About and Beside

Group Exhibition featuring work by Barbara Balfour, Nadine Bariteau, Dan O’Neill and Nick Shick.
Curated by Daryl Vocat.

In celebration of Pride month, Open Studio Print Sales Gallery presents About and Beside; an exhibition rooted in interactions and interpretations. These four artists gather, contemplate, and translate their sources and ideas to create new works. In some instances these pieces have fairly direct and clear links from inspiration to creation. In other instances the works act as companions or parallel statements, building on existing references and moments of familiarity. Two examples of these varied strategies can be seen in the works of Dan O’Neill and Barbara Balfour.

In Dan O’Neill’s lithographs, Jpeg Notes, the viewer can sense a familiarity with the images. The prints use a halftone pattern commonplace in printed matter, and collage imagery from both drawn and photographic sources. They look at memory and the body, but also offer possibilities of visual play and interpretation. The repeated images ask the viewer to look and to look again.

Barbara Balfour’s ink draw-downs reference the processes of mixing and testing colours common in print-based practice. In this case notions of preparation and exhibition are intertwined. This selection of works from her series, Qualified Colours — From FW, start from the colour descriptions in David Foster Wallace’s novel, Infinite Jest. The process of testing colour parallels the process of reading and interpreting. The ideas flow from page to the imagination and back.

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Barbara Balfour, is a Toronto-based artist whose print practice has long involved the relationship between the textual and the visual. Her research into text-based art practices and inordinate interest in words as succinct expressions of complex thought inform her books, multiples, and print installation. Balfour teaches print media and theory at York University as Professor in the Department of Visual Art and Art History, School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design.

Nadine Bariteau is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice is rooted in printmaking, sculpture, installation and video. Her works are studies of permanence, ephemerality, and interplay between human-made and natural environments. She is currently living on the road in her mobile studio, Studio Coyote, and reaching out to different communities across Canada.

Dan O’Neill is an artist and educator based in Halifax. His core practice is lithography. He also maintains an active, cross-disciplinary studio practice centered on drawing, painting, writing, and construction/installation. Collage is his primary method for gathering notation for lithography and other media, harvesting visual material from the public domain.

Nick Shick lives and works in Toronto. He is an artist, professional printer, and printmaking studio technician at Ontario College of Art and Design University. His works are rooted in photo-based screenprinting, and show moments of interaction.

Curator Bio

Daryl Vocat is a visual artist living and working in Toronto. He has participated in solo and group exhibitions in Canada and beyond. His work has been acquired by the New York Public Library Print Collection, National Gallery of Canada Library and Archives, The Robert Blackburn Printshop, and The Saskatchewan Arts Board.