. The refiguring of these texts is done through various devices of distanciation. The execution of this work is as necessary as the pre-figured thought that goes into its planning. Like many contemporary conceptual artists, I view the embodiment of the physical work as a necessary aspect of my practice.

Where possible, I prefer to display and contextualize this work in situ, as books (e.g., not as artist books) that infiltrate the structures of the dissemination of the primary texts themselves._

- Michael Maranda (from artist’s website)

Tanya Mars is a feminist performance and video artist who has been involved in the Canadian art scene since 1973. She was a founding member and director of Powerhouse Gallery (La Centrale) in Montreal (the first women’s art gallery in Canada), editor of Parallelogramme magazine for 13 years, and very active in ANNPAC (the Association of National Non-Profit Artist-run Centres) for 15 years. She has also been an active member of other arts organizations since the early 70’s. Her work is often characterized as visually rich layers of spectacular, satirical feminist imagery. She has performed widely across Canada, in Valparaiso, Chile, Mexico City, Sweden, France and Helsinki. Her most recent major work, a 7-hour durational performance entitled “The Tyranny of Bliss” involved over 30 performers who created 14 tableaux in and around Queen’s Park in Toronto. She is co-editor with Johanna Householder of OCAD of Caught in the Act: an anthology of performance art by Canadian women (2004) published by YYZ books. She is also a member of the 7a*11d Collective that produces a bi-annual International Festival of Performance Art in Toronto. She currently teaches performance art and video at the University of Toronto Scarborough and is part of the graduate faculty of the Master of Visual Studies Program at the University of Toronto. In 2004 Mars was named artist of the year for the Untitled Arts Awards in Toronto. She is the recipient of a 2008 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts and is currently an International Artist in Residence at La Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. In addition a book on her work published by FADO and edited by Paul Couillard, Ironic to Iconic: The Performance Works of Tanya Mars, was launched in May of 2008.

In the 70s and 80s Mars’ work focused on creating spectacular feminist imagery that placed women at the centre of the narrative. Since the mid-90s her performances have included endurance, durational and site-specific strategies. Her work is political, satrical and humorous. She has worked both independently and collaboratively to create both large-scale as well as intimate performances.

Her most recent works In Dulci Jubilo (Malmo, Sweden) and, 6 Images in Search of An Artist (after Pirandello), are a reflection on our complicity in the world of excess and consumption in the face of economic collapse.

William Grant “Will” Munro (February 11, 1975 – May 21, 2010) was a Toronto artist, club promoter, and restaurateur known for his work as a community builder among disparate Toronto groups. As a visual artist, he was known for fashioning artistic works out of underwear; as a club promoter, he was best known for his long-running Toronto queer club night, Vazaleen.

(from wikipedia)

Born in Australia, Munro grew up mostly in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, and moved to nearby Toronto to study at the Ontario College of Art, graduating in 2000. Influenced by such artists as General Idea and the queercore movement, he received critical attention for his work with men’s underwear, a medium he used eventually to create collages of colourful performers he admired such as Klaus Nomi and Leigh Bowery. He created silkscreen posters to advertise Vazaleen – his monthly nightclub party that was unusual for being a queer event where punk and other rock music was prominently played, and for being one of the first to exist beyond the confines of the gay ghetto. The party was known for attracting a diverse crowd, and at its peak brought in such performers as Nina Hagen; international “best-of” nightclub lists took notice.

Munro died of brain cancer in May 2010. Posthumous exhibits of his art work included a 2010 show at the Art Gallery of Ontario, and in 2011 he was the first male artist to be featured in the feminist Montreal art gallery La Centrale.

Will Munro was born in Sydney, Australia in 1975. Later that year his family moved to Canada, just outside of Montreal, and then lived in Mississauga, Ontario from 1980 onwards.

Despite his involvement in nightclub events, Munro did not consume alcohol or recreational drugs. He was a vegan from a young age. For many years, he volunteered as a peer counsellor at the Toronto Lesbian Gay Bi Trans Youth Line, where an annual award was established in his honour after his death.

