Water Babies
Gunilla Josephson | october 2022
Water Babies
‘Water Babies: Surf’s up but Mama says No’, Gunilla Josephson, oil on canvas, 60 x 130 cm [63 x 51 inches], 2022
At the micro moment of awakening, induced by a fragmented chord of surf music in the ear shell, the little goddess water babies experience the instantaneous delirious hyper-augmented journey flowing from the iris on the digitized splashes of the great wave, interrupted by the super ego’s knowing wink.
‘All that Remains’, Gunilla Josephson in collaboration with Lillian Ross Millard, video on montior, 20min 30sec loop, 2021
All That Remains parodies a European genre of still life painting, the vanitas, a serious expression of the artist's own mortality and the ephemeral. This particular "still life" is not so still or serious. A Master and her Assistant at work (at play) subvert the logic of Dutch Golden Age painting in the context of contemporary materiality.
From Gunilla Josephson:
My work, whether film or painting, is to a large extent informed by the language of the kind of cinema, theatre and literature that is rooted in the problematical, always political domestic sphere played out on a chaotic arena. My fictional documentaries and performance-based videos raise questions about the life long formation and transformation of identity, until and including death. Despite their playful appearances and their theatrical mise-en-scène the bouncy characters in my films spiral into complex psychological states of consciousness and behavior which confuse the consensus, our points of reference of the established order. I work in a way that exploits unbridled emotions, with the aim to challenge the accepted conventions of art as an entertainment that is well behaved.
About
Gunilla Josephson is a Swedish artist with a BA in Social Science from Stockholm University and an MFA from College of Fine Arts and Design in Stockholm [1986 Konstfackskolan]. She lives and works in Toronto and exhibits in Canada, USA and Europe. Some venues are The Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris, The Swedish Institute in Paris,; Language Plus, Quebec and OO Gallery, Halifax, Nova Scotia; at Cinématheque Toronto; Toronto International Images Festival 2000, 2001, 2002, 200 9; Goethe Institute, Toronto; Video Inn, Vancouver; Cinématographe Montréal; SAW Video, Ottawa; Winnipeg Art Gallery; The UK/Canada Video Exchange at South London Art Gallery and at LUX Cinema, London; The Stuttgarter Winterfest; The Kassel Dokumentarfilm & Videofest, The International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (Festival Prize]; in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia; The Nordic Arts Centre, Bergen, Norway; The Video Archaeology Festival in Sofia, Bulgaria, at Moderna Museet; Femmedia-International Film and Video Festival 1998, at Bio Rio, all in Stockholm, Sweden, and at Gallery Leena Kuumola, Helsinki, Finland in 2000.
Josephson is part of Ways of Something, Canadian artist Lorna Mills’ contemporary remake of John Berger’s British TV-series Ways of Seeing from 1970; and has been an artist in Residence at Circolo Scandinavio in Rome; The Gushul Studio in Blairmore, Alberta, Canada; 4 months Residency at The Nordic Art Center in Bergen, Norway; at Charles Street Video and Trinity Square Video in Toronto, both 4 months Residencies – under the umbrella of Toronto Images festival. She was awarded the Canada Council Paris Studio at Cité Internationale de Paris in 2003 and is the co-founder and Director of Triennale MMsM, France, 2012
From Lillian Ross-Millard
I devise choreography using a methodological approach, processing text and imagery siphoned through various exercises and restraints to produce movement scores. Functioning as research, my current solo practice explores the relationship between language and bodies, charting feedback loops of meaning between memory and movement under contemporary conditions of labour. These days, a lot of green screens show up in my work. The performative aesthetic is indebted to a clown vernacular.
About
Lillian Ross-Millard (b. Toronto, 1993) is a UK-based video artist with a background in physical theatre. She has an MFA from the Glasgow School of Art and a BAH in Contemporary Studies and Theatre Studies from University of King’s College, Halifax. She recently exhibited new work at Kiosk Gallery and 5 Florence Street in Glasgow, UK. She is currently engaged in an ongoing collaboration with the visual theatre company Snap-Elastic as a video artist and performer. This fall, she will conduct The Lost & Found Sessions, a participatory work at Paragon Studios in Belfast.
‘Water Babies: Surf’s up but Mama says No’, Gunilla Josephson, oil on canvas, 60 x 130 cm [63 x 51 inches], 2022
At the micro moment of awakening, induced by a fragmented chord of surf music in the ear shell, the little goddess water babies experience the instantaneous delirious hyper-augmented journey flowing from the iris on the digitized splashes of the great wave, interrupted by the super ego’s knowing wink.
