Anik Glaude

January 21, 2023 – June 2023

Field Notes brings together historical sketches by F. H. Varley with contemporary animation and drawings by Winnie Truong. Although their bodies of work and approaches to art-making are vastly different, both artists share a desire to engage with the natural world.

The artworks presented in this exhibition derive from personal observations and intimate impressions of nature, and range from concise sketches of alder trees and rose stems, to colourful renderings of otherworldly flora. Both artists used pencil and paper to express their interpretation of nature, whether to challenge existing ways of studying and understanding it or simply to celebrate its beauty.

Curated by Anik Glaude

Visit this virtual gallery to view the exhibition online.

September 17, 2022 – April 28, 2023

Don Kwan, Quiet Resistance, Reclaiming Space, 2022, photographic vinyl mural, 209.6 cm x 1,270.0 cm

For the Varley Art Gallery of Markham’s 25th anniversary, Don Kwan was commissioned to create a temporary mural on the gallery’s exterior façade.

A third-generation Chinese Canadian, Kwan turns to his own experiences and challenges as a gay, East Asian artist in order to ground himself in broader conversations about identity, representation, and intergenerational memory-making in the diaspora. Quiet Resistance, Reclaiming Space consists of a series of photographs taken in a range of Canadian landscapes, each framed by a traditional Chinese lantern panel. The first three images were taken around the artist’s home in the Ottawa valley, and the last two were created in Unionville, behind the gallery.

By inserting himself into these environments, Kwan seeks to reclaim space and dismantle narratives of racism and homophobia.

Curated by Anik Glaude

May 7 – September 4, 2022

Janet Jones and Michel Daigneault are contemporary painters who question and challenge our understanding of abstraction. Aware of and informed by historical and formal definitions of the genre, they see abstraction as moving beyond specific movements to convey broader meaning today.

Both artists look to abstraction as a way to explore different realities, or as modes of perceiving what is true and what is not. Both employ similar methods—layering, patterning, and collage—to assemble their narratives from a diversity of sources. The resulting paintings, however, differ significantly in scale, imagery, and intent. Established artists and peers, Jones and Daigneault intentionally cultivate a collegial relationship that thrives on debate, on creating space for dialogue that permits both different ideas and approaches to art-making to flourish.

Curated by Anik Glaude

Visit this virtual gallery to see the exhibition online.

Refracting the Lens is a two-part exhibition marking the Varley Art Gallery of Markham’s twenty-fifth anniversary.

Part I: February 4, 2022 – September 4, 2022

Featuring the work of Shuvinai Ashoona, Franklin Carmichael, Emily Carr, A. J. Casson, Maurice Cullen, Kathleen Daly, Clarence Gagnon, Lawren Harris, A. Y. Jackson, F. H. Johnston, Molly Lamb Bobak, Arthur Lismer, J. E. H. MacDonald, Doris McCarthy, Norval Morrisseau, Lucius R. O'Brien, Albert H. Robinson, Jon Sasaki, Greg Staats, F. H. Varley, and Mary E. Wrinch.

Visit this virtual gallery to see the first iteration of this exhibition.

Part II: September 17, 2022 – January 8, 2023

Featuring the work of Pitseolak Ashoona, Kathleen Daly, Betty Goodwin, Anique Jordan, Doris McCarthy, Annie Pootoogook, Napachie Pootoogook, John Reeves, and Mary E. Wrinch.

Visit this virtual gallery to see the second part of Refracting the Lens.

About the exhibition

Seeing the world through a pair of binoculars can bring the land around you into focus. By refracting light, the lenses create a magnified and often clearer image. You can now see objects that are very small or too far away for the naked eye to perceive by itself. Your surroundings take on new meaning as you discover the richness they hold.

The way we see and understand works of art is similar to the way we use binoculars. Our first impression is usually of the picture as a whole, the frame, dimensions, and medium. However, a closer look reveals all the subtle details that contribute to the success of a painting, drawing, or photograph. We might, for example, discover the intention of the artist or the context in which the work was created. However, we all carry a set of lenses that affect our perspective. In this case, the lenses are our experiences, our backgrounds, and our histories.