Munro was diagnosed with brain cancer and underwent surgery to remove a tumour in 2008. A second surgery was performed in October 2009. He entered into palliative care in April 2010, and died on May 21, 2010.

Munro moved from Mississauga to Toronto after high school, to attend the Ontario College of Art (OCA). From early on in his career, his signature medium was pastiche work with men’s underwear.The origins of this work date back to his Intro to Sculpture class at OCA, where his professor asked the students to “bring a special object to class that isn’t really functional, but is special to you.” Munro had long had an affinity for special underwear, ever since his mother had refused to buy him Underoos superhero underwear when he was a child; regarding white briefs, he said, “They were clinical and sterile. They weren’t very sexy. It just felt very repressed. I wanted Underoos so bad.” For the sculpture class, Munro decided to bring in a pair of underwear that he had stolen from a high school friend on whom he had a crush. He put the grey underwear on display in a Plexiglass cage, complete with air holes. In his subsequent work he decided to use white briefs as a medium “because they were so accessible.” The summer after his sculpture class, to keep himself busy on a road trip, he made a quilt out of white underwear. In 1997, his first show involving underwear was held in a gallery supported by his college. The show received publicity after conservative columnist Michael Coren, in the Toronto Sun and on the radio, criticized Munro and his show, in particular for having said that it involved “boys’ underwear” (although Munro had simply meant guys’ underwear). Coren asked the public to bring dirty diapers to the exhibit, but no one did.¹⁰ Munro went on to have many showings of his underwear art, mostly “rescued” from second-hand Goodwill clothing outlets, including at Who’s Emma, HEADspace, and Paul Petro Contemporary Art. Actor Selma Blair bought one of Munro’s underwear works when she was in town for the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival.

Munro’s influences included the work of General Idea, and the queercore movement. Speaking about the confluence of his music events and his art, Munro said in 2004, “This is where the music scene and gay underground come together. We’re at a time when all kinds of shifts are happening. The structure of artists’ galleries are changing. Magazines are changing. There’s more different kinds of artist activity that’s happening. All this is having an impact on my visual work. And my visual work is more and more going into performance.” Galleries exhibiting his work have included Art in General, in New York City, Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown, and Toronto galleries Zsa Zsa, Mercer Union, YYZ Artists’ Outlet, Paul Petro Contemporary Art, and the Art Gallery of York University. Munro was named on the longlist of finalists for the Sobey Art Award in 2010.

A posthumous exhibit of his work, “Total Eclipse”, was presented at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2010. Works included collages, made from underwear, that depict Klaus Nomi and Leigh Bowery, both of whom Munro admired.Reviewing the show in Canadian Art, critic Sholem Krishtalka wrote that Munro’s work is “insistent on the necessity of self-made culture and buttressed by an encyclopedic knowledge of queer underground cultural history.”

Other posthumous exhibitions of his work include a 2011 show at the feminist La Centrale gallery in Montreal – a first for a male artist in that space – and in 2012 a major retrospective at the Art Gallery of York University.

Munro started the monthly party Vaseline (later renamed Vazaleen) in Toronto at a time when most gay clubs featured house music or other types of dance music. His hope was to draw a more diverse crowd: he said at the time, “I’d like to do something that’ll encompass all the freaks out there, myself included.” In addition to its stereotype-countering incorporation of punk and other rock music, his club night was also noted to be unusual for being located outside of the Church and Wellesley gay neighbourhood. It was atypical as well for having about 50 percent women attending the event. Munro said, “I was determined to get women to attend and I did it in a really simple way. I put lots of images of women and dyke icons on the posters and flyers – groups like The Runaways or singers like Nina Hagen and Carole Pope. I wanted women to know instantly that this was their space as much as anybody else’s.” It began in the downstairs space at El Mocambo in late 1999, moved to the upstairs space in January 2000, and in late 2001, when El Mocambo was threatening to close, to Lee’s Palace, where it continued as a monthly event until 2006.

