Common Place: Common-Place
Common Place: Common-Place
June 5 – July 27, 2019
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Curated by Lillian O’Brien Davis
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University of Toronto Art Centre
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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.