Friday, February 27, 2015 to Friday, April 3, 2015
Opening Reception: Feb. 27th from 7:00- 10:00 PM
Forest City Gallery is pleased to present LIVE FROM PATTERN HUT, a collaborative exhibition by Anthea Black (Toronto, ON) and Thea Yabut (London, ON) that was sparked by an image of Louise Bourgeois drawing in her studio.
Artist Talk and Publication Launch: March 28th 2015 from 6:00- 9:00 PM*
6:00- 7:00: Publication Launch/ Mingle/ Cash Bar
7:00 - 8:30: Artist Talks & Screening
8:30-9:00: Informal Q&A
*Licensed event
About the exhibition:
Who are we (with) in the studio? Who is Bourgeois looking towards as she turns from her drawing?
Black and Yabut's body of work together begins from the shared fascination with holding her gaze, and continues by filling some of the spaces in between. It builds on their common interests in early 20th century women’s studio practices, representation, craft, pattern, chance, and difference to reveal a series of tactile and cognitive meetings. Through drawing games, mirroring, and repetition, they come to “know with” or alongside one another, revealing the meaning of the Latin verb cognosco or cognition. “Knowing with” is a mode of inquiry that enables them to move in sync, and closer towards the figures in feminist art history with whom they share formal, material, and conceptual lineage.
About the artists:
Anthea Black is a Canadian artist, writer, and cultural worker based in Toronto. Her work in print, textiles, performance and video set a stage for collaborative encounters and insert intimate gestures into public space. Black has exhibited in Canada, the US, France, Germany, and The Netherlands, including Ephemera as Evidence at Visual AIDS, Oh, Canada at Brick + Mortar International Video Art Festival, Tools for Survival at the National Queer Arts Festival, and Gestures of Resistance at the Museum of Contemporary Craft. Her writing with Nicole Burisch is included in The Craft Reader (Bloomsbury) and Extra/ordinary: Craft and Contemporary Art (Duke University Press). Her curatorial projects, SINCERITY OVERDRIVE, SUPER STRING, No Place: Queer Geographies on Screen, and PLEASURE CRAFT have focused on embodied perspectives and politics in relational practice, contemporary textiles, queer film and video, and perverse film craft. In 2012, she was the Viola Frey Visiting Artist-Scholar at the California College of Art and currently teaches printmaking, book arts, and publications at OCAD University in Toronto Canada.
Thea Yabut explores the complexity of identity through drawing. She drags, scratches folds, cuts, erases, pins and scores her materials to reveal the physical act of the construction. Her drawings evoke the varied ways in which she relates to the contingency of fluctuating social realities. Historically an ephemeral practice most often associated with preparatory sketches for other media, Yabut exploits drawingʼs tradition of marginality and its limitless dimensions and modalities to embody the complex, intersectionality of her experience as a Canadian Chinese Filipino woman. Yabut is a recent Master of Fine Art graduate from Western University. She holds a BFA from the Alberta College of Art and Design. She has exhibited at McIntosh Gallery and ArtLab in London, Ontario and The Marion Nicoll Gallery in Calgary. She has participated in group exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Calgary and TRUCK Contemporary Art, Calgary, and at Embassy Gallery in Edinburgh, Scotland. She is currently based in London, Ontario.
