Babe, yr my religion explores the gay bar as sacred space. These sites of gathering, celebration, mourning, and protest hold vital importance within the histories of queer and trans socializing and political organizing, yet many of these brick-and-mortar institutions continue to be shuttered. Crossman engages in cross-generational dialogue through queer film, television, and canonical texts such as Leslie Feinberg’s 1993 book “Stone Butch Blues” - an autobiographical novel that deals with gender, class, queerphobia, transphobia, antisemitism, and police brutality in the last half of the 20th century. This solo exhibition consists of a new body of work by Crossman that pays homage to queer literature and media, and the often-precarious spaces that helped keep our histories alive, while simultaneously envisioning more inclusive liberatory futures.

Then They Saw Firelight is a duo exhibition featuring multidisciplinary artists Morgan Possberg and Dan Cardinal McCartney. Exploring the ongoing effects of colonialism within their artistic practices, Morgan and Dan share the experience of growing up as Métis people formerly placed in the foster care system as children. 

Lan “Florence” Yee’s interdisciplinary practice draws on writing and unassuming imagery to permeate the slippery ends of meaning. Through a wide range of media, including oil painting, textile embroidery, sculptural installation, electronic signage, and photography, each are grounded together by unearthing speculative bonds between the historical and personal.

In Yee’s words, “My text-based artwork borrows the anonymous pen of templates, signage, and forms, while displacing their functions through skeptical experiences. The often ironic and humorous tones in the language recognize the limits of their own structure, and sustain a necessary uncertainty. The intimacy of this doubt gives me the space to interrogate the echoes that make up queer diasporic memory. Rather than looking at the height of grand moments, I prefer to investigate their systemic origins, and what continues to leak in the aftermath.

My practice uses the double-edged sword of visibility and recognition to explore how we may queer desirability. It attempts to step around easy signifiers of legibility with sparse retellings, obscured patterns, and frequent interruptions. Away from the flattening effect of nostalgia, I seek to deromanticize linear narratives of intergenerational knowledge by showcasing awkwardness, repetition and dead ends.”

A Sound That Never Was is a multi-channel sound installation curated by The Dim Coast (jake moore & Steve Bates). It features sound by 14 artists; Félicia Atkinson, Matthew Cardinal, Raven Chacon, crys cole, Isabella Forciniti, David Grubbs, Timothy Herzog, Sasha J. Langford, Mani Mazinani, Christof Migone, Marc-Alexandre Reinhardt, Anju Singh, Aho Ssan, Mark Templeton, voice recording by Vivian Darroch-Lozowski, and text by Daniela Cascela.

Artspace is proud to announce the final exhibition of our 50th anniversary year.

From the Ground Up: Artists in Practice for 50 Years features sculptural, painted, and textile works by Dorothy Caldwell, Wayne Cardinalli, Frances Dorsey, Faye Jacobs, Jeanne McRight, and Brian Nichols. Connected by time, theme, and place, their works illuminate the underlayers that ground and support 5 decades of artistic practice.

Ininige examines the work of five contemporary women artists each of whom carry knowledge, memory and skills developed across time and through their art practice. They may be carrying skills learned at a young age, holding the vestige of a love of textiles and patterning from childhood; skills acquired in an academic or group setting; or skills that carry forward from life experience.

Anahi Gonzales’ artistic practice and research explore migration, Mexican labour for/within Canada, Canadian imperialism, and identity with questions relating to commerce, systems of power and the event of photography through installation, photography, and moving images.

Kicking off our 50th anniversary year is an exhibition dedicated to our valued membership!

Throughlines: 2024 Juried Members' Exhibition proudly presents the work of 20 of our members, including a media arts installation in Gallery 2 co-presented with ReFrame Film Festival. On the commencement of this milestone year, we asked artists to submit work imbued with a look back and a look forward.

In 2008, at 32, I experienced psychosis. and spent many subsequent years in my thirties giving up on life. I have begun to claw my way out of that difficult, consuming, and confusing period.

This exhibition is about building strength, resilience, and courage through kindness towards yourself and others. I am interested in asking, how does one cope with the parts of self one doesn’t want to face? How can one deal more productively with the emotions schizophrenia conjures? Schizophrenia is a major life derailment. It is an extreme state of mind, and most certainly, a call to courage for those who have experienced it. And in my mind, it is a spiritual crisis.