For the gallery’s 25th anniversary, we’ve gathered a selection of works that showcases new acquisitions and signals new directions in the ways in which we approach the work we do. Museums and art galleries are changing. Collections are no longer seen as repositories of historical artifacts, but as living and breathing chapters in ever-evolving narratives. We invite you to consider these narratives and push beyond those that have already been written.

February 4 – April 24, 2022

Organized by the Varley Art Gallery of Markham in partnership with the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and the Richmond Art Gallery.

Featuring Karen Tam, with Lui Luk Chun 呂陸川, Tam Yuen Yin Law 譚阮嫣娜, Jeannie C. Lee 劉志文, Kileasa Wong 黃吳紫雲, Peter Law 罗建生, Meng Bao Qing 孟寶清, and Sui Sheng Guan 關則開.

For the past several years, Montreal-based artist Karen Tam 譚嘉文 has searched for traces of Lee Chao Nam 李趙南. Lee was a Chinese Canadian painter who lived in Victoria, British Columbia in the 1930s. Little is known about Lee’s life and artistic practice. Having first discovered Lee in the journals of Canadian painter Emily Carr (1871–1945), Tam investigated historical archives, newspapers, and immigration records in an attempt to piece together what little information she could find. This evolving research culminates in the installation With wings like clouds hung from the sky 大鵬就振翼 (2017–ongoing), which re-imagines Lee Nam’s studio.

Tam is not looking to reconstruct a historically accurate display. Instead, her goal is to fill the gallery with the essence, history, and aura that artists’ studios hold in our imagination. By creating a space for Lee in the gallery, Tam aims to help redress the balance of standard Canadian art history discourses by recuperating absent or overlooked racialized artists and their communities. She asks us to consider who gets included and, maybe more importantly, who is excluded, from exhibitions both past and present. A central part of the project is the way Tam traces the lineages and friendships found between artists of multiple generations and cultures. The importance of colleagues and the relationships between teachers and pupils are both made evident through the artists Tam invites to join her in this display. These include Lui Luk Chun 呂陸川, Tam Yuen Yin Law 譚阮嫣娜, Jeannie C. Lee 劉志文, Kileasa Wong 黃吳紫雲, Peter Law 罗建生, Meng Bao Qing 孟寶清, and Sui Sheng Guan 關則開.

This exhibition is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Varley-McKay Art Foundation of Markham, and the City of Markham.

Curated by Anik Glaude

Visit this virtual gallery to view the exhibition online.

February 1 – September 6, 2021

Jessica Thalmann is attracted to the limits of photography and the ways in which she can push the parameters of the medium both formally and conceptually. She is not interested in using the camera merely to document but as a tool to explore how images can be deconstructed and re-contextualized. As seen in the series of works included in this exhibition, Thalmann uses manipulation techniques to reveal the porous boundaries that exist between the image and the object. The rips, folds and collaged elements you see in her work further accentuate the push and pull between the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional. These techniques also make the viewer question what they see, what is real and what is not.

Thalmann adopts architectural concepts to extend her photographic practice and to devise new presentation methods. For example, she is interested in how the poetics of space inform our understanding of spatial and pictorial relationships. This concept underscores the importance of considering both the context and the lived sensation of a particular place or architectural form. The artist is interested in the formal qualities of the sites she photographs, but also in how these places hold the lived experiences of the people who have passed through them. While it started as a means to make sense of a personal tragedy, this practice has been extended to consider the ways that ruins, monuments, and abandoned public squares embody the failed utopian aims of Brutalist architecture.

Curated by Anik Glaude

Visit the virtual gallery to view this exhibition online.

February 1 – September 6, 2021

With a sculpture and painting practice rooted in traditional Northwest Coast design, Luke Parnell contrasts these formal aesthetic elements with personal and contemporary concerns. His new installation, Repeat the chorus three times, includes three box drums. Varying in scale and design, the pieces are adorned with curving lines and concentric ovoids in both red and black paint, or with carved elements.

