Art Metropole

Christine Baigent (Toronto, ON) makes work that is highly personal and conceptual in nature. She has exhibited her work in Toronto, Cambridge, Halifax, and now Kingston. For many years she has been interested in the idea of producing multiples, in both limited and unlimited editions, to make art more available to a broader audience.

Yuula Benivolski (born 1980, lives and works in Toronto) is a multidisciplinary artist working in photography, video, sculpture and writing. Her work investigates social behaviours, transitional states, feelings, and memory through personal narratives. She received her MFA from Concordia University in Montreal and has recently exhibited at Trinity Square Video, Videofag and Narwhal in Toronto. Her upcoming show “Signals” during CONTACT Photography festival 2016 is a large scale light installation through the windows of the now decommissioned Gibraltar Point Lighthouse.

Krista Buecking (born 1982) is a Canadian visual artist.

Krista Buecking was born in Brampton, Ontario in 1982, and currently lives in Los Angeles, California. From 2002 to 2007, she attended Guelph University in Guelph, Ontario, and in 2012 she completed a Master of Fine Arts degree at California Institute of the Arts.

Krista Buecking’s work consists of large-scale sculptures, drawings and installations that explore often sentiments of disappointment, disintegration and renewal. We Thing, her most recent solo exhibition, consisted of architectural, sculptural, plant and video components that attempted to illustrate the intangible, abstract system of neoliberalism. As Ellyn Walker writes in Magenta Magazine, “We Thing [..] reiterates our identity as that of social construct, rooted in the premise of a lifestyle promised, and formerly believed unattainable” Some of Buecking’s earlier work consists of drawings of lyrics from classic American pop songs by artists such as Patsy Cline and Elvis Presley, such as That’s when your heartaches begin and Are You Lonesome Tonight?­ As Rosemary Heather writes in a 2010 article in Canadian Art, “ Within American pop songs Buecking has located deeper truths about the culture that produced them. Endless change and a taste for the ephemeral have produced the conditions for a rootless population.” In her series of drawings from 2007-2008 entitled Proposal for Ruins, Buecking examined various states of disintegration and renewal in a set of modernist buildings that she depicts in ruin. In this series, Buecking selected historical buildings with back stories connected the fall-outs from ideological and political impulses of Modernism, such as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater and Adalberto Libera’s Casa Malaparte.

Bill Burns was born in Regina, Saskatchewan in 1957 and has lived and worked as an artist in Toronto, Canada and London, England. His work consists mainly of conceptual writings, artists’ books and multiples. He studied under Gerard Hemsworth, Jon Thompson and John Latham at Goldsmiths College in London, England. He is known for his Safety Gear for Small Animals (SGSA) which was first shown at 303 Gallery in New York in 1994 and later at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2005/2006 and at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 2008. His 2002 project Everything I Could Buy on eBay About Malaria which was shown at the Wellcome Trust in London, England is considered a seminal work in the area of electronic collecting. His work about life in the art world known as Veblen Goods was shown at MASS MoCA in 2012.

Burns has published numerous books including When Pain Strikes (Burns, Busby, Sawchuk), a critical anthology about pain and pain relief, published by the University of Minnesota Press in 1999. Other book titles include Analgesia (Rochefort,Montreal, 1993), How to Help Animals Escape from Degraded Habitats (Optica, Montreal, 1996), Urban Fauna Information Station (Mercer Union, Toronto, 2002), Safety Gear for Small Animals (MOCCA, Toronto and California State University, Fullerton, 2005) Bird Radio (Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Koenig, Cologne, 2007) and The Flora and Fauna Information Service – 0.800.0.0FAUNA0FLORA (ICA, London, 2008). Burns has also published dozens of guides, posters, and editions. His editions are included in major museum collections throughout the world.

