Exhibitions
'backSHORE prints #1', 2009. screenprint
Doug Guildford
November 19 - December 31, 2009
Doug Guildford’s North Gallery exhibition Requiem is an edited survey of his print work, plaster, drawings, and nets that continue ruminations on mortality and time spend between the tides on the back shore of the North Atlantic Ocean. Requiem will feature Guildford’s intricate and obsessively layered prints, working drawings, plaster proofs of small holes drawn in wet sand and his ongoing crocheted nets. For the Between The Tides catalogue, Robin Metcalfe states that Guildford’s practice “is rooted in drawing” and has evolved into a “language of marks and symbols that – as he says – wanders suggestively between male and female and lays claim to the ambiguous terrain of the intertidal zone.
'Hood #7', 2009. gesso/oil on mylar, 52" x 40"
Group Exhibition
October 20 - November 15, 2009
The Edward Day gallery will feature a group show including works from Sarindar Dhaliwal, Sophie Jodoin (image at left), Angela Grossmann, Andrew Morrow, Catherine Heard, and Frank Nulf.
Sony World Photography Awards
Global Tour 2009
October 6 - October 20, 2009
Opening Reception:
Thursday, October 8th
5 - 7 pm
The Sony World Photography Awards Global Tour showcases the very best of professional and amateur photographs from across the world.
Brought together by leading curator Zelda Cheatle, the exhibition is unique in the variety and depth of the photographic genres that it displays, from fashion to photojournalism, natural history to architecture.
The photographs were taken by the winners and finalists of the 2009 Sony World Photography Awards and have been selected by the Honorary Judging Committee, which is comprised of leading figures from the international photographic community. The winning images were chosen from over 70,000 images submitted from 139 countries.
Shayne Dark
Gridlock
September 8 - October 8, 2009
Opening Reception:
Thursday, September 10th
5 - 7 pm
Edward Day Gallery is pleased to present new work by Shayne Dark that features variations of his iconic iron wood structures. A previous key piece, Into the Blue, a freestanding grid of brilliant blue poles has, over the past five years, become a dynamic visual marker for the 952 Queen St. West complex. Dark’s current Gridlock series includes three dimensional reliefs and a free standing assemblage saturated in unrestrained pure ultra-matte colour within the context of classic, geometric abstraction. Dark states that through his horizontal and vertical organic elements, the viewer “will see the grid network as places in which space is gathered, locked and then encouraged by interior framework to flow over and under temporary resting places where, under the influence of colour, will expand and contract before spilling into the surroundings”.
In 2008, Dark won the X-The Condominium Public Art Competition with his Double Vision sculpture and in 2007/08 participated in the Beyond/In Western New York Biennial at the Albright Knox Museum with Into the Blue. In 2004 and 2005, Dark was the subject of a 24-minute documentary produced by HD Vision Studio out of Los Angeles that aired on Discovery HD Theatre Network across the United States. In 2004, Dark was also one of three Canadian artists selected to participate in 'ARTiade 2004 Olympics of Visual Arts' in Athens, Greece, for the XXVIII Olympic Games. He received a 2004 grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the “Juror's Choice Award” by Phyllis Braff, art critic for The New York Times at the EXPO XX Competition in April 2001, and participated in the 2003 International Sculpture Center Juried Exhibition, in Hamilton, New Jersey.
The Main Gallery will feature a group show of Edward Day Gallery artists including Melissa Doherty, Nada Sesar-Raffay, Mark Thompson and others.
Foreign Legionnaires
Art Collectives at Work
August 6 - September 6, 2009
Opening Reception:
Thursday, August 6th
6 - 8 pm
FASTWÜRMS, Instant Coffee, Shake-n-Make, Toronto Terrarea Club, Team Macho
The Foreign Legionnaires exhibition associates the nomadic camaraderie and discipline of distant military forces to the creative activities of contemporary art collectives. Not unlike the impervious military world, the creative impulse is often perceived as foreign or untouchable in relation to day to day routines. Furthermore, art collectives are not formed to protect a country, fight a fire, participate in war fare or other such heroic deeds, but instead, give rise to a unified voice of unexpected creative concepts, erupting out of the blue through extraordinary powers of consolidation and negotiation. All for creative pursuits in the realm of art; the realm of serious play that is most foreign to day to day living.
The Foreign Legionnaires exhibition is an attempt to maneuver through the collective process in order to reveal layers of the collaborative process, taking into consideration the individual mark making that comprises the cohesive whole.
Storm of Painters
Group Exhibition
July 2 - August 2, 2009
Opening Reception:
Thursday, July 9th
6 - 8 pm
The Edward Day Gallery is pleased to present a new exhibition of painting.
New work by Catherine Beaudette, Paul Bourgault, Melissa Doherty, Scott Everingham, Heather Graham, Angela Grossmann, Dan Hughes, Sophie Jodoin, Dan Kennedy, Rebecca Last, Bogdan Luca, Diana Menzies, Andrew Morrow, John Nobrega, Nada Sesar-Raffay, James Ridyard, Gary Spearin, Jennifer Walton, Doug Williamson, and Jacob Yerex.
'Autumn Tips', 2009. oil on canvas, 48" x 45"
Seeing Red
North Gallery
May 28 - June 28, 2009
Opening Reception:
Thursday, May 28th
6 - 8 pm
The Edward Day Gallery is pleased to present new paintings by Melissa Doherty. Doherty interprets a visceral and intuitive sense of trees and landscape, paying homage to each leaf and simultaneously expressing a sense of rooted life with intimacy and exaltation. In her new body of work, Seeing Red, the aerial view from her previous paintings is adjusted so viewers are confronted by the core life cycle of trees as nature undresses them in blazing colours.