In a lengthy article about Vazaleen in Toronto Life, critic R. M. Vaughan wrote, “In its lewd, spontaneous, hysterical and glamorous way, Vazaleen defined a new Toronto aesthetic, a playful and endlessly inventive mode of presentation that encompassed everything from lesbian prog- rock to tranny camp to vintage punk revival to good old-fashioned loud-mouthed drag.” In an editorial in C magazine, Amish Morrell wrote, “At [Vazaleen] it was not only okay to be gay, but it was okay to be other than gay. One could be just about anything. The effect was that it completely destabilized all preconceptions of gender and sexual identity, in a hyperlibidinous environment where everyone became a performer.” Benjamin Boles of Now wrote, “These days it’s normal in Toronto for hip gay scenes to flourish outside of the queer ghetto and to attract a wide spectrum of genders and orientations, but that didn’t really happen until Vazaleen took off and became a veritable community for everyone who didn’t fit into the mainstream homo world. For too long, it was too rare to see dykes, fags, trans people, and breeders hanging out together, and Munro changed that.” Vazaleen became a launching pad for such musical acts as Peaches and Lesbians on Ecstasy. Other bands performing at Vazaleen early in their careers were The Hidden Cameras, Crystal Castles, and The Gossip. At the height of the event’s popularity, Munro appeared on the cover of Now magazine (made up to look similar to David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane album cover), musical guests included Carole Pope, Tracy + the Plastics, Vaginal Davis, and Nina Hagen, and Vazaleen appeared on “best-of” nightclub lists internationally.

Munro produced other Toronto club nights such as Peroxide, which featured electro music, No T. O., which showcased No Wave, Seventh Heaven Dream Disco, and the amateur stripper party Moustache. In 2006, Munro and his friend Lynn MacNeil bought The Beaver Café, in the West Queen West neighbourhood. Arts columnist Murray Whyte of the Toronto Star wrote, “Will’s virtual status as hub took bricks-and-mortar form: The Beaver quickly became that cozy, everyone-in-the-pool house party, a sort of community hall/mini dance club, and an alt-culture oasis”. “Love Saves the Day” became Munro’s dance music night at The Beaver, which he continued to organize even as his illness began to prevent him from leaving home. His final night of DJing in person was at a special Halloween Vazaleen party at Lee’s Palace in 2009.

Bruce LaBruce wrote of Munro’s impact on Toronto, just prior to his death: “As we all know, Toronto can be a cruel and unforgiving city. What makes Will Munro so extraordinary as an artist and as a person is that he has not only remained true to such a harsh mistress, but that he has also contributed so substantially to the fabric and heft of this often maleficent metropolis. His dedication to community work (including volunteering for a decade at an LGBT youth crisis hotline) and to creating social and sexual stimulation for the queer community outside the decaying gay ghetto (namely, his wonderfully raunchy club night, Vazaleen, and his participation as a founding partner in revitalizing the Beaver Café) is unmatched.

Born in California to Canadian parents in 1955, Daniel Olson completed degrees in mathematics and architecture before obtaining a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1986 from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design Halifax) and a Master of Fine Arts in 1995 from York University (Toronto). Olson’s work, which includes sculpture, multiples, installation, photography, performance, audio, video and artist’s books, has been exhibited widely, including shows at the Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (Québec), Galerie Optica (Montreal), and the Canadian Cultural Centre (Paris). Olson has published numerous artist’s books and multiples, most of which have been available at Art Metropole in Toronto, where he is also represented by Birch Libralato. Since 2001 Olson has been living and working in Montreal. Solo exhibitions include Twenty Minutes’ Sleep, Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver, 2005); Other Conditions, Modern Fuel (Kingston, 2005); Unknown Seventies Artists, Galerie TPW (Toronto, 2005); and I’m Not There (1955), Goethe Institute (Dublin, 2004). Olson has exhibited in group exhibitions such as Aural Cultures, Walter Philips Gallery (Banff, Alberta, 2005); Frottements: Objets et surfaces sonores, Musee national des beaux arts de Quebec, (Quebec, 2004); In Light (video projections by eight artists), Art Gallery of Ontario, (Toronto, 2004); and Promise, Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver,2001).

