Contemporary Toronto Artists: Artists E-H

In response to the AGO exhibition Maharaja: The Splendour of India's Royal Courts, The Museum of Found Objects proposes to create an archive of everyday objects fueled by Toronto's South Asian neighbourhoods. A direct line will be drawn between historic objects and present-day objects, cleverly updating the AGO's Maharaja exhibition. Toronto-based artist, Sameer Farooq and his Paris, France-based collaborator, Mirjam Linschooten apply the strict methodologies of a museum - collecting, preparing, interpreting and displaying - to a selection of objects collected from neighbourhoods such as Brampton, Mississauga, Scarborough and Milton.

Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, B.C. from Jan. 24 - March 22, 2008. Essays by Jenifer Papararo and FastWürms; interviews with Jim Drobnick and Jennifer Fisher; and introduction by Christina Ritchie.

"This catalogue documents an exhibition of selected works by Fastwürms that opened with the unveiling of a sculpture commissioned specifically for the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre’s Sculpture Park. Nasby situates the artists' new work within the context of their oeuvre, and explains that EX OVO OMNIA is Fastwürms' sculptural interpretation of the history of biology (up until the discovery of DNA)." -eARTEXTE

Catalogue to accompany an exhibit at The Koffler Gallery, 1994. Essay by Carolyn Bell Farrell. "Farrell writes on Fastwurms' photographs and installation noting the critical aspects of the exhibition's parody of 'Star Trek'." -eARTEXTE

Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Oakville Galleries: Centennial Gallery, August 17 to September 24, 1989. "FASTWURMS provides documentation and images of the "Copper Bog", an installation previously presented in Rome, which stresses the importance of preserving wetlands." -eARTEXTE

Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Art Gallery of Ontario, August 17 to October 27, 1988.

Catalogue of an exhibition held at The Macdonald Stewart Art Centre.

Publication of images by Robert Flack.

"Robert Fones continues his investigation of the integration of the manufactured and natural worlds with a series of precisely rendered, frequently humourous images. (Imagine an anthropomorphized ATM that distributes pancetta instead of cash, then try not to giggle. We dare you.) The text accompanying the images is Fones Caslon, a font of the author's own design." -- From the publisher

"Presenting a history of typefaces, Bradley exposes the many layers of meaning in Fones' work. Bringhurst examines the implications of "Three Eszetts" (1992) and "The Three G's" (1989). Includes artist's comments on each work." -eARTEXTE

Double issue of the quarterly Northward Journal, Number 52-53 devoted to the artist Robert Fones.

Catalogue to accompany an exhibition to be held at the Power Plant, Toronto, May 5-June 18, 1989.

"Robert Fones applies principles of schematic identification to a variety of objects and cultural artifacts, from standardized highway sign letter forms to Georgian building facades, contrasting these phenomena in the immediate environment with larger geological processes." -Art Metropole

No. 355 of a limited edition of 750.
One colour illustration in mounted envelope.
"Printed in an edition of 750 copies at The Coach House Press, December 1971." -- Colophon.

"This monograph is the first extensive survey of the most important works by Czech-born Canadian artist Vera Frenkel. Her contemplative, transdisciplinary projects have been a presence on the international scene since the 1970s. Her installations, videos, writings, and websites address central issues in an age that is more affected by human migration, and violence than any other. Among her topics are politics of the archive, the impact of media on the shaping of cultural memory and forgetting, and the interplay of institutional and individual narratives." -- From the publisher

"In 1974, Vera Frenkel explored real-time video transmission at the then-new Bell Canada Teleconferencing Studios in Toronto and Montreal. Giving her experiment an improvisational structure, she chose the cat's cradle finger string game as the mode of orchestrated movement in service of a constantly transforming whole. Essayists offer an account of the work's creation and situate it within the national and international context of conceptual art practices, where it intersects with the nascent electronic art movement." -- From the publisher

Catalogue to accompany an exhibit at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, Hart House, Toronto, Nov. 18-Dec. 18, 2003; the Art Gallery of Sudbury, Sept. 9-Oct. 17, 2004; and the Carleton University art Gallery, Ottawa, Nov. 15, 2004-Jan. 23, 2005.

Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Gesellschaft fur Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen, Germany from November 1, 1996 to January 1, 1997.

Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Power Plant, Toronto, Nov. 25, 1994-Jan. 8, 1995 and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, May 9-Oct. 27, 1996.

"Winzen situates the "Transit Bar" installation at Documenta IX in the context of contemporary xenophobia. Tuer investigates the role played by the themes of exile and memory in Frenkel's work. In an interview with Tuer, Frenkel discusse her adoption of the video medium, the role of storytelling in her work, the influence of archeology, and themes such as silencing." -eARTEXTE

An artists' book of the "Transit Bar" experience.

Artist Vera Frenkel discusses her 1992 installation project for Documenta IX, in Kessel, Germany.

Several interlaced modes of narrative and representation, including American Sign Language, are used to trace and disclose the bond between messiahnism and consumerism, our two most prevalent romances of rescue, next to Romance itself.

Catalogue of an exhibition of Vera Frenkel's videos held at the National Gallery of Canada, October 1 to December 31, 1985.

An experimental futuristic film in which story-telling has been outlawed, and Valentine's Day is the only festival still celebrated in Canada.

Catalogue of an exhibition held at The Vancouver Art Gallery, April 29 to May 28, 1978. Foreword: Luke Rombout, Director. Essay: Gary Michael Dault.

"This comprehensive volume includes commentary and in-depth analysis of Fung's pioneering work in contemporary film and video." -- From the publisher

A contemplative and heartfelt personal essay about living in the shadow of illness. Multiple layers of image and text are used to reflect on personal history.

Much has been said about the trauma of coming out as a gay man or lesbian. Shawn Fowler never had that problem - everyone always knew. In this film, 19 year old Shawn recounts his life in a Toronto suburb. Shawn is a natural stand up comic, and his stories are alternately hilarious, biting and poignant.

An investigation of the historical representation of Chinese immigrant railway workers in Canada, and "outlaw" sexuality in nineteenth century Chinese Canada.

A documentary focusing on the memories of a granddaughter of Chinese indentured labourers brought to Trinidad in the mid-19th century.

Using fantasy voice-overs, staged interviews and re-enactments, this video explores the ambiguous relationship between gay Asian men and white gay porn.

A poetic exigesis of the concept of Mimesis and Antimimesis in photography.

"Coming from a multi-disciplinary background (writing, sculpture, video), Garnet infuses his photographs with a profound ambiguity, both moral and conceptual. His allegorical studies of familiar yet unidentifiable places transform moments that are usually hidden into image that seem almost commercial in their visual impact." - From the publisher.

"Exhibition catalogue featuring an essay by Richard Rhodes, and a multi-page project by the artist." - Art Metropole

"'The television imagery' of this book and videotape package is collected from ten broadcast stations during one typical day in the life of a businessman, as recorded during a typical broadcast day. Book contains hundreds of b/w televison stills." - Art Metropole

"A video tape comprised of ten television stations from one typical broadcast day and the life of a business man as recorded during a typical day".

"From its origins in the mail art movement through to its “destruction” of The 1984 Miss General Idea Pavillion in 1977, the Canadian collective General Idea constructed a comprehensive body of work as a performative fiction. Glamour Is Theft examines this “pageantry of camp parody” through the logic of its mythic system. The book reconstructs this system from statements that were dispersed and disguised within General Idea’s work and writing as a whole, including the publication FILE Magazine." -- From the publisher

This volume presents an overview of the Canadian collective's oeuvre – an oeuvre still haunted by Miss General Idea, a fictive character who was at once muse and object, image and concept. Founded in Toronto in 1969 by Felix Partz, Jorge Zontal, who both died in 1994, and AA Bronson, the trio adopted a generic identity that 'freed it from the tyranny of individual genius'. Their complex intermingling of reality and fiction took the form of a transgressive and often parodic take on art and society. Treating the image as a virus infiltrating every aspect of the real world, General Idea set out to colonize it, modify its content and so come up with an alternative version of reality. Including newly commissioned essays and republished texts, this title is illustrated with documents and reproductions of the most important projects realized by General Idea from 1969 to 1994. Published to accompany the exhibition at Musee d'art moderne, Paris, 11 February, 30 April, 2011, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, autumn 2011.