'Cravat', 2009. mixed media on canvas, 72" x 35"
Edward Day Gallery Artists Group Show
Main Gallery
May 28 - June 28, 2009
Opening Reception:
Thursday, May 28th
6 - 8 pm
'Hall of Mirrors'
Archival inkjet print facemounted to Plexiglas
58" x 48 "
2008
Joshua Jensen-Nagle
Decadence
Main Gallery
April 29 - May 24, 2009
Opening Reception:
Friday, May 1st
6 - 8 pm
Jensen-Nagle's recent photobased work explores the notion of cultivated, cultured hallmarks of civilisation. Whether through images from St. Mark's Square in Venice, vistas from the Louvre in Paris or interior corridors of European palaces, Jensen-Nagle positions what is considered to be civilised magnificence on a podium that at once resists examination yet simultaneously invites questioning.
'Persephone Offering Pomegranates', 1/10
c-print facemounted to Plexiglas
34" x 34 "
2009
Sonja Scharf
Divine Light
North Gallery
April 29 - May 24, 2009
Opening Reception:
Friday, May 1st
6 - 8 pm
These selected pieces from the series entitled “Divine Light”, address the universal and unseen forces that affect all individuals birth, death, love, beauty, hate, pain and the stages of spiritual development and internal growth that inevitably occurs through human suffering.
The iconographic nature of these images allegorizes our perpetual search, and explores the eternal battle between the higher self and the shadow side of the psyche represented by the ego.
View Sonja's web-portfolio here.
Shinny'
oil on canvas
20" x 60"
'Rapids'
oil on canvas
20" x 60
Jennifer Walton
Ice and Other Landscapes
Main Gallery
April 2 - 26, 2009
Opening Reception:
Thursday, April 2
6 - 8 pm
Jennifer Walton’s new series of paintings, Ice and Other Landscapes, depict Canadian vistas that capture moments of engagement between people and place: the lone skater on a vast expanse of ice or the young boy in camouflage clothes barely discernable through rich Ontario foliage. Walton states that her paintings are "at once iconic in their references to contemporary Canadian culture and firmly grounded in art-historical tradition."
'Early'
oil on panel
9" x 12"
2009
James Ridyard
Painting the Moon
North Gallery
April 2 - 26, 2009
Opening Reception:
Thursday, April 2
6 - 8 pm
Edward Day Gallery is pleased to introduce the works of painter James Ridyard in the North Gallery. His Painting the Moon series is influenced by historical landscape painting of the late 19th century and captures a sublime mystery of contemporary landforms through deft atmospheric gestures, leaving the viewer with a raw, ethereal impression of our most valued originating source. Ridyard has exhibited extensively in Toronto including Gallery 1313, Propeller Centre for the Visual Arts and Engine Gallery. His paintings are found in various collections including the BMO Collection, Loblaws Canada and Can West Global.
'Face no. 1'
48" x 48"
oil on canvas
Heather Graham
lost and found and lost
March 5 - 29, 2009
Opening Reception:
Saturday, March 7
2 - 4 pm
The Edward Day Gallery is pleased to present new paintings by Heather Graham. Her new body of work includes portraits of strangers that appear to be caressed onto the canvas. The close up nature of the paintings suggest an intimacy between the artist and subject, however, the subject is unaware of being observed. Graham employs large house brushes to eliminate detailed brush strokes, giving the overall surface an ephemeral, sublime refinement.
Lost and found and lost describes a shifting between appearance and disappearance. The subtle portraits become clear when viewed at a distance, and then dissolve into abstraction upon closer inspection. Graham states that the faces are close cropped and enlarged with little external context for the figures; an intimacy and immediacy is conveyed, providing a private and personal nature. The paintings focus is diffused; as a result the subject is lost in and re-emerges from a grey visual static depending on the distance viewed.
Heather Graham would like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for their generous support.
'Five Finger Rapids on the Yukon River'
42" x 55 ", oil on panel
William Irish
CANADA
February 7 - March 1, 2009
Opening Reception:
Saturday, February 7, 2 - 4 pm
William Irish has been collecting stories and anecdotes for over thirty years, employing those influenced by the majestic frontiers of Canadian landforms sculpted from the east to west coast. His 2006 Canada publication conveys histories, fables, legends and myths that have been shaped by the indomitable terrain and the heritage of living communities from within. The publication includes images of his dramatic paintings on exhibit, that breathe life into the stories and the “roads less traveled” from shore to shore.
Irish’s quest and passion for effective communication have led him to numerous creative professions including art direction, film direction, photography and painting. In 1974 Irish and six colleagues established Partners Film Company in Toronto; a passion that would preoccupy him for some 25 years, garnishing major awards from the industry such as the 1990 Les Uherwood Award for “a lifetime of excellence in the Communication Arts” from the Art Directors Club of Toronto.
'Oh, happy Meat', 96" x 192 ", oil on canvas
'Untitled', 18" x 24" oil on canvas
Andrew Morrow
New Works
December 2, 2008 - January 30, 2009
Opening Reception:
Saturday, December 6th, 2 - 5 pm
Andrew Morrow’s new paintings confront the viewer with contemporary apocalyptic mash up imagery that pulses with physical conflict, volatile chaos and pornography through turbulent states of nature. Morrow states that in his work he “sees a reflection of the constant state of inner and outer conflict that defines life.” He states that even though his paintings aren’t about these tensions, “they are informed by them, expressed in painterly abstraction confronting representation, the spectacle of the body....ambition and self-doubt, among others.”