Cultural X is an online, annual showcase for Trent University’s Cultural Studies Undergraduate Art Exhibition, presented on Artspace’s website. Students in studio courses are invited to submit their work for the prestigious the Gregory R. Frith Memorial Prize.

Until recently, Hall’s work has largely consisted of wall-mounted relief sculpture in the format of sequences and grids. These works combined shapes of Minimalism with gestures of Abstract Expressionism.

As Artspace’s 2022 Artist in Residence, Hall began experimenting with vertical, floor-based work, creating a series of large-scale drawings and maquettes that led to full-scale sculpture, the goal of which was exploration of the visual impact of a vertical format while considering the conceptual and aesthetic potential of repetition in her work.

Performance/Process presents the intense imagination and artistry of Brad Brackenridge, Artspace’s 2021 Artist-in-Residence. Providing a glimpse into the creation of puppets and puppetry, Brackenridge offers the inner workings of his methods and busy studio. His artistic process starts with character building, the forms of which materialize into captivating, stand-alone works of art. By way of movement, manipulation, imagination, and story-telling savvy, Brackenridge breathes life into sculptural objects as performance subjects.

The Circle Project is an evolving collaboration of artists and formerly incarcerated women in Vancouver, dedicated to producing provocative art together.

Guest curated by Amy Siegel, Creative Director of the ReFrame Film Festival

Port Manteau is a series of new video and sculpture works by Toronto based artist Mikiki. The work created for Port Manteau follows a self-led research trip, during which the artist returned home to Ktaqmkuk/Newfoundland to reconnect with family and land.

Curated by Lucas Cabral

Cultural X is an annual showcase Trent University’s Cultural Studies Undergraduate Art Exhibition. The students students in studio courses are invited to submit their work for the prestigious the Gregory R. Frith Memorial Prize.

Moursi presents a multitude of considerations to the viewer: What if singular patriarchal voices of religious sermons were interpreted through mime and dance? How would neon lights adorning mosque minarets look as sculptural objects? How do residents of Cairo challenge authoritative architectures and urban master plans, whilst creating new meanings for public space and land use?

Artspace presented works by David Bobier, as well as collaborators, Leslie Menagh and Kelly O’Neill.

The Mornings in Reverse invites us to consider the relationship between memory and anxiety through the lens of reflection.

The Hidden Anatomy brings together the disassociated. The elements of work, practice, repetition, and experimentation that are done behind closed doors are brought to the forefront. It is an exposition of how and why choices are made and presented. This is not a negation of the past; this is a drawing out. An examination. Accepting our failures, and moving through them. This is a negation of mediocrity. An acceptance of learning. A willingness to listen.

In 2010, Ann Hirsch intercepted VH1 hit reality TV dating show “Frank the Entertainer in a Basement Affair”. As “Annie”, Hirsch performed as one of fifteen women trying to win over Frank Maresca, himself a former reality TV contestant on “I Love New York 2” and “I Love Money”.

connections of gestures explores beaded animation in video, still life, and beaded works. Carrie Allison was inspired by beadwork held in museums across Turtle Island, how these pieces hold ancestors, tell stories and connect us through time and space. Through combining animation and beadwork the artist seeks to visually narrate the practice of beading and bring viewers closer to an understanding of beadwork’s animacy.

In MAKE/SHIFT, Bulman uses sheets of drywall and the gallery’s physical architecture to bring attention to the barriers, both physical and ideological, that continue to exist in the contemporary art world. Employing a disability framework, the work invites audiences to explore ableism in the gallery setting.

Abundance is a new project by Shellie Zhang featuring sculptural, photographic and installation-based works. The exhibition combines visual cues from imagery of plentiful fruit in produce advertisements and cultural rituals as a metaphor for the dreams and labour that extends across oceans and generations.

The project is accompanied by Bulaklak, a performance for the camera by Maria Patricia Abuel. A personal meditation on matriarchal roles and sacrifices, the artist honours and reclaims the traditions she’s inherited.

___a lineage of transgression___ explores language as a tool to challenge the limitations of systemic definitions of Blackness and womanhood. As writers, poets, teachers and creators - Kameelah Janan Rasheed and Jamilah Malika Abu-Bakare - use film, audio, photocopies, collage and text to play with the materiality of words.