‘All that Remains’, Gunilla Josephson in collaboration with Lillian Ross Millard, video on montior, 20min 30sec loop, 2021
All That Remains parodies a European genre of still life painting, the vanitas, a serious expression of the artist's own mortality and the ephemeral. This particular "still life" is not so still or serious. A Master and her Assistant at work (at play) subvert the logic of Dutch Golden Age painting in the context of contemporary materiality.
From Gunilla Josephson:
My work, whether film or painting, is to a large extent informed by the language of the kind of cinema, theatre and literature that is rooted in the problematical, always political domestic sphere played out on a chaotic arena. My fictional documentaries and performance-based videos raise questions about the life long formation and transformation of identity, until and including death. Despite their playful appearances and their theatrical mise-en-scène the bouncy characters in my films spiral into complex psychological states of consciousness and behavior which confuse the consensus, our points of reference of the established order. I work in a way that exploits unbridled emotions, with the aim to challenge the accepted conventions of art as an entertainment that is well behaved.
About
Gunilla Josephson is a Swedish artist with a BA in Social Science from Stockholm University and an MFA from College of Fine Arts and Design in Stockholm [1986 Konstfackskolan]. She lives and works in Toronto and exhibits in Canada, USA and Europe. Some venues are The Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris, The Swedish Institute in Paris,; Language Plus, Quebec and OO Gallery, Halifax, Nova Scotia; at Cinématheque Toronto; Toronto International Images Festival 2000, 2001, 2002, 200 9; Goethe Institute, Toronto; Video Inn, Vancouver; Cinématographe Montréal; SAW Video, Ottawa; Winnipeg Art Gallery; The UK/Canada Video Exchange at South London Art Gallery and at LUX Cinema, London; The Stuttgarter Winterfest; The Kassel Dokumentarfilm & Videofest, The International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (Festival Prize]; in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia; The Nordic Arts Centre, Bergen, Norway; The Video Archaeology Festival in Sofia, Bulgaria, at Moderna Museet; Femmedia-International Film and Video Festival 1998, at Bio Rio, all in Stockholm, Sweden, and at Gallery Leena Kuumola, Helsinki, Finland in 2000.
Josephson is part of Ways of Something, Canadian artist Lorna Mills’ contemporary remake of John Berger’s British TV-series Ways of Seeing from 1970; and has been an artist in Residence at Circolo Scandinavio in Rome; The Gushul Studio in Blairmore, Alberta, Canada; 4 months Residency at The Nordic Art Center in Bergen, Norway; at Charles Street Video and Trinity Square Video in Toronto, both 4 months Residencies – under the umbrella of Toronto Images festival. She was awarded the Canada Council Paris Studio at Cité Internationale de Paris in 2003 and is the co-founder and Director of Triennale MMsM, France, 2012
From Lillian Ross-Millard
I devise choreography using a methodological approach, processing text and imagery siphoned through various exercises and restraints to produce movement scores. Functioning as research, my current solo practice explores the relationship between language and bodies, charting feedback loops of meaning between memory and movement under contemporary conditions of labour. These days, a lot of green screens show up in my work. The performative aesthetic is indebted to a clown vernacular.
About
Lillian Ross-Millard (b. Toronto, 1993) is a UK-based video artist with a background in physical theatre. She has an MFA from the Glasgow School of Art and a BAH in Contemporary Studies and Theatre Studies from University of King’s College, Halifax. She recently exhibited new work at Kiosk Gallery and 5 Florence Street in Glasgow, UK. She is currently engaged in an ongoing collaboration with the visual theatre company Snap-Elastic as a video artist and performer. This fall, she will conduct The Lost & Found Sessions, a participatory work at Paragon Studios in Belfast.