In the mid-1980s, AA Bronson, Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal created a symbol using the acronym AIDS, in a manner resembling Robert Indiana's famous LOVE logo. This launched Imagevirus, a series of paintings, sculptures, videos, posters, exhibitions and ephemera that from 1987 to 1994 used the mechanism of viral transmission to investigate the term AIDS as both word and image. In this book, artist and writer Gregg Bordowitz analyses Imagevirus from the perspective of his own involvement with activist art initiatives in New York during the 80s and 90s. Considering the battles fought over sexuality and representation in those years, and through the lens of modernist literature (Gertrude Stein and William S. Burroughs), the author approaches the virus as idea, as tactic and as identity. Bordowitz explores how Imagevirus infected urban spaces across the world, offering a new model for artistic production.

"Among artists' magazines and periodicals, FILE Megazine occupies a very unique position: between 1972 and 1989, the celebrated Canadian artists collaborative General Idea (active 1969–1994) published 26 issues of this sophisticated, though self-published, magazine, which had a distribution extending far beyond its Toronto underground origins. Its name and logo adapted those of the famous LIFE—whose heyday was in the 1950s and early 1960s—demonstrating an already very Pop strategy of appropriation... The present six-volume reprint features all the issues, reproduced page by page, in a slightly modified format." -- From the publisher

Catalogue raisonne of the editions produced by General Idea from 1967-1995. Published on the occasion of the exhibition 'General Idea Editions 1967-1995,' held at Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto at Mississauga, Jan. 16-Feb. 16, 2003.

"Negative Thoughts is AA Bronson's first major project outside of the context of General Idea, the artist collective which he co-founded with Jorge Zontal and Felix Partz... The exhibition documented here combines three works by General Idea along with new works of Bronson's as a meditation on the themes of life and death in the age of AIDS. This accompanying catalogue, designed both to stand on its own and to extend the exhibition to a wider audience, combines an extended memoir with approximately 50 photographs of the artist and his friends to form an autobiographical reflection on Bronson's relation to death, AIDS, and life beyond AIDS." -- From the publisher

"Densely researched, illustrated and annotated history of the early years of General Idea, 1968 through to 1975. Primarily a detailed illustrated chronology, with text by Fern Bayer. Also includes texts by Christina Ritchie and AA Bronson. Many works never seen before, or not seen since the early 70s, were uncovered for this exhibition." -Art Metropole

"Simpson documents 163 works in this annotated catalogue raisonné of General Idea's multiples. An interview with General Idea focuses on issues related to this work, such as mass production, seriality, and the invasion of mainstream image systems." -eARTEXTE

In this tape General Idea examines the relationship between the mass media and the artist. They incorporate segments from television and film, along with their own commentary to humorously point out the media's insistence that it is gossip and spectacle that make art and artists interesting to the public.

Essays by Rosemary Heather and Eli Lang. Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Doris McCarthy Gallery, Scarborough, Ont., Sept. 11-Oct. 21, 2007.

Catalogue of an exhibition held at 49th Parallel.

Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, April 28 to June 5, 1984; Glenbow Museum, June 29 to August 5, 1984; Agnes Etherington Art Centre, August 19 to September 16, 1984; Concordia Art Gallery, November 14 to December 15, 1984; Art Gallery of Windsor, January 13 to February 10, 1985; Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, Hart House, University of Toronto, March 28 to April 25, 1985.

