Art Exhibitions at Artword,
1993-1998 During the five years in our
studio theatre at 81 Portland Street, Toronto, we kept a
constant and changing display of work in the Artword
collection, or on loan from our artist friends. Now and then
there was a specific exhibit, often linked with performance
in the studio theatre, as listed below:
A Bookwork by Frank
Manners
Prototypes of working pages for a book-in-progress called
21.5 Hz, as well as copies of The Unavailable
Mind. Frank Manners, a Toronto artist, was a member of
Workscene Gallery. He was also a contributor, with Reinhard
Reitzenstein, to Artword Artists Forum in a regular column
called "A Dialogue between Frank Manners and Reinhard
Reitzenstein".
This work was on display in conjunction with Bush News,
Beauvais and Books, performances by William Beauvais and
Karen Doleske, November 28, 1993.
Three sculptural works from Lynn
Campbell's "Passages" series
On display during the Sounds and Clowns performance
by Peter Jarvis and Nobuo Kubota on December 5, 1993. These
works, door structures with a strong theatrical and
allegorical presence, have often been seen in Artword's
foyer, and sometimes even on stage.
Lynn Campbell designed the Artword Artists Forum logo and
often helped with layout and pasteup, as well as cover
design during the life of the publication. She was a
founding member of Workscene Gallery in the late 80s and
early 90s.
Sculpture, paintings,
drawings by Julie Picard
November 1 to 12, 1994
Julie Picard uses forged and welded steel to
fabricate rough and vigorous organiz body and palnt forms.
Also on show were oil and wax paintings. Both the sculptures
and paintings explore the body as a repository of emotional
memory, layering the body's physical inner reality with its
psychological inner reality.
A performance by musician Roderick Zalameda called
Wood between Worlds on Thursday November 3, used the
sculptures as an acoustical environment in the theatre.
No Mo' PoMo
November 24 to 26, 1994 at 8 pm
An irreverent adult puppet performance by the Necessary
Corrective Collective that took a riotously uncensored,
unfootnoted look at the foibles of the art world. The
Necessary Corrective Collective includes Toronto artists
Anthony Arnold, Joyce Kline and Iris
Paabo. Guest appearances were made by June Call-Me, Sgt.
Duncan Donuts, Hannibal Dundee, Awfully Galling, Annie
Malrights, Vera Video and of course Baudrillard and
Foucault.
Virago!
December 28 and 29, 1994
An exhibition and performance by Amanta Scott and
David Tomlinson of four enormous Goddess Sound
Sculptures created by Amanta and David from a wild
assortment of found material and played as percussion
instruments. The performance, a celebration of the Bold and
Boisterous Feminine Spirit, involved voice, dance and text
as well as the percussion.
Paintings by Bill Kort
March 23 tp April 6, 1995
Large acrylic paintings by Bill Kort are stained
wet-into-wet with large gestural strokes so that the paint
flows and there are no defined edges. The works have a
strong colour sense and vigorous overall activity. The
paintings, both in the foyer and in the theatre, provided
the setting for Pulse Form Variations, a concert of
new jazz compositions by Timothy Minthorn on March 25, 1995.
Journey through a Blind Man's
Passion: Performance and exhibition by Philip
Read
Saturday, February 18, 1995 at 8:00 pm
A multi-media performance by artist/poet Philip Read
combined music, poetry, video, movement and action painting.
Through images and symbols, Read built an atmospheric
reflection on the creative process -- and made a wall-sized
painting during the performance. An exhibition of Read's ink
and watercolour paintings was in the foyer.
Philip Read is a visual artist who uses the techniques of
traditional Oriental painting to explore a personal and
spiritual visual statement. He often collaborates with
musicians and adds the elements of video and poetry to his
work.
Still
Life in an Earthquake: Acrylic paintings on canvas by
Anthony Arnold
May 24 to June 10, 1995 (during The Artword Festival of the
Human Voice)
Arnold's sources are a wild and wonderful mix of Japanese
woodblock prints, comic books and Greek myths, and -- rare
in the art world -- a sense of humour. Arnold was a member
of the Necessary Corrective Collective and a perpetrator of
the No Mo' PoMo performance at Artword in
November 1994. He was also a longtime contributor to Artword
Artists Forum with his column "Le Flaneur's Diary".
Geography: An exhibition of
paintings by Andrew Glinski
March 9 to 30, 1996
In this work, the geography of abstraction, Glinski examines
the relationship between landscape as a lived experience and
his subjective reaction to it. These intensely coloured
acrylic paintings (on canvas and on wood) often depict a
roughly geometric shape whose edges are lost and found
again, blending and melding with an active ground.
Andrew Glinski has worked for many years on paintings that
wrestle with the subjective contexts of abstraction. Glinski
has participated in many shows in and around Toronto,
including group shows at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Lake
Galleries, Ruby-Fiorino Gallery and Partisan Gallery. Other
significant contributions to Toronto's art life include
being a co-founder and distribution manager of Artword
Magazine and a participant in several collectives, including
Workscene Gallery, the 53 Fraser Group and the Drawing
Collective. Andrew Glinski's recent work can be viewed on
his website.
Studies for Milkweed Patch:
Works by Debbie O'Rourke
November 11 to 29, 1997
Drawings on silk and carved painted wood sticks deal with
Debbie O'Rourke's ongoing fascination with the life cycle of
the monarch butterfly and the resonances for us in their
fragile yet triumphant transformations.The full installation
of the Milkweed Patch is on view at ASpace Gallery from
March 6 to April 17, 1999.
Debbie designed and made the costumes for Whoever You
Are, the theatrical adaptation by Ronald Weihs of
science fiction author Judith Merril's short story. The
exhibition was concurrent with the run of the play.
This is the final exhibition in the 81 Portland Street
space. In 1998 we began plans to move next door, to 75
Portland Street.