hearth
The Nest Channel | September 2022
The Nest Channel
Organized by Hearth at Spacemaker II Hiromi Nakatsugawa is a visual artist from Japan and Montreal, and is currently based in Toronto. Her drawing based practice depicts façades of structures rendered in a gauzy drone of colours and textures, which morph and melt towards an ever changing manifestation of the object. Hiromi graduated with a BFA at OCAD University in 2022, and she is currently interested in sci-fi anime aesthetics, natural ephemera and otherworldly phenomenon. ‘Secret Burrow Map’, 2022, 8” x 17”, colour pencils on paper ‘Foiled’, 2022, 7.25” x 11.25”, colour pencils on paper ‘Marmot Lair’, 2022, 6” x 10”, colour pencils on paper Jos Theriault is a multi-disciplinary artist, focusing on plastics, memory of place and the environmental changes the artist has experienced. ‘This Must Be The Place’, 2021, 7.25” x 10”, acrylic mounted to wood panel ‘Plasticide’, 2021, 5” x 7”, acrylic, resin, lava gesso, acrylic marker mounted to wood panel ‘Jogger at Night’, 2020, 4.45” diameter, acrylic collage, rubber band mounted on acrylic paint “Happy Accident 1’, 2022, dimensions variable, acrylic collage “Happy Accident 2’, 2022, dimensions variable, acrylic collage Leeay Aikawa (b. Japan) is an interdisciplinary artist based in T’karonto/ Toronto. As an eco-yogic feminist and self-claimed Jungian artist-researcher, Aikawa persues Earth-based practice and craft as an archetypal path to explore collective unconscious –oneness consciousness. She received her MFA as well as her BDes both from OCAD University and worked as an illustrator for over ten years before completing her MFA. Coupled with this, she is a certified yoga teacher, which makes her work often investigate the space between physicality and spirituality. ‘Awareness’, 2020, cicada wing, acorn, and found objects ‘Grieve Weaving’, 2022, Foraged tall grass, oyster teardrop shells, burlap ‘Meditation’, 2022, washi paper, foraged leaves, wire |
Deer tore in even shelter breath / static long hound cackle breath / murder snort doubles over the blasting channel breath / gas staple dragged over the nest breath / thunder sealed for a lure in song breath… Tending to those downy patches under all egg weight’s sag, together we ease a pore of hurt. Inner vision: beaking plummets its bird - look to where torn from sky! Vision-immersion, lensless rend yourself this land’s heel by throwing a scatter (bread for feathers) so my empty paws may trace your temple silent & rest my heart in a basket of pecks. As even-hour tosses door, in comes night’s new gaspings – awoke in a start at 4, out the porthole under Cassiopeia Fire motor of seam ripple arch to ruin all given
WILL TELL YOU WHEN YOU ARE FAR ENOUGH THEN YOU CAN START TO TURN Water muscle hears imprint of shale plates. So sew up your sight, water muscle. Coal gives over in bitten cattail shoots, breath smoke wing rusting slowly the rust of pines which is their tawny pollen. Out me way! To chase the spark flying up willow music… our forever strumming gift breath (I smuggle this sentiment into every letter, namely, how the season is not over it is gone) Mercy wheeze half blisters around the snout capped breath, troublemakers in the fenced quarter howl and yap even now. Even before the cackle ends, toothy whitebrow kicks up mud (hole-makers) gouges shapes forewarning. Pucker of terror bearings breath/ groany bile hatchling’s clean bleating breath. Persist by way of anagram and stars embroidered over under over. Snare a wooden hoot / to become light painfully / then spray out across the milky lowers, swallowèd up by this grotto. Sousreal you wear the purse of psychic handiwork, stuff your pocketless shroud with fistfulls of grass. In this world we carry shit = TO ASH. Stand-on-your-head-seen-spirals-dive-down-in-lichen-breath. Secure for yourself a special place in the held-close hound pack breath……… Hunched trowelling we stumbled into your stare curious seagull : in 3 skulls a wonder buzzing, BdB 29/8/22 |
Huge thank you to Hearth (www.hearthgarage.com) and Benjamin de Boer for organizing and curating this exhibition.
Also thank you to Gallery Weekend Toronto 2022 for including us in this years programming. Check us out on their website here.
Also thank you to Gallery Weekend Toronto 2022 for including us in this years programming. Check us out on their website here.
Maria simmons
Segmented Life, Regenerative System | august 2022
Maria Simmons is an artist from Hamilton, ON. She investigates potentialized environments through the creation of hybrid sculpture and installation. Her work embraces contamination as an act of collaboration. She collects garbage, grows mushrooms, ferments plants, and nurtures fruit flies. She makes art that eats itself. She holds an MFA from the University of Waterloo and a BFA from McMaster University. She has completed residencies at Mustarinda, Finland, BioArt Society, Silent Barn in NYC, and Factory Media Centre in Hamilton, ON.
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This project is a poetic video installation with an audio soundscape that draws inspiration from more-than-human forms of life to explore notions of love. Specifically, the anatomy and regenerative qualities of worms form the basis of a new way of thinking about love. What would it be like if we thought of loving not from a circulatory system but from a nervous system? To love not with one’s whole heart but instead like a planarian worm with a nervous system that can be divided and regenerated.