Whether addressing HIV/AIDS, the policing of bathroom sex, censorship, or anti-globalization movements, John Greyson has imbued his work with cutting humour, eroticism, and postmodern aesthetics. Mashing up high art, opera, community activism, and pop culture, Greyson challenges his audience to consider new ways that images can intervene in both political and public spheres. Emerging on the Toronto scene in the late 1970s, Greyson has produced an eclectic, provocative, and award-winning body of work in film and video. The essays in The Perils of Pedagogy range from personal meditations to provocative textual readings to studies of the historical contexts in which the artist's works intervened politically as well as artistically. Notable writers from a range of disciplines as well as prominent experimental and activist filmmakers tackle questions of documentary ethics, moving image activism, and queer coalitional politics raised by Greyson's work. Close to one hundred frame captures and stills from almost sixty works, along with articles, speeches, and short scripts by Greyson - several never before published - supplement the collection. Celebrating thirty years of passionate, brilliant, and affecting moviemaking, The Perils of Pedagogy will fascinate both specialists and general readers interested in media activism and advocacy, censorship, and freedom of expression.

This satirical dance piece, performed by four women dressed as men, highlights issues of gender conformity.

A musical fantasy about love, life and politics in the age of AIDS.

A video documentary on a 1993 police investigation into a suspected child pornography ring in London, Ontario that descended into media sensationalism.

"This book came into being through Art Metropole’s publication of Greyson’s queer writings and a publication developed from an exhibition of Greyson’s film and video, curated by Barbara Fisher at The Power Plant. The reworked project, “Urinal and Other Stories” is not only a record of a history of media activity but it is also part of its continuum. This script is faithful to the completed film." -Art Metropole

A look at the media's paranoia about AIDS.

Publication based on a performance by John Greyson.

Catalogue of an exhibition held at The Power Plant, December 11, 1987 to February 7, 1988.

Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, October 4 to 26, 1986.

Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Laurentian University Museum and Arts Centre, September 25 to October 20, 1991.

Artist Noel Harding is shown installing a show at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art and visiting his installation beside the Don Valley Expressway that uses byproducts from the plastics industry to clean river water.

Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Palace of Exhibitions, March 18 to April 11, 1993. Introduction: Suzanne Meszoly, exhibition curator. Essays: Richard Rhodes, Peggy Gale. Interview: Vincent Tangredi.

Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Mississauga Civic Centre Art Gallery, June 21 to August 19, 1990.

Catalogue of an exhibition held by the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1982.

A series of essays and conversations between artists, curators and programmers on the complicated path from the white cube to the black box.

Images and clips extracted from diverse cinema sources are edited into ten chapters pf political and poetic reflection.

An unconventional documentary about New York video artist Tom Chomont. The film uses his reminiscences and an array of found footage, video, photographs and film clips to convey the psychological contents of his life.

A chorus of speakers from all walks of life talk about AIDS, love and death.

Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Apr. 11-Sept. 5, 1999 and travelling to the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, North York, Ont. and the Medal Art Gallery, Saskatoon, Sask.

"Employing the traditions of modernist painting, particularly as practiced by Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman, Houle has tenaciously insisted on reciprocity among the aesthetic and cultural specificities with which he engages. After years of breathtaking solo exhibitions, he returns to his first stylistic impulse: abstraction. This important publication, with three essays and an artist statement, documents a unique and vital side to Houle s innovative artistic practice." -From the publisher

"Publication celebrating the acquisition of Hurbut's Le Jardin du sommeil , a major work exemplary of the artist s practice. This monumental installation includes more than a hundred children's beds - found, antique metal cribs and cradle - solemnly arranged in rows in a way that
evokes both age and the loss of childhood." - From the publisher

"In an extraordinary gesture, The Royal Ontario Museum invited Toronto artist Spring Hurlbut to create an exhibition for its Institute of Contemporary Culture. Known for her reconfigurations of antique rituals surrounding sacrifice and death, Hurlbut decided to create an exhibition from the Museum's own immense trove of research artifacts and spent nearly two years scouring its departments of Egyptology, paleobiology, mammology and ichthyology. The result is a tour-de-force of editing and formal design with over 400 objects ranging from Egyptian cat mummies to the very tools of death and mummification. Radiant in their Victorian vitrines, Hurlbut's treasures emanate an other-worldliness and, rather than instilling fear, invite contemplation. We reflect on the connections between life and death, art and science and beauty and knowledge." - From the publisher

Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge, Dec. 7-Jan. 26, 1991-1992, and other museums.