Burns’ work has been exhibited in major museums and biennial exhibitions since the nineteen nineties. His most notable exhibitions include the ICA in London, the MoMA in New York as well as Forum Arte y Vida at the Havana Bienal in Havana, Cuba in 2003, the Bienal del Fin del Mundo in Ushuaia, Argentina in 2007 and the Quebec City Biennial – Manif d’art 5, in 2010.

Rebecca Diederichs has been involved with Toronto’s artist run culture since the 1980s. A founding member of the artists’ collective, Place & Show Artists’ Projects, she participated in exhibitions in Toronto, Ottawa, and London, Ontario. She has been a Board Member of the artist run centre YYZ Artists’ Outlet and the artists’ service organization CARO, as well as a member of The Red Head Gallery. She co-curated Urgent Witness / Drawn Remains with Kim Pruesse for YYZ Artists’ Outlet, edited Peter MacCallum: Material World for YYZ Books, and has written for Lola Magazine, Open Studio, and the Red Head Gallery, all in Toronto. Diederichs has been involved with Persona Volare since their first exhibition in 2000. Her work was part of the three-person exhibition Neutrinos They Are Very Small, with Sally McKay and Gordon Hicks, curated by Corinna Ghaznavi, which toured from Sudbury to Kingston and Waterloo, Ontario. Diederichs recently completed a Masters of Visual Studies at the University of Toronto in May 2010. Carousel, 2011, is a photographic compellation and part of Corinna Ghaznavi’s exhibition entitled Animal, which will tour across Canada. Diederichs lives and works in Toronto.

Jess Dobkin’s performances, artist’s talks and workshops are presented internationally at museums, galleries, theatres, universities and in public spaces. Her creative endeavors have received wide support and recognition, including awards from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and Toronto Arts Council, and repeated funding from the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art and the Astraea Foundation.

Her work has toured internationally, and she has performed, lectured and conducted performance art workshops in the US, Canada, Germany, Belgium, and the UK. Her performances have been presented at renowned avant-garde venues in New York including P.S.122, The Kitchen, LaMama, Dixon Place, the Joyce SoHo and the WOW Cafe. In Toronto, her work has been presented at The Power Plant, The Ontario College of Art & Design Professional Gallery, Harbourfront Centre, YYZ Artists’ Outlet, the WARC Gallery, SPIN Gallery, Buddies In Bad Times Theatre, the Inside/Out Festival, and other venues. Her performances receive extensive print, radio, television and web media attention and have been the subject of recent journal articles in Gastronomica, The Canadian Theatre Review and n.paradoxa. She was named “Best Performance Artist” by NOW Toronto and X-tra Magazine, and her Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar performance continues to draw international media attention and interest.

Jess has presented as a Visiting Artist at numerous universities including Yale University, Columbia University, Cornell University, New York University, Brown University, Swarthmore College, McGill University, RISD, University of Michigan, and Goldsmiths University of London. She has worked as a Sessional Lecturer in the Visual Studies department at the University of Toronto and at OCAD University. She also serves on the University of Toronto/Sheridan College Art and Art History Program Advisory Committee and as a Member/Co-Curator of the 7a-11d International Festival of Performance Art.

Born in London, Ontario in 1949, Robert Fones had his first solo exhibition in that city at 20/20 Gallery in 1969 and was also a founding member of Forest City Gallery in London. Since 1976 he has lived and worked in Toronto where he has exhibited regularly. He is represented by Olga Korper Gallery, Toronto. He has also shown work at other artists- run centers, commercial galleries and public institutions. A ten-year survey exhibition of his work was organized by The Power Plant in 1989. Fones has exhibited throughout Canada and internationally in the United States and Germany. His work is in The National Gallery of Canada, The Art Gallery of Ontario and other public and corporate collections.

Robert Fones has worked in a variety of media including sculpture, painting, woodblock printmaking and photography. In his work he has investigated the transition from manual to industrial production; disclosed hidden processes of geological and cultural change; and exploited the innate ambiguities of photographic and painted pictorial space. The latter theme is exemplified by Head Paintings, one of many artists books that Fones has published with Coach House Press and Art Metropole. The book is typeset in Fones-Caslon, a typeface he designed specifically for this publication. A number of his works use type in combination with photographs or pictorial representations.