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Ecologies & Cosmologies presents the 2022 Themed Commissions, which were produced over a summer residency. This year’s theme invites projects that explore and critique different forms of interdependency, networks of life, and destabilize fixed entities/identities/borders through technological, ecological or cosmological metaphors.
The selected projects explore various topics, including; networks of care; spiritual, physical and digital connections in human and nonhuman relationships; environmental speculative fiction; and deconstructing trauma through ecological metaphors;
In reference to the theme of interconnectedness, the selected projects take place in different venues across Tkaronto, culminating in a constellation of public-facing spaces, inextricably linked to the structure of the city and bringing together a number of local artist-run communities.
Co-presented by Trinity Square Video, Lakeshore Arts, Whippersnapper Gallery, Critical Distance Centre for Curators, and SPACEMAKERII.
The Themed Commission is made possible by the EQ Bank. Special thanks to: Ed Video Media Arts Centre, Art Metropole, and Scarborough Arts.
Morris Fox
My Gay Mediaeval Times | July 2022
Morris Fox (he/him) is an artist & writer, living in Tkaronto (1984). He graduated from the Low Residency MFA program at SAIC in 2018. Fox’s work manifests primarily in performance, textiles, video and writing. His influences include Stephen Andrews, Joyelle Mcsweeney, Skawennati, Peter Carpenter. Recently Fox performed in VR as a bat for Claudia Hart’s Ludicity (Hyphen Hubs, Mozilla Hubs 2021), created digital avatars and virtual environments for Gothwerk Revelations, curated by Maggie Wong, in Hotwheelz Festival (Chicago, 2020), worked as the textile intern for The Icelandic Textile Centre (Blönduós, 2020), and was curated by Jordan Olivia Turk in An Archive of Feelings (Randolph, VT, 2019). His show Vestiges and Remains at Artcite Inc. (Windsor, ON, 2022) explored the haunted temperature of archives, community memories and the ghosts of labour. He has exhibited in Canada, The United States of America and Iceland. He is a PhD candidate in the Interdisciplinary Humanities program at Concordia University (Fall, 2022).
I'm Morris Fox, a queer poet and artist who explores virtual and ecological intimacies via queer and gothic objects, texts and praxis. I see my practice as a net/cropolis, a net being a porous fabric that trolls, traps and connects, and the necropolis being a city of the dead and parkland, or a cemetery of desires. This hybrid wording allows me to think through emotions and uncanny emergences, to find affinity through asynchrony and hauntings. |
My Gay Medieaeval Times, entangles the triple threat of medieval times: my own flourish into mid-adulthood, the historiographic period and the existential times we live in contemporaneously, finally Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament, where you are invited to "travel through the mists of time to a festive celebration." Chainmaille tapestries in plaid and floral knit patterns hang like funereal achievements. A hatchet is buried in lavender soap. A virtual reality avatar swings a green axe gaily around a necropolis pageant ground. My work finds solidarity in queer and ludic self-fashioning and interfaces, allows the gothic structures of the cemetery to take on erotic and co-contaminated self(s) within what James Bridle has termed the "New Dark Age", self(s) that engage with animate and inanimate beings with feeling.
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Matt Thomas
the woods are lovely, dark and deep | june 2022
Matt Thomas is a contemporary painter who lives and works in Toronto. His practice is multifaceted, osculating between abstraction and representation. Matt is a Graduate of the 2022 class from OCADU’s Drawing and Painting BFA program. He has exhibited in multiple group shows both locally and abroad since 2015, including The Plumb in Toronto, and Warbling Collective in London UK.
https://mattthomas.partial.gallery/ From the Artist: “For this series, I’m using landscape, specifically the woods, to symbolize the psychology of navigating a path through life. Forests have been symbolized as both protective and full of danger. Full of life, resources and sanctuary, but also danger, evil and the unknown. I want these landscapes to act as interior spaces, reflecting a generationally shared psychological state of simultaneous hope for prosperity, and foreboding doom. “The woods are lovely, dark and deep” is a quote from a Robert Frost poem that describes a moment at dusk where the writer stops on his path through the woods, struck by the beautiful melancholia of the “darkest evening of the year”. It’s here that I want to position the viewer, looking in to the beautiful, terrifying, unknown of the woods, the mind, and their own path that lies ahead.” |
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