A filmmaker and installation artist based in Toronto, Oliver Husain has called his pieces "attractive traps," for the way in which they offer up an initial interpretation to the viewer which is eventually revealed to have been misleading. In a similar vein, Husain has inserted visual interruptions that interfere with the essays in this, his first monograph.

"Quotes from a diary recalling the experiences of an art student in India are told over the documentary of the construction of an earth building, being revealed in the surprising second part."--Cover.

"Natalka Husar is a socially conscious artist passionately engaged in reflections on art and history. Her lifelong obsession with painting and with Ukraine, her ancestral home, has led her to create an overwhelming and immediately identifiable body of work centered on the conflict between the ideal of womanhood as silent and compliant and the self she sees as powerful and aggressive. Her complex images convey multiple narratives of the past and the present, of autobiography and social history, and of the lives of girls and women caught on the cusp of change. The view would be unrelenting were it not for a dark wit and an attention to texture and fabric reminiscent of Rembrandt and Vermeer. This sumptuously produced publication provides, as the title suggests, a unique visual and intellectual encounter with the work of a singular artist." -- From the publisher

Burden of Innocence is the project of a Canadian Ukrainian, the painter Natalka Husar, who has made a name for herself in her field in both Canada and abroad. Here Husar's visual work is presented with her own commentary on what she sees as the social ills and goods in contemporary Ukraine: the subject matter is post-Orange Revolution Ukraine and our continually shifting, always-problematic but utterly abiding relationship with our parents' homeland and the homeland of our imaginations. Burden of Innocence is a bridge between various worlds: Canada and Ukraine, painting and writing, and verbal and visual images.

Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Oct. 6-Dec. 31, 2001, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Feb. 14-Apr. 7, 2002, Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, Hart House, University of Toronto, Apr. 18-May 16, 2002, and the Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery, Sept. 13-Oct. 27, 2002.
Includes essays by Shirley Madill and Ihor Holubizky, poems by Janice Kulyk Keefer and an interview by Robert Enright.

Catalogue of an exhibition held at Garnet Press; Gallery, 10 March to 8 April 1995; Douglas Udell Gallery, 27 April to 13 May 1995; Rosemont Art Gallery, 7 June to 8 July, 1995; Douglas Udell Gallery, 7 October to 21 October 1995; The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, 9 November to 7 January 1996; Mendel Art Gallery, 12 January to 25 February, 1996. Foreword: Karen Schoonover, Director/Curator, Rosemont Art Gallery. Poem: Carla Garnet, Director, Garnet Press Gallery. Essays: Carol Podedworny, Ihor Holubizky, Natalka Husar.

"In his analysis of Husar's figurative paintings, Enright relates their intensity, visual sabotage and weaving of imagery to the artist's sense of dislocation and psycho-social awareness. Lypchuk's allusive text draws on classical and popular motifs, Jungian psychology and feminism to further assess each painting. The catalogue itself is a pastiche of a women's fashion magazine." -eARTEXTE

Catalogue of an exhibition held at The Floating Curatorial Gallery at Women in Focus, Vancouver, 19 September 19 to October 22, 1988; Ukranian Cultural and Educational Centre, Winnipeg, 22 November 1988 to 10 January 1989; Garnet Press, 3 March to 1 April 1989; Laurentian University Museum and Arts Centre, Sudbury, 21 June to 16 July, 1989; Whitby Arts Incorporated, The Station Gallery, 9 September to 1 October, 1989. Essay: Grace Eiko Thomson.

Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Garnet Press Gallery, January 10 to February 12, 1986. Introduction: Robert Enright. Essay: Ihor Holubizky.

Catalogue of an exhibition held at Nancy Poole Studio, August 1980.