In the gallery, the drums are rendered silent, echoes of their beats audible only in the imagination of their viewers. At the same time, however, the drums act like the verse of a song, one after the other adding meaning to an evolving visual narrative. As with many of Parnell’s past works, these pieces explore how both culture and trauma are passed down from generation to generation, creating a conundrum about how one reconciles with both simultaneously.

Luke Parnell is Laxgiik (eagle) from Wilps Kwa’kaans on his mother’s side and Haida from Massett on his father’s side. His training has involved a traditional apprenticeship with a Master Northwest Coast Indigenous carver, a BFA from OCAD, and an MA from ECUAD. His artistic practice explores the relationship between Northwest Coast Indigenous oral histories and Northwest Coast Indigenous art, with a focus on transformation narratives. Parnell’s work has been exhibited at the MacLaren Art Centre (Barrie, 2011), the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, 2014), the Biennial of Contemporary Native Art (Montreal, 2016), the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery (Kitchener, 2018), and more. He has been an artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre and the International Cervantino Festival (Guanajuato, Mexico).

Curated by Anik Glaude

Visit this virtual gallery to view the exhibition online

An exhibition catalogue of works by Luke Parnell. Features an introduction from curator Anik Glaude, and an extended essay by independent curator, artist, and educator Lisa Myers.

February 15 – April 26, 2020

In her first project as the Varley Art Gallery of Markham’s 2020 Community-Artist-in-Residence, Annie Wong explores a nuanced sense of nostalgia and cultural survival embodied by the everyday objects specific to the making of a Chinese home. These objects range from kitchen staples, such as dried ingredients typical of Chinese soups, to collections of traditional folk art of the kind that proliferated among Chinese communities during the early waves of immigration to Canada.

Borrowed from local residents in Markham and beyond, the objects here perform a type of diasporic Canadian “Chineseness,” despite or distinctively because of, their Western context.

Curated by Anik Glaude

Annie Wong is a writer and multidisciplinary artist working in performance and installation. Her work begins at the intersections of the poetic and political in the matrix of everyday life, employing socially-engaged and process-oriented methods of artistic collaboration often with everyday people. Conceptually diverse, her current research explores embodied and affective knowledge from the anger of BIPOC feminist histories and the melancholy of diasporic hauntologies. Wong has presented research and projects across North America with Open Source Gallery (NY, New York), The Gardiner Museum (Toronto, ON), Studio XX (Montreal, QC), Third Space (Saint John, NB), Intersite: Visual Arts Festival (Calgary, AB), among others. She has held residencies at The Art Gallery of Ontario, Khyber Centre for the Arts (Halifax, NS), The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (Banff, AL), and most recently with the City of Calgary. Wong’s literary practice includes poetry, art writing, and non-fiction. Her writing can be found in C Magazine, Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Canadian Art, Performance Research Journal (UK), and MICE Magazine.

September 14, 2019 – January 5, 2020

Andrew Chung, Annette Mangaard, Julieta Maria, Calyx Passailaigue, Roberto Santaguida, Alice Shin

Tout-Monde: Markham seeks to engage with the delicate, yet timely discourse about encountering and representing others. Inspired by the ideas of Martiniquais poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant (1928 – 2011), six artists working with film were commissioned to engage with communities different from their own, thus stimulating the exploration of various means of perception and interaction with others.

Ultimately, this project aims to generate a series of encounters between artists and communities, as well as between neighbours, between friends, and between strangers.

Curated by Catherine Sicot and Anik Glaude

The artworks presented in Tout-Monde: Markham are commissioned by Elegoa Cultural Productions with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, New Chapter Program, in partnership with the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT) and the Varley Art Gallery of Markham.

January 19 – April 7, 2019

Moving through darkness into the clearing considers the ways in which artists return to the land in search of subject matter and how these repetitive actions are informed by their understanding of place and identity. In the last century, the Group of Seven were very successful in their collective project of creating a landscape style that would be recognized as definitively Canadian. In Moving through darkness into the clearing, photographic works by Greg Staats, Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk), both complement and challenge the Group of Seven works on display. Staats combines language and mnemonics with imagery drawn from the Ontario landscape, not as a nationalist project, but as part of an ongoing process of conceptualizing a Haudenosaunee restorative aesthetic that explores multiple relationships with trauma, renewal, and place.

