Buried Echoes

Marzieh Miri, detail of Buried Echoes, 2021, cyanotype of the river on watercolour paper, one edition, 8" x 8".

Buried Echoes explores the course of the buried Taddle Creek in today’s Toronto, encouraging looking and listening to what cannot be immediately seen or heard — an obscured piece of nature and indigenous heritage. The practice-based research for this work includes the development of a year-long sensory geography, representing the experience of place. It aims…

Garden (Working Title)

Image: William Kentridge, in his Johannesburg studio, working with Jillian Ross to develop the print series.

Drop-in Conversation with Jillian Ross and Brendan CopestakeSaturday, November 4, 20231:00 pm – 3:00 pmFree to attend, no RSVP required Please join us in person at Open Studio for a drop-in conversation with Jillian Ross and Brendan Copestake as they discuss their collaborative printmaking process and work. In 2024 in Aix-en-Provence, France, William Kentridge will…

Rememory

Angela Pilgrim, Rememory I (detail), 2023, screenprint, decorative paper collage, fabric applique and mixed media on paper, edition size 1, 27.5” x 39.3”.

The diptych portrays a figure lost in thought as they gaze back into a mirror that reflects on their past self with a sense of rememory. The artwork in Rememory captures nostalgia as a powerful magnet that draws the figure toward their past experiences. The figure is suspended in a liminal space between past and…

Material Redistribution – A Collective Endeavour

Feature Wall [detail]: Panya Clark Espinal, 'Material Redistribution – A Collective Endeavour', 2023.

Historic Toronto/Tkaronto was once built mainly of wood but, after several devastating fires, brick became the building material of choice. By 1912 there were 34 brickyards within the city’s proximity. With modern building developments in the 60s, 70s, and 80s much of the city’s clean demolition waste ended up forming the Leslie Street Spit. It…

Pickering Nuclear Generating Station. Pickering, Ontario.

Christopher Hutsul pulling a linocut print of the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station. Pickering, Ontario, 2023.

For printmaker Christopher Hutsul, Pickering Nuclear Generating Station. Pickering, Ontario. was an opportunity to explore his fascination with large, person-made structures and infrastructure, the likes of dams, mines, power plants etc. In this instance, he was interested in surveying the power plant’s physical and symbolic relationship with adjacent residential Pickering and Lake Ontario. Visually, he…

Bestie Mart

Project Space: Cleopatria Peterson, prototypes for Bestie Mart, 2023.

Cleopatria Peterson’s printmaking practice explores how print can be used to create tactile art objects that feel as though they exist in our everyday lives. Their artwork Bestie Mart explores the labour of print through creating a product and commodity using humour. In our current landscape, living is unaffordable, particularly groceries. Using the motif of…

Perpetual Ruminations

Feature Wall: Samsam Elmi, Perpetual Ruminations, 2023.

With no distinct beginning or end, thoughts are momentary ideas that bubble up to the surface. Consistently collected and categorized, they create a loop of ideas, gestures, and feelings mulled over until satisfied. Through this series of prints, Elmi illustrates the physical depiction of thought processes. This collection of fragmented moments and sentiments that may…

All that I see, all that I wonder

Feature Wall: Ron Siu, All that I see, all that I wonder, 2022. Photo: Greg-McCarthy.

All that I see, all that I wonder, is a new work by Ron Siu experimenting with the intersections between print media and animation. Through a series of hand-printed phenakistoscopes (circular devices that were an early analogue form of looping animation), Siu considers their cyclical nature as space for meditations on change, intuition, emotions and…

Rest On The Gum Hoods

Feature Wall: David Trautrimas, Rest On The Gum Hoods, 2022.

Image: Rest On The Gum Hoods, 2022, laser etched acrylic, spray paint. Mounted on a baltic birch panel, 48” x 72”. Please note that the following exhibition text contains sensitive words. An X-ray of a memory only the bones remember. ‘X’ marks the spot where the ghost bicycle occupies the place of a tragic happening. Painted…

Digital Now: Imprint

Feature Wall: Jasmin-Nicole Amoako, Megan Feheley, and Sonali Menezes, Digital Now: Imprint, 2022.

This exhibition presents new work by artists Jasmin-Nicole Amoako, Megan Feheley, and Sonali Menezes, created while participating in Open Studio’s inaugural Virtual REsidency program. These three emerging artists spent six weeks developing ideas and learning printmaking processes both virtually through digital learning and engagement and in-person at Open Studio. The new prints in this exhibition result from…

A TROPICAL GLOW BABY PRODUCTION: Remember the sun baby girl

What does it mean to talk about there while being here? A TROPICAL GLOW BABY PRODUCTION: Remember the sun baby girl is an expanded installation of a portion of Isabel Diana’s MFA Thesis. The installation includes a repeated pattern wall and two monoprints—a printmaking technique that is significant to their practice. The work explores her…

Wall Drawing #1

Feature Wall: Sean Weisgerber, 'Wall Drawing #1', 2022.