Sandy Plotnikoff is a Toronto based artist. His practice is diverse and includes mixed media works, sculpture, and performance. Plotnikoff employs a variety of working methods, sometime collaborative, sometimes centered on found objects.

In 2001, Plotnikoff acquired an antique foil stamping press, found while surfing the online swapshop Craigslist. Using metal type and dies, the press was used commercially to emboss metallic foil lettering onto product packaging.

Plotnikoff began using the press to embellish a small series of paper products, ‘zines and collages, then moved onto stamping directly onto items such as cd jackets, books, stickers, food, napkins, coins, wallets, shoes, and furniture.

As the artist became more adept with the press, this ongoing series evolved into increasingly abstract foil treatments, Foil On Paper

Plotnikoff received his BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, in 1997. Three years late he co-founded the Laundry Line project space. In 2006 he was a Workshop facilitator at Decoding the Undertow in Halifax, NS. and the following year he was a session instructor at the University of Guelph.

Born in 1971 in Montreal, Quebec, Lucy Pullen is currently Assistant Professor, Sculpture, at the University of Victoria. Pullen has participated in residencies internationally and exhibits principally in Canada and the US.

Warren Quigley has exhibited across Canada, the U.S., China, and in France, Brazil, and Japan. His current project Survival Guide & Kit has recently been produced for the exhibitions Tout Contre Nature at Wharf, Centre d’art contemporain de Basse-Normandie, France, Beyond/In Western New York at Western New York Book Arts Collective and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery Bookstore, Buffalo, Art/Work at Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit, and at Convenience Gallery, Toronto.

Other exhibitions have occurred at Reverberation: 2008 International Video Art Exhibition at Yuangong Art Museum, Shanghai, at Tank Loft Contemporary Art Center, Chongqing, and at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Shijiazhuang, China, in Extreme Centre at Centre culturel canadien, Paris, France and as part of Sound Symposium in St. John’s, Newfoundland (in collaboration with Millie Chen), at FILE-Rio 2007: the Electronic Language International Festival, Telemar Cultural Center, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (in collaboration with the PED collective), Big Orbit Gallery, Buffalo, and Harbourfront Centre, Toronto. He has produced a number of permanent public art commissions, and his work is in private and public collections in Canada, the U.S.A. and Europe. Quigley is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto. He has given lectures at, among other institutions, the University of Toronto’s School of Landscape Architecture and Department of Fine Art (Public Art Panel) and the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in Chongqing, China. He is currently a lecturer in the Department of Visual Studies at the University at Buffalo, SUNY.

Rupen was born in Istanbul to Armenian parents. He has been a Canadian citizen since the age of fourteen. A self taught artist he has been exhibiting his work for fifteen years and is associated with Gallery 1313. He has had several solo exhibitions as well as participating in over forty group shows: two of which were in New York and two which are upcoming in Seoul, South Korea and St. Petersburg, Russia. His visual art practice is enriched by diverse interests including music, monocromatics, the Toronto art community, and chance. Rupen is the director of the Natural Light Window, an installation venue at 506 Adelaide Street West in Toronto. He was Toronto’s 2004 co-winner of the colour match tournament organized by d’ART magazine. His work has been reviewed in the Globe and Mail, NOW Weekly, Artery, and The National Post. This is Rupen’s second curatorial project for OTMG. The first was titled Front Room in 2003.

Born in 1973. Lives and works in Toronto.

Jon Sasaki’s multidisciplinary art practice brings performance, video, object and installation into a framework where expectation and outcome never align, generating a simultaneous sense of pathos and fun. His work employs reason-based approaches reminiscent of conceptual art while investigating romantic subjects; in this juxtaposition, Sasaki creates humorous, self-exhaustive systems caught in cycles of trial and error. In his 2010 work Jack Pine, 8’ Camera Crane, Sasaki attempts to recreate Tom Thomson’s 1916 The Jack Pine painting with modern cinema infrastructure; this fanciful gesture results in Sasaki struggling to control the crane as the camera repeatedly crashes through nearby foliage. Throughout his performance-for-video works, Sasaki assumes the role of a somewhat naive everyman, performing Sisyphean tasks with a mildly uncomfortable, self-effacing positivism. Sasaki holds a BFA from Mount Allison University and he was an active member of Toronto/Vancouver–based collective Instant Coffee from 2002 to 2007. Sasaki has exhibited nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions at Galerie Clark, Gallery TPW, the Art Gallery of Ontario and Latitude 53.