Robert Fones is an active participant in the Toronto art community. He has served on the board of The Art Gallery of Ontario, C Magazine Foundation and the Acquisitions Committee of the Design Exchange. In 1990 he curated an exhibition for The Power Plant on the work of Toronto furniture designer, Russell Spanner. In 2011, he curated Cutout: Greg Curnoe, Shaped Collages 1965–1968 for Museum London.

Robert Fones has taught at the Ontario College of Art and Design, the Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto, and in the Art and Art History Program at Sheridan College. He has also published numerous reviews and articles in Vanguard, C Magazine, Parachute and other publications.

Born in 1973, Stephen Ellwood lives and works in New York.

Ellwood’s work uses language as a means for creating narratives and indexes in various formats, including video, books, posters, cards, wall works, and temporary installations. Typeset or handwritten on the wall, the words double as drawings, using language as a stand-in, and freestanding narratives, gleaned from hermetic and social experiences.

Kristan Horton studied fine art at the University of Guelph and the Ontario College of Art and Design. For the past decade he has shown his work widely in Canada and abroad. He currently resides in Toronto. Horton’s multi-disciplinary practice includes sculpture, drawing, photography and video. Using layered processes of construction, both material and virtual; he has produced several long-term projects linked conceptually by their serial and episodic structure. Horton researches and creates his subjects in an intensive studio practice, ultimately realizing his artworks through inventive and experimental uses of digital technology. Horton’s acclaimed Dr. Strangelove Dr. Strangelove project was seen in a series of over forty photographs exhibited at the Art Gallery of York University and accompanied by a publication illustrating all 200 diptychs (2007). He has also had solo exhibitions at White Columns, New York, (2008) and The Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2007), among others. Horton’s work has been featured recently in the following group exhibitions: Beautiful Fictions, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2009-2010), My Evil Twin, MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina (2009), Toy Void, Münchner Kammerspiele, Munich (2008), Stutter and Twitch, Bard College Museum, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York (2007), Beyond/In Western New York, The Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York (2007) and We can Do This Now, The Power Plant, Toronto (2006-2007).

Instant Coffee is a service oriented artist collective now based in Toronto and Vancouver. The domain name Instant Coffee was registered in May of 2000. Instant Coffee’s motive for initiating “services” came from our desire to place relational activities, more directly communication, at the core of our practice. Ultimately, we believe that communication is the primary function of artistic production, but what is meant by communication or the building of relations is continually under negotiation. Together we have developed a practice that culminates in bringing together large numbers of artists, designers, musicians and other cultural producers under loosely themed events. We offer networking services that promote local, national and international activities and publish a monthly on-line magazine, Instant Coffee Saturday Edition. In conjunction with our events, we also publish bookworks, posters and other multiples. Instant Coffee’s most consistent members are Jinhan Ko, Jenifer Papararo, Kate Monro, Cecilia Berkovic, Jon Sasaki, Emily Hogg and Kelly Lycan.

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.

Toronto artist Guntar Kravis earned a degree in photographic arts from Ryerson University. His work has been published in Prefix Photo, Alphabet City and Mix Magazine. His work can be found in private, public and corporate collections in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K. He has been a member of Gallery 44 for 8 years and is currently working on a short experimental film. The artist wishes to thank the Ontario Arts Council for their assistance in the production and exhibition of Echo.