Wall Drawing #1 Sean Weisgerber’s new series of wall drawings stems from his ongoing Price Per Square Inch series of paintings. At Open Studio, the artist will execute the first work in this series, Wall Drawing #1, using a price gun to place fluorescent pink price stickers in each square inch of the gallery walls’…

Double Take

Feature Wall: Khadijah Morley, ‘Double Take’, 2021. Print details: Khadijah Morley, ‘Double Take, 2021, linocut, edition 1/7, 18” x 13”.

…a delayed reaction to a surprising or significant situation after an initial failure to notice anything unusual —usually used in the phrase do a double take (Mariam-Webster Online) By utilizing imagery of mirrors, Khadijah Morley’s work in Double Take asks viewers to ruminate on the notion of spectatorship. Emanating from the mirrors in Khadijah’s linocuts is…

Blind Spots

Lavinia Lindsay, 'Grasshopper Legs' (detail), 2021, mezzotint, 4'' x 2.5".

Don Phillips Scholarship Residency recipient. Blind Spots is a new body of work where Lavinia Lindsay touches on what it means to value new experiences and places beyond your focal point. Her mezzotint prints focus on scenes of her drive from Toronto, Ontario, to Tofino, British Columbia, where she spent time alone on the road this…

Overlook

Feature Wall: carlina Chen, 'Overlook', 2021. Booklet titled: '43°39'11.2', 2021, drypoint, 5.375" x 4.125" (folded) and extends to 24".

carlina Chen’s practice explores experiences of time and space in everyday life. Everyday indicates routine, the mundane; the actual backbone of our existence. This overlooked omnipresence is a staple of her art-making language. Overlook features visuals and audio, mapping out a shared riding experience that illustrates how we relate to the spaces and the temporal…

Natural Patterns, Woven Series

An image list is available here. We live in a continually changing environment where changes construct layers of memories that weave together past and present. Walking is one of Sally’s passions, an activity she enjoys and where her thoughts can flow at liberty in many directions. The exploration of parks, ravines and waterways in and…

Films for Garments

An image list is available here. Films for Garments features a suite of films, hand-painted on mylar, layered and tacked to the wall. These films are often used to create printed material, particularly screenprints. For the past year, Michelle Forsyth has been making a series of garments, printed at Open Studio, to wear in large-scale photographs….

The Oscilloscope Drawings

Micah Lexier, The Oscilloscope Drawings (1a,b), photopolymer print on Japanese Kozuke paper, edition of 25, 11" x 17".

The Oscilloscope Drawings is a collaborative publishing project between Open Studio and Micah Lexier, resulting in a set of ten photopolymer etchings on 17″ x 11” Japanese Kozuke paper, held in a silkscreen-printed, aluminum portfolio box. The prints feature imagery from a found technical manual, continuing Lexier’s interest in creating new objects from old sources. — Micah…

Skimming, skirmishing

Joy Wong, Untitled, 2018, installation detail: copper tubing, rubber latex, acrylic medium monoprint, etching on xuan paper, dimensions variable.

Joy Wong’s Skimming, skirmishing explores the fight between interior and exterior worlds by meditating on the dirt that lives with us, on the in-betweenness of skin, boundaries, and thresholds. To skim is to discard of “impurities”. To take the top off, to reveal below. These works are explorations in materiality and corporeal ambiguity. Deteriorating surfaces…

Moon Song

Liz Little, 'Moon Song with Fuji', 2019, mokuhanga, unique artist proof, not editioned.

Liz Little is a contemporary artist based in Toronto. Moon Song features a selection of Mokuhanga prints made by Little during a recent residency in Japan.

Generational Echoes

Emma Nishimura, 'Generations of an Archive I and II', photo etchings, 2019.

Generational Echoes is a new body of work that is part of Emma Nishimura’s ongoing research that focuses on the narratives surrounding the Japanese Canadian internment, which investigates the weight of memory and the stories that are passed down from one generation to the next (and the stories that are lost as well). An extension…

Shape Garden 2019

Shape Garden 2019, by Toronto-based artist Tom Lecuyer, features a monotype print and the woodblocks used to create it. The installation draws attention to the printmaking process and explores the relationship between print and sculpture.

A Twist of Lime

A Twist of Lime employs the blended roll technique of other work in Lorna Livey’s ongoing Glow series, but unlike those other works, which hint at narrative landscape and atmospheric meditations, A Twist of Lime is a visual play of pure abstraction. To add to the sense of experimentation, the modular units can be rearranged, the patterns…

Convergence North / South 

Convergence North/South is a printmaking project which took place in Ivujivik, Nunavik (Arctic Quebec) and features three artists from Nunavik – Qumaq Iyaituk, Mary Paningajak and Passa Mangiuk – collaborated with Montreal-based artist and printmaker, Lyne Bastien. In addition to individual chine-collé prints, each of the four artists created their own panel of twenty-eight linocuts,…

The Laxgiik Convocation Robe

Feature Wall: Luke Parnell, 'The Laxgiik Convocation Robe' (detail), 2019.

The Laxgiik Convocation Robe by Luke Parnell (Haida/ Nisga’a) is an immersive installation, performance, and print of an original design based on Northwest coast Indigenous Chilkat blankets. The blanket refers to the potlatch, a gift-giving feast practiced by Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. On some occasions of the event, Chilkat blankets were cut…