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Learning from the Lake

pieces of blue plastic against a white wall being held up by a white

 

Works by:

Maggie Groat and Kelly Jazvac

a row of clear glasses lined in front of a window
close up of wood pieces white white pebbles
close up of a dark turquoise blue water

 

Learning from the Lake

June 13 – July 7, 2018

Curated by Katie Lawson

Justina M. Barnicke Gallery

Water is fundamental for all of life: it can also be understood as an emotional, elemental or spiritual home. For artists, a growing interest in water is connected to the urgencies of visualizing the changes occurring in bodies of water, the element which has become one of the most urgent, visceral and ethically fraught sites of political and theoretical inquiry. Exhibitions which gather up artworks responding to the aqueous come quite literally in waves. What does it mean to mount an exhibition which attends to bodies of water at a time when climatic catastrophe ripples through the hydrosphere? How might artistic research and interdisciplinary collaboration reveal our entanglement with a more-than-human world?

Stories, knowledges and representations help us to make sense of the world. They are able to do so through the foregrounding or backgrounding of different aspects of a phenomenon. Elizabeth Grosz suggests that “concepts do not solve problems that events generate for us” but “they enable us to surround ourselves with possibilities for being otherwise”¹. Investigating an elemental metaphor as a cultural producer carries the potential for being otherwise — the exhibition Learning from the Lake seeks to explore these possibilities, conjuring certain kinds of ethical relations with water and watery others.

¹ Grosz, Elizabeth. Becoming Undone: Darwinian Reflections of Life, Politics and Art. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011: 78.

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 13, 2018, 6-8pm
Justina M. Barnicke Gallery

Shoreline Cleanup: Humber River

Saturday, June 16, 2018, 2pm
This is a registered cleanup with The Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup.
Meeting point: East side of the Humber Bay Arch Bridge.

Swimming Lessons: Astrida Neimanis and Beth Stuart

Wednesday, June 27, 2018, 10:30pm
Registration required for this performative colloquium
Register Here
Hart House Pool

Jordyn Stewart: Trails

Wednesday, July 4, 2018, 7pm
Artist Jordyn Stewart will lead a guided hike from the Art Museum to the Lake Ontario shoreline.
Justina M. Barnicke Gallery

Curatorial Tour: Katie Lawson

Saturday, July 7th, 2018, 2pm
Justina M. Barnicke Gallery

Watersheds: An Expanded Reading Room

Ongoing
With contributions from: Gina Badger, Diane Borsato, Tiziana La Melia, Maryse Larivière, Leisure Projects (Meredith Carruthers + Susannah Wesley), Tegan Moore, Aubyn O’ Grady, Jaclyn Quaresma, Jordyn Stewart, and the Synthetic Collective.

Our Supporters

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


Title Image: Kelly Jazvac, Salp, Salvaged adhesive vinyl, steel and chip clips, 2012.

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