Curated by Anik Glaude

May 4 – September 2, 2019

In her interdisciplinary practice, Nava Waxman combines elements of performance, dance, and the visual arts (namely painting, drawing, found objects, and photography) to create site-specific artworks and installations. Her work, regardless of the medium selected, is informed by her interest in the dualities of order and chaos, continuity and change, and rules and randomness. It is within these contrasting forces that the artist explores the possibilities of mark-making in relation to cultural contexts and identity. Over the past few years, her practice has evolved to question the boundaries of traditional two-dimensional painting practices. Now, she is interested in engaging with the fourth dimension, time, to explore ideas of movement and temporality, and to make the boundaries between various media more elusive. A temporal element is integral to many artistic disciplines, such as music or dance. It is also a key component of body art and performance.

The artworks presented in Choreographed Marks demonstrate the various ways Waxman uses the camera to bring to light the performative aspects of mark-making. In these lens-based works, the body becomes both the brush and the artist that wields it. With an emphasis on process and documentation, the camera records her actions as she moves across the studio space; the body is moving in and out of focus, even barely visible at times. Employing theatrical strategies, Waxman introduces objects into her performances as props, adding layers of meaning and visual cues for the viewer. Finally, Waxman uses sequencing, the arrangement of images and marks, as both a presentation strategy and a way by which to develop a visual narrative and a personal artistic vocabulary.

Curated by Anik Glaude

Nava Waxman is a Markham-based artist born in Beer Sheva, Israel. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at Saint Louis University Museum of Art, St. Louis, Missouri; St. Stephen’s Cultural Center, Rome; and Walnut Contemporary, Toronto. Waxman holds a Bachelor of Social Science and communication from The OPEN University of Tel-Aviv and is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts at York University.

This project is part of right here | right now, an initiative to help foster the work of contemporary artists in York Region by providing them with exhibition opportunities and ongoing professional development. We would like to thank Suzy Lake for her participation in this mentorship program.

May 19 – September 3, 2018

Karen Miranda Abel, Lisa Hirmer, Jessica Karuhanga, Anna Williams

A woman’s hand weaves in and out of the tall grasses growing along a riverbed. The clap of a beaver’s tail thunders upon the water’s surface, the sound reverberating into the distance. Nearby, concentric circles appear as particles of matter disturb the river’s otherwise calm body. The roots of mother trees extend on either side of the stream nurturing the next generation of saplings.

Inspired by the gallery’s location near Toogood Pond and the Rouge River watershed, Refuge dwells upon issues of boundaries, permanence, interconnectivity, and exchange. It explores the physical and psychological effects of nature on humans and animals alike, specifically within the context of the urban forest.

Curated by Anik Glaude

January 20 – September 3, 2018

Here’s to the stories yet to be told

- Alejandra Ribera, “Led Me to You,” This Island, 2017

Art gallery collections grow over time to include works produced in various mediums and dating from various historical periods. Artworks created before our time may appear quaint, even old-fashioned, while newer ones may engage with contemporary concerns, yet challenge our definition of art itself. Thematic group shows are, at their core, an opportunity to place such disparate works into conversations with each other. What seems at first glance to be a forced or awkward pairing, may, ultimately, offer new and exciting readings.

Featuring works from the Varley Art Gallery of Markham’s permanent collection, Inscapes explores the landscape genre and considers the relationship between it and the natural world it depicts. Nathalie Desmet has said, “The tradition of landscape painting is in some way responsible for distancing us from nature, for making us forget that nature is an experiential place.” If this is true, how do we, as viewers, relate to images of landscape on a personal or even sensorial level? If we look beyond the intent of the artist and rely on our own individual experiences of the natural world, how does that process affect the ways in which we see and understand the artworks in this room?

