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Kelly Mark: It's Just One God Damn Thing After Another
Diaz Contemporary is pleased to present new work by Kelly Mark, in her first exhibition with the gallery. For years, Mark has been known for her witty critiques and wry sense of humour. Influenced by minimalism and conceptualism, Mark explores themes related to work, repetitive labour, and time. Her work often focuses on the banal facets of everyday life, and comments on contemporary culture. In this exhibition of primarily new work, Mark will show a range of media, including: drawings, text pieces, video- and light-based works. In a series of new letraset drawings, Mark employs this long-outdated desktop publishing tool to create elaborate designs in black and white; meanwhile, several neon and light-based works employ the self-reflexive, self-deprecating humour that she is known for.
Toronto-based Kelly Mark received her BFA in 1994 at the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design. She has exhibited widely across Canada and internationally at venues including the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), The Power Plant (Toronto), Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), Musée d'Art Contemporain (Montreal), Ikon Gallery (UK), Lisson Gallery (UK), and the Physics Room (NZ). She is a recipient of numerous Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts Council grants, as well as the KM Hunter Artist Award (2002), and Chalmers Art Fellowship (2002).
Kelly Mark gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
Diaz Contemporary is pleased to present new work by Lisa Steele & Kim Tomczak. Steele & Tomczak have worked exclusively in collaboration since 1983, producing videotapes, performances and photo/text works. Visually elegant and technically sophisticated, their work addresses universal social realities, family histories and repressed memories. They have profoundly influenced developments in video and media art in Canada since the early 1970s through an intimate and subjective approach to investigating and documenting society. Continuing this approach, for the past several years, Steele & Tomczak have been asking young people questions in various Western countries. In this series of work, these short interviews are inscribed as texts onto hybrid images of young individuals in front of institutional doorways. These photo-text works speak to the deep solitude of youth while never abandoning the current social environment within which each person exists.
Toronto-based Lisa Steele & Kim Tomczak have shown their work in numerous film festivals and exhibitions worldwide. In September 2009 they will be showing a new piece entitled Speak City for Projections, part of the Toronto International Film Festival. Steele & Tomczak have received numerous grants and awards including the Governor General’s Award for lifetime achievement in Visual & Media Arts (2005). They are also co-founders of Vtape, a Toronto media arts centre, and both teach at the University of Toronto, where Steele is the Associate Chair of the Department of Art.
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