John Marriott is a Vancouver-born artist who lives and works in Toronto. Since 1995 he has been active as a writer, curator, and artist working in video, installation, performance and urban interventions. His works have been seen in publications, exhibitions and screenings nationally and internationally. In 1996 his sculptural installations were presented in a solo exhibition at the Powerplant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto, and most recently his video Vegetative States (done in collaboration with Steve Reinke) screened at the International Festival of Film and Video in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.His performances, interventions, videos, installations, sculptures and images have been featured in exhibitions and festivals nationally and internationally in venues such as The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery (Toronto 1995, 1996), The Impakt Festival (Utrecht, 2003), 25HRS (Barcelona, 2003), The Rotterdam International Festival of Film and Video (Rotterdam, 2003), The 7a*lld International Festival of Performance Art (Toronto, 2004), The ZKM (Karlsruhe, 2004), The Toronto Sculpture Garden (Toronto, 2006), Optica – un centre d’art contemporain (Montréal, 2011) and The Blackwood Gallery (Mississauga, 2011, 2013).

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).

Liss Platt is a media artist whose works take the form of videotapes, films, photographs, web sites, performances, and installations. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Multimedia Program at McMaster University and a part-time consultant for organizations involved in independent media arts preservation, such as IMAP and Materiamedia. She also curates video and film programs, writes/edits for media publications, and plays ice hockey.

As an artist I am committed to an experimental approach which utilizes hybrid forms. Combining personal narrative, critical analysis, humor, and gender politics, my work explores the way various representations (popular, subcultural, artistic) inform our understanding of ourselves within the world. Drawing heavily on camp and parody, my work attempts to playfully unravel some of the intricacies of identification, representation, and subjectivity. My use of humor is a conscious strategy intended to increase accessibility and reach an audience that may not be open to or interested in queer subjectivities.

-Liss Platt’s website

For over a decade Liss Platt has been making abstract works out of everyday gestures and objects that resonate with her. The photographs in constant represents a continuation of her interest in bringing elements of the everyday, along with personal and autobiographical content, into an aestheticised and conceptual art practice. The centering of the subject and the repetition align the series with the New Topographic movement and offer more commonplace, rather than sublime, renditions of nature. The particular landscape represented in this series of images is from a place Platt has been returning to, and photographing for over eight years. She is interested in the process of sustained looking, particularly at something that is familiar, and what occurs through an accumulation of images. She is also intrigued by the tension between what changes in the scene and what stays the same.

Liss Platt lives and works in Hamilton, Ontario where she is associate professor in the multimedia program at McMaster University. Her work has been exhibited and screened internationally. She previously exhibited in the exhibition, Pattern Theory at MKG127 in 2007 and as a member of the Shake-n-Make collective for the exhibition, I Can’t Stop This Feeling in 2009.

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.

Zeesy Powers is an interdisciplinary artist based in Toronto, Canada who likes to play with expectations. She has worked on an organic goat farm, where she cared for and slaughtered 100 chickens, and has foraged for urban and wild foods on 3 continents. Her performance and video work has been exhibited in festivals and galleries around the world, with her project I Will Tell you Exactly What I Think of You making people cry, and then ask for a hug, and then want to hear more. She is a past resident of CCA Kitakyushu (Japan), The Banff Centre (Alberta) and Palomar5 (Berlin). Zeesy is currently working on treating video and film as painting, and expanding her fake Reality-TV-empire.

The Prize Budget for Boys is an art group convened in Toronto in 2001 to make new media, performance, video game, literary, and fine art.

Members include Mike Brown, Neil Hennessy, Isa Hooper, Mike Horgan, Tristan Parish and Chris Walker

Tanya Read graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design in 1995 and since then she has been active in the Toronto art community. She was an organizer and founder of the Impure artists collective in Toronto from 1994 – 1998. In 1999 Read and partner Scott Carruthers opened a storefront exhibition space called Fly Gallery in the Queen St. W. neighbourhood of Toronto. Fly Gallery closed in the fall of 2011 after 12 years.

Tanya created a character called Mr. Nobody in 1998 and since then her art practice has focused on projects featuring this character. Read has made super 8 animations, drawings, sculpture, silk screened t-shirts and video all featuring Mr. Nobody. Her work has received extensive critical acclaim including articles in The Globe and Mail, National Post, Canadian Art Magazine, Calgary Herald and Korea Times. She has exhibited work in Toronto, Calgary, Hamilton, Seoul, Korea and Japan. When not spending time with Mr. Nobody, Read enjoys the rock and roll life playing bass and singing in the band ‘Ethel and the Mermen’.

