After All - Tonight!
After All
A colloquium of micro-disasters and subtle apocalypses…
Work by Anouk Desloges, Clare Samuel, Leanne Eisen, Marcy Chevali,
Candice Purwin, April Maciborka, Allison Rowe, Alisha Piercy
Opening Reception: Wednesday October 5th 2011. 7pm-11pm Exhibition Date: October 5th – October 27th 2011
Steam Whistle Gallery – The Roundhouse
255 Bremner Blvd, Toronto.
After All is a colloquium of micro-disasters and subtle apocalypses, little mistakes and lonely wanderers, absences and distortions, created by eight young visual artists. Both melancholy and acerbic, the works speak to the aftermath of arbitrary and fictitious disasters. Darkness has already descended, and the sensation is one of being unsettled for good, and yet, escape routes and alarm-bells appear to be built-in to each misfortune.
Anouk Desloges’ work depicts airplane crashes and ship collisions with delicately embroidered threads on cold, transparent plastic. The unfinished lines are simultaneously intimate and dispassionate, leaving us unsure how to feel about these calamities. Clare Samuel’s photographs create an ambivalent relationship between the figure and landscape, and a sense that ‘civilization’ is something long forgotten. Allison Rowe’s recycled quilt pieces contrast bright fabric colours with urgent words: ‘The Time to Try and Convince Them is Over,’ speaks one; and ‘Save Yourself,’ warns another. Alisha Piercy presents large-scale drawings of excessive fountain scenes in unnatural colours, a kind of post-apocalyptic alchemy that is both enticing and intimidating. Leanne Eisen’s ‘Scan’ project pushes technology beyond its limits, tricking, bating and teasing the machine to produce beautiful shapes. The outcomes bear scant relation to the objects they should represent, and instead become sublime errors. April Maciborka’s distorted sea imagery brings to mind tidal waves of biblical proportions, pertinent to recent events in our climate. Candice Purwin’s dense ink drawings illustrate childhood terrors, dark worlds ever present in individual memories. Marcy Chevali’s tiny crocheted figures hang together, yet are isolated from each other, little grey creatures who have lost their way in the storm.
Curated by Clare Samuel and Agi Gutkowska.
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Exhibition is open to the public- Monday to Thursday from 12 noon to 6 pm, Friday and Saturday from 11 am -6pm, and Sunday from 11am to 5 pm. Steam Whistle Brewing – The Roundhouse – 255 Bremner Blvd. Toronto. ( just south of the CN Tower)
