The Reconceptualized Universe of the Anti-Logo League Girls

Open Studio presented The Reconceptualized Universe of The Anti-Logo League Girls, a solo exhibition by Toronto-based artist Stephanie Cormier from April 8 to May 15, 2010.

Stephanie Cormier’s Anti-Logo League Girls are warriors created from society’s detritus. Fashioned from appropriated advertising images and discarded packaging, Cormier’s characters exist to defend the environment and protect us from the deluge of advertising and consumerism. The “Reconceptualized Universe” of Cormier’s Anti-Logo League Girls is occupied by prints and assembled objects made from digital montages composed of repurposed packaging and recycled materials. These digital prints and objects resemble ancient religious iconography, symbols and talismans, and in Cormier’s new universe, they replace the ubiquitous corporate logos of contemporary culture.

Stephanie Cormier’s Reconceptualized Universe of the Anti-Logo League Girls introduces us to an impending future, where garbage is transformed into relics of contemporary society. Despite the warning inherent in Cormier’s imagined universe, the Anti-Logo League Girls and their accompanying symbols and objects give us a glimpse of a world where our excess waste is reborn into new and encouraging signs, according to Toronto-based writer Tara Marshall in the accompanying essay.

Stephanie Cormier was born in Montreal, Quebec, raised in Barbados in the Caribbean and now lives in Toronto, Ontario. Her practice includes photography, video and sculpture installation. Cormier “sculpts, draws and paints” with everyday materials, using objects that are either plentiful and recycled or conversely nostalgic or obsolete. She enjoys giving these humble objects a new and honorable context. Stephanie studied at the Ontario College of Art and Design where she completed her BFA. Her work has been exhibited across Canada as well as in London, England and New York City. She has earned several national grants and awards and her work can be found in Carte Blanche Volume 1: Photography. Stephanie Cormier would like to acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council’s Exhibition Assistance Grant for making this exhibition possible.

Tara Marshall is an art historian, curator, writer and educator from Toronto. She earned her BA in Art History from McGill University, and her MA from York University, where she wrote about the use of irony in the films of Joyce Wieland. She has written for catalogue essays for exhibitions of contemporary art and been published in Lola and Canadian Art. She currently teaches at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the School of Continuing Studies at the University of Toronto.

Exhibition Brochure: Download Brochure Here