Steph Rogerson is a crafter, artist, curator, and academic who believes there is critical power in television. Long-term interests include semiotics, photography, and queer theory. Current interests are Gordon Ramsey, Adam Lambert, and embroidery.

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.

Paul Mpagi Sepuya (1982, San Bernardino, CA) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He studied photography and imaging at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in New York, Los Angeles, Basel, Sydney, Toronto, Paris, Berlin and Hamburg. His work has been featured and reviewed in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Interview, SLEEK, Capricious, V, HUNTER, Paper, and BUTT, among other publications. Awards include the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace Residency (2009-2010) and Artist-in-Residence at the Center for Photography at Woodstock (2010), and Artist-in-Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2010-2011). His most recent artist publication, STUDIO WORK, was published in 2012 and the related body of work has been exhibited at The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City, The Center for Photography at Woodstock, NY, Franklin Art Works, Minneapolis, and Artspeak, Vancouver.

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.

Josh Thorpe is an artist, writer, and musician living in Toronto. He has a Master’s in Visual Studies from University of Toronto and he works at ERA Architects and Cove & Ovolo. His work has been shown in Canada, the US, and Europe. In 2009 Art Metropole published Thorpe’s first book, Dan Graham Pavilions: A Guide.

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.

Julie Voyce was born in 1957 in Woodstock, Ontario. She Studied at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto. Since the early 1980s, she has shown her work extensively in Canada and has had exhibitions in the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia and Italy. Her practice has been documented in writings and exhibition catalogues by Art Gallery of Mississauga, Mississauga, Ontario; Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton, Ontario; University of Waterloo Art Gallery, Waterloo, Ontario and Struts Gallery, Sackville, New Brunswick. Her work is included in numerous private and public collections including those of The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal; Art Gallery of Mississauga, Mississauga and Osler Hoskin and Harcourt, Toronto. In addition to drawing, painting and printmaking, Voyce has engaged in several book and mail art projects, often collaboratively. In 2004, she was awarded Artist of the Year Award by the by the Untitled Art Awards in Toronto. She lives and works in Toronto, Ontario.

Felt is a design company based on the material and ideas of felt.

Founded by artist Kathryn Walter, the company specializes in industrial manufactured felts and is unique in its commitment to a material rather that a market, allowing it to move into numerous fields including visual art, architecture and design.

The versatility of the material is evident in the product lines FELT Home, FELT Fashion and FELT Gift, while FELT Custom and FELT Design/Build demonstrate a further range of possibility for fabrication. Clients have included Holt-Renfrew, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Power Plant: Contemporary Art Gallery at Harbourfront, Bruce Mau Design, Canadian Rocky Mountain Resorts and Teeple Architects.

The company emphasizes eco-friendly living. All felts are 80 – 100% wool with varying combinations of virgin and recycled fibres. FELT products are designed using basic geometric patterns that enable low-waste production.

Laptop music maker, experimental photographer, digital art curator, open source advocate, online community developer & digital communications strategist

Montreal ex-pat Neil Wiernik (aka naw) who currently calls Toronto his home, began composing electronic music in 1988 with explorations in audio art and experimental music. Neil’s interest in sound and technology has lead him to a continued questioning and refinement of audio tools and modes of production resulting in experimentation with altered instruments, modified devices, and custom software environments. Neil’s music could be described as warm, atmospheric, and cinematic.

Neil’s sound is firmly grounded in formal contemporary composition but can also be weighed alongside the rich traditions of dub studio culture and the by chance musings of free music improvisors. His music has been described in “The Wire” as having “…the kind of sharpness and clarity usually lost amid the murk and decay of clicks and cuts and digital delays.”

