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We are looking for Volunteer Gallery Attendants for Thomas Cottage (the old cottage near the Kaneff and the Student Centre). Thomas Cottage will be our 3rd site for this exhibition, in addition to the Blackwood (Kaneff) and eGallery (CCT).
The exhibition runs from Wednesday, January 27 to Sunday, March 7 and the hours of operation are:
Monday to Friday: 12 - 5pm
Wednesdays to 9pm
Saturday & Sunday: 12 - 3pm
(closed on civic holidays)
We are looking for punctual and reliable volunteers who can work 2 to 5 hours a week, during our hours of operation and throughout the entire 5-week run of the exhibition.
Volunteers will be responsible for opening the gallery on time, greeting visitors to the space and answering questions about the exhibition. This is a great opportunity for anyone who wants experience working in a gallery environment and are curious about the contemporary art world.
One thing we would like to mention upfront is that Thomas Cottage is an old building that has not been well maintained over the years. Unfortunately it has a mild odour and I would discourage anyone with severe respiratory conditions or allergies (especially to dust) from signing up. That being said, the space has been carefully cleaned and is heated. Attendants will be allowed to have a friend sit with them while they are watching the space. If you have any questions or concerns about sitting the cottage, please let me know.
We promise that Thomas Cottage will offer a truly "unique" gallery sitting experience. Making "gallery spaces" from the most unlikely habitats and altering environments is very much "on par" with what is happening everywhere else in contemporary art. To participate in an exhibition this ambitious, especially at a university gallery is a remarkable thing. I hope that you will consider taking at least one shift at the space and help support the gallery.
If you are interested in a shift, please send me your date and time preference by Friday January 22rd. If you have any friends that are interested, please feel free to pass on this message. For more information on the exhibition, please read below.
Lastly, we are hosting a special tour THIS Wednesday at 2pm starting at the Blackwood Gallery in Kaneff. It is called the "Hard Hat Tour" and the artists will be giving a personal tour of the galleries AND the cottage. (See attached poster.) So, if you would like to get a "peek" of the cottage, please join us on Wednesday. I will be in attendance and can answer any questions you might have about this volunteer opportunity.
Best,
Juliana Zalucky
Exhibition Coordinator
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Blackwood Gallery
University of Toronto at Mississauga
3359 Mississauga Rd. N.
Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6
T: 905 828 3789 F: 905 569 4262
www.blackwoodgallery.ca <http://www.blackwoodgallery.ca/>
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LOCATION! LOCATION! LOCATION!
January 27 – March 7, 2010
Collaborative work by Christine Swintak and Don Miller
Curated by Christof Migone
Opening Reception
Wednesday, January 27th 6 – 9pm.
A free bus leaves OCAD (100 McCaul Street, Toronto) at 6:30 pm and returns to OCAD at 9 pm.
Artists in attendance.
Three sites. Three stages. Three locations, and one event intertwines the three. First, in one location, a cottage is gutted. Second, the cottage's interior is reconstituted in our two gallery locations as a temporary display which functions simultaneously as an architectural autopsy, a time capsule, a resuscitation, a dump display, a scavenger manual, a surgical dismantlement, a reverse gentrification, a study of inefficiency, an erased erasure, and a memento mori. The second stage enacts a delayed forgetting, it forestalls the inevitable discarding, it impedes the third unknowable stage of oblivion from ever occurring. Christine Swintak and Don Miller intervene in the course of a campus in the midst of a growth spurt; they balance the equation whereby as new buildings break ground and emerge, others fade underground. The cottage in question, the Thomas Cottage, is a small late 19th century building that sits in the middle of the UTM campus and precedes the establishment of the campus and even its predecessor, Erindale College. The artists methodically take apart the dilapidated and maligned cottage and not only stage a slowing down in anticipation of its impending demolition, they also animate and transform it into a chimerical entity. The cottage, now in a pseudo post-mortem state and no longer listed in the property registry, enters the realm of sitelessness. Robert Smithson described his non-sites as "maps of material" which not only delimit space but also "involve a consciousness of time." Swintak and Miller provide a similar sensitivity to this continuum. The layered histories of the cottage, from the banal to the apocryphal, are present in both gallery spaces. The installation presents a portal to a pastoral past, but also reflects its university-based gallery setting as a white cubed cog in the knowledge industry. Neither narrative is idealized or demonized, in other words, the project acknowledges the fissures and fractures inherent in architecture. The invisible structures of society are made manifest in the structures of our buildings. In short, architecture not only speaks volume, it also speaks power. Consequently, with a conviction that is both resolute and risible, Swintak and Miller pervert the conventions and dub the cottage a sovereign. In honor of what would otherwise be an unnoticed demise, they then produce an installation which proclaims, The Cottage is dead! Long live the Cottage!