Derek Sullivan was born in 1976 in Richmond Hill, Ontario. He received a BFA from York University and an MFA from the University of Guelph. His multiple National Gallery Catalogue 2004 was included in the exhibition Art Metropole The Top 100 at the National Gallery of Canada (2007). Recently his work was featured in the group exhibitions We Can Do This Now at The Power Plant in Toronto (2007) and Gasoline Rainbows at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver (2007). He is represented by Jessica Bradley Art + Projects, Toronto.

Jessica Thompson is a Canadian media artist working in sound, performance, and mobile technologies. She holds an MFA in Media Study from SUNY at Buffalo. Her work has shown in festivals such as ISEA (San Jose), the Conflux Festival (New York), Thinking Metropolis (Copenhagen), (in) visible Cities (Winnipeg), Beyond/In Western New York (Buffalo), the Deep Wireless Festival (Toronto), New Interfaces in Musical Expression (NIME) (Oslo) and most recently as part of Audible Edifices, School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. Her projects have appeared in publications such as Canadian Art, c Magazine, Acoustic Territories, and numerous art and technology blogs. She is an Assistant Professor in Hybrid Practice at the University of Waterloo.

RM Vaughan is a Toronto-based writer and video artist. His previous books include the poetry collections A Selection of Dazzling Scarves, Invisible to Predators and Ruined Stars; the novels A Quilted Heart and Spells; and the play collections Camera, Woman and The Monster Trilogy. Vaughan writes about art and culture for numerous periodicals and currently pens a weekly celebrity-pestering column for The Globe and Mail. Vaughan’s videos are shown in galleries and festivals around the world.

Laurel Woodcock is a multidisciplinary artist working in sculpture, video, audio, photography and performance. She is known for her interest in familiar language, turns of phrase, song lyrics, punctuation marks, typography and various other syntactical elements. These become materials with which she explores the problems and possibilities of language: its formal qualities and malleable meanings. Often, her work can be confused for official or corporate public signage—from billboards to a banner towed by a plane. Woodcock has exhibited nationally at the Power Plant, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Contemporary Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, and the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, among other Canadian venues. Internationally, she has shown her videos in New York, London, Chicago, Cairo, Berlin, Paris, Barcelona and Glasgow. Her work is in several public and private collections and she has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council. Laurel Woodcock is represented by MKG127, Toronto. She lives and works in Toronto.

Andrew Zealley is a Toronto-based artist whose work expands beyond audio and music methods to inform mixed disciplines and media. His practice has been situated at the shifting nexus of HIV/AIDS, queer identity, and the body since 1990. Zealley s audio installation, Nature: This Is A Recording, is in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada. He has recordings published by labels Art Metropole, Fine & Dandy, How To Explain Silence To A Dead Hare, Old Europa Cafe, Public Record/Ultra-red, Tourette Records, and Vague Terrain. Zealley holds an MFA in interdisciplinary studies from OCAD University. He is currently pursuing doctoral research through the Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University; Program of Study: Safe and Sound: Art, Queer Listening, and Biopolitics of HIV/AIDS.

Formed in 1979, FASTWURMS is the cultural project, trademark, and shared authorhsip of Kim Kozzi and Dai Skuse.

FASTWURMS creates poly-disciplinary artworks that mix performance and performative events into the context of immersive installations, collective making and social exchange projects.

FASTWURMS artwork is characterized by a determined DIY sensibility, Witch Nation identity politics, and a keen allegiance towards working class, queer alliance, and artist collaborations.

FASTWURMS is a Witch polity and epistemology, creating and circulating aesthetic knowledge as a shared emancipation and liberation narrative.