Neil has released music on various labels including noise factory, paper+sound, feedbackloop, blrr and elevation recordings as a solo artist; under his own name or using various pseudonyms, as well as part of various band projects.

Neil is also a founding member of the online publication vagueterrain, sits on the board of directors for MusicWorks magazine. By day Neil works in the non profit sector as a digital communications strategist and an online community developer, he also dabbles in experimental photography and film, prefers open source technology and enjoys curating digital art.

Leonardo Rosado, FeedbackLoop label curator recently described my most recent album Broken Strings, Plastic Tubes and Bedside Serenades as:

“What happens inbetween states is probably one of the most fascinating aspects about “ambient” music. At the surface, all seems quiet and peaceful, but when you delve a little bit more inside the sound you start to apprehend the true meaning of the sounds.

Neil Wiernik’s latest album Broken Strings, Plastic Tubes and Bedside Serenades, is a perfect example of this dynamics, or shall I say this stillness. The four songs of the album all seem to be static, and I mean they are almost like in suspension, but also they are soaked in electric static, like you were in a foggy landscape and all you could feel was the electricity in the air, nothing to see, nothing to touch. And when you start listening to this static, you soon realize that the rhythmic intervals are not the same, the deepness of the static evolves, but you can’t quite understand what is the logic behind it. And you feel totally lost, though not desperate.

Neil Wiernik masters his music quite beautifully, with virtuoso craftsman hands and an elegant stream of sounds, there is tension and peace at the same time everywhere. Movement and stillness.”

Amy Wilson (born 1973 in New York City, NY) is an artist who currently lives and works in Jersey City, NJ. She received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 1995, and her MFA from Yale University in 1997. She primarily works with watercolor and pencil on paper, with which she makes drawings, artist’s books, and three-dimensional sculptures. Her work is narrative and often involves the re-telling of stories from the artist’s life. She is represented by BravinLee programs in New York.

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.

Jill Henderson is a Scottish/Canadian artist born in Scotland in 1969 and graduated from Glasgow School of Art with a BA honours in Fine Art in 1991 and a Masters in Fine Art in 1993.

From 1991 to 1993 she exhibited in Scotland and Europe including The ICA in London, Overgaden Gallery (Copenhagen), Tramway and the Centre for Contemporary Art in Glasgow, Scotland.

In 1994 Jill Henderson moved to Toronto, Canada and began exhibiting in Toronto and all over Canada, showing at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery (Toronto), The Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto) and The New Gallery (Calgary). She also started to be represented by Fine art dealers Wynick Tuck Gallery, Toronto, from 1995 to the present day. She also exhibited at Transmission Gallery (Glasgow), YYZ (Toronto), Art Metropole (Toronto), Catalyst Arts (Belfast), Hales Gallery (London UK), Angelus Novus (Antwerp), Brasilica (Vienna) and Vox Populi (Philadelphia). During this time Jill Henderson also co-founded and ran ‘Free Parking’ an artist run gallery project in downtown Toronto, as well as curating a number of exhibitions.

In the year 2000, Jill Henderson was asked to exhibit at PS1 centre for contemporary Art / MOMA in the widely acclaimed exhibition “Greater New York”. In 2001, Jill Henderson was also asked to exhibit as one of seven Canadian artists chosen for an international exchange exhibition and seminar in Taipei, Taiwan curated by Manray Hsu. Since 2001 she has exhibited at The Art Directors Club (NYC), Lothringer 13 (Munich), Morris & Belkin Gallery (Vancouver), Manif d’Art 2 (Quebec), The Americas Society (NYC) and Solo shows at The Helen Pitt Gallery (Vancouver) and the Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver). She was also nominated for a Louis Comfort Tiffany award.

She has received numerous awards from The Canada Council, The Scottish Arts Council and The Ontario Arts Council. She was also recently made a lifetime member of Art Metropole, Toronto. Her work is also in the collection of The Robert McLauglin Museum in Oshawa, Canada and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, as well as in numerous private collections.