Christof Migone, Director/Curator
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Christine Swintak is a Toronto-based visual artist who works in a number of media including performance, intervention, installation and multimedia. She has exhibited at galleries, festivals and museums across Canada and internationally, including HMK Mariakapel (Holland), Model Niland (Ireland), DCR Guest Studios (Holland), YYZ Artist's Outlet (Toronto), Toronto Free Gallery (Toronto), Nuit Blanche (Toronto), Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), ArtCity Festival of Art and Architecture (Calgary), Khyber Centre for the Arts (Halifax), Dalhousie University Art Gallery (Halifax) and Rockefeller Centre (New York). Swintak has also presented numerous independent public interventions and relational happenings in places like Shelburne, Amsterdam, Banff, Vancouver, Teslin, New York, Salt Lake City, Death Valley and Los Angeles. Her projects include building a full scale ship through collective improvisation, running an election party campaign for the Irish underworld, transforming a dumpster into a luxury boutique hotel, promoting urban quicksand pits, creating a symmetrical frontispiece out of two mirrored rooms, attempting to give a shed a consciousness, and producing a series of impossible project proposals. Swintak received a BFA in 2003 from NSCAD University and is committed to continual self-directed research.
Don Miller is an idea-based visual artist, intuitive carpenter and poet who lives near Shelburne, Ontario. Miller works in a number of media including performance, video, installation, experimental architecture, snow sculpture and written word. He also works with stone, steel and wood to generate income to fund his artistic pursuits; his creative endeavours tend to infiltrate his life, and his life tends to infiltrate his art. Though the majority of his projects are produced independently, outside the gallery network, Miller has also presented performances, videos, readings and interventions at Ghost Ship (Amsterdam), York University (Toronto), Knock on Woods (Holland), Pleasure Dome/Cinecycle (Toronto), Engine Gallery (Toronto), Tranzac (Toronto), and Anna Leonowens Gallery (Halifax). His projects include an ongoing series of sensory deprivation and/or sensory enhancement snow caves, a large one of a kind frankenhouse constructed from numerous century old barns, spoken word performances at various venues, and creating what he terms "a strategy for living." Don received a BFA in 2002 from NSCAD University.
Christine Swintak and Don Miller met at NSCAD in 1998. Though they have been involved with each other's projects for the past decade, this is their first large scale exhibition working together as an equal authorship collaborative. Neither Swintak nor Don had a cottage in their childhood.
SPECIAL EVENTS
Sunday January 31st, 11:30-5:30pm.
FREE Contemporary Art Bus Tour
Tour starts at 11:30 am at 23 Beverly Street (Koffler Centre off-site space) and then departs for Blackwood, Art Gallery of York University and Doris McCarthy Gallery. To make a reservation, contact the Blackwood Gallery at blackwood.gallery@utoronto.ca or 905-828-3789.
Monday March 1st, 2-4 pm
The Blackwood Talks:
Location is Everything: site and non-site in the work of Christine Swintak and Don Miller
Narrated tour by Michelle Jacques (Associate Curator, Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of Ontario).
At the Blackwood Gallery.
For more information, call 905 828 3789 or visit www.blackwoodgallery.ca <http://www.blackwoodgallery.ca/>
Support generously provided by The Canada Council for the Arts, University of Toronto Student Housing and Residence Life (Mississauga) and The Ontario Trillium Foundation.
Blackwood Gallery
University of Toronto Mississauga
3359 Mississauga Rd. N.
Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6
www.blackwoodgallery.ca <http://www.blackwoodgallery.ca/>
blackwood.gallery@utoronto.ca <mailto:blackwood.gallery@utoronto.ca>
905.828.3789
Gallery Hours
Monday to Friday: 12 - 5pm
Wednesdays to 9pm
Saturday & Sunday: 12 - 3pm
(closed on civic holidays)
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