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Common Place: Common-Place

pink canvas with multicoloured material

Works by:

Patrick Cruz, Erika DeFreitas, Walter Scott, Catherine Telford Keogh, Sojourner Truth Parsons

Three T shaped structures in white, black, and yellow
Large white bowl holding various dark blue and turquoise objects preserved in resin
Still of Erika DeFreitas sitting on a chair in blue jeans, black flip flops with a blank wall behind her.

Common Place: Common-Place

June 5 – July 27, 2019

Curated by Lillian O’Brien Davis

University of Toronto Art Centre

Due to construction, the University of Toronto Art Centre location is not wheelchair accessible. Learn more.

The artworks included in this exhibition engage with notions of a common place through a variety of entry points by their conceptual and material presences. The artworks are accumulations of interconnectivity—kinships[1] within themselves, with each other and with us. Catherine Telford Keogh’s sculptures contain data from previous moments; objects that are in and around us, deposits that slowly shift and change state over time, reacting in relation to each other. Erika DeFreitas’ video depicts a figure in constant movement, resisting a settled or permanent position along with the sound generated by her presence which permeates the space. Patrick Cruz’s wall painting engages with the gallery as ‘place’, a site for experimentation where presence is asserted by resisting the muting power of the white walls. Walter Scott’s humanoid sculptures extend into the gallery, the vulnerability and humour associated with their forms is a variation of representation, proposing alternate possibilities of perception. Sojourner Truth Parsons’ paintings work through the cacophony of existence, acting as memorials or visual representations of an emotional process, each painting becoming a site of exchange with and in response to the activity of the world. We care where we put things and we care where we are put. Common Place: Common-Place looks at the structures that hold us,[2] considering what it means to be in a state of constant exchange and the difficulty as well as the generative possibilities of that state.

[1] See Glissant, Édouard, and Betsy Wing. 1997. Poetics of Relation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

[2] Guibert, Pascale: “Common Place: Common-Place” A Presentation of Edouard Glissant’s Poetics of the compounding of place. Commonwealth No. 39 Autumn 2016, 113-125.

This exhibition is produced as part of the requirements for the MVS degree in Curatorial Studies at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, University of Toronto.

Opening Reception

Wednesday, June 5, 2019, 6-8pm

Drop-In Tours

Tuesdays, 2pm

Exhibition Resources

Press Release
Exhibition Brochure
Press
Large Format Guide
Exhibition Documentation

Our Supporters

We gratefully acknowledge operating support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, with additional project support from TD Insurance.

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