This exhibition focuses on representations of the places we inhabit, whether they be physical or imagined. Seascapes, snowscapes, cityscapes, and even mindscapes, are generic terms used to describe the types of environments represented within an artwork. An “inscape,” on the other hand, is defined as the essential quality of a particular human being, object, or location. In order to highlight such qualities among the works on display, contemporary writers have been invited to produce original texts in response to them. This cross-disciplinary approach seeks to expand the possible readings of artworks by offering new interpretations, creating new stories, and bringing to our attention contemporary ideas and concerns. Hopefully, these new texts will allow us to remove the frames limiting our perceptions of the scenes depicted and allow our imaginations to expand beyond the confines of their borders.

Curated by Anik Glaude in partnership with Sheniz Janmohamed

May 13 – September 4, 2017

Museums collect vast arrays of artifacts; typically, items of significant cultural interest. These objects, once removed from both space and time, become untethered from their original contexts. They are kept in vaults and stored away under lock and key, forced to remain still for perpetuity. That is until they are brought out into the limelight; carried by white-gloved hands and put out on display for all to see. Over time, nostalgia – a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past–creeps in and attaches itself to these unsuspecting items, casting an aura upon them like a layer of metaphorical dust clinging to passivity. Encased in a plastic cell, they take on a new role, a new identity.

The Varley Art Gallery collects artworks by F.H. Varley but also archival material that assists in telling his life story. Our holdings contain objects relating to his artistic practice, such as his easel, paint box, paint brushes, and even old tubes of paint. These items help illustrate Varley’s artistic process and are placed on display for educational purposes. Our collection also includes everyday objects – a chess set, a briefcase, and a pair of sunglasses–objects that, despite not having any real historical significance, help us connect with the artist on a more personal level.

As part of Present | Perfect | Continuous, a year-long exhibition celebrating the Varley Art Gallery’s 20th anniversary, Jon Sasaki was invited to create new work in response to our archival holdings. Struck by our collection of Varley’s belongings, Sasaki created two projects that sought to bring new life and new meaning to these everyday objects. An unused panel from Varley's studio left in stormy weather is a meditation on the depiction of atmospheric elements in Varley’s paintings and on the physical environments in which such paintings are subsequently stored and displayed. Varley's junk drawer of 1969 made useful in the present is an attempt to imbue a collection of random ‘bits and pieces’ with a new purpose.

The artist equates the process of finding a new use for this discarded material to the process of reappraising canonical images of the Canadian landscape. While the original agenda of the Group of Seven might no longer be relevant to contemporary audiences, Sasaki offers us an alternative reading through which the public might access this material.

Curated by Anik Glaude

May 13 – September 4, 2017

Chun Hua Catherine Dong, Raafia Jessa, Jihee Min, Yvonne Singer, Shellie Zhang, Alize Zorlutuna

Language is a universal and abstract system of sounds and symbols. Yet, the social, political, and cultural contexts in which a language is spoken greatly affect its development and usage. In ever-increasingly globalized societies, our sociolinguistic identity is not often singular. The language we speak at home, or learned as a child – our mother tongue – may not be the same one used in our everyday lives. Mother Tongue invites us to consider the complex relationships that exist between language and identity; how it defines who we are and how it can inform visual artistic practice.

Curated by Anik Glaude

September 23, 2017 – January 7, 2018

Markham-based Xiaojing Yan journeyed far into the realms of meaning and imagination to bring Out from among the tranquil woods into the visible world. Along the way, Yan collected objects of wonder and beauty – lingzhi mushrooms, star anise, freshwater pearls, and cicadae – which she has intricately woven into sculptural installations that are at once fantastical and familiar. In these new works, the artist invites the viewer to explore a space inhabited by contemporary beings and forms that are infused with references to centuries-old Chinese mythology, folklore, and symbolism. Much like the practices of traditional Chinese painters, Yan uses an economy of means to suggest mountainous landscapes, clouds in the process of formation, or swarms of flying insects. Instead of brushing ink onto a flat surface, however, Yan extends her works fully into three-dimensional space, allowing the viewer to encounter them in a more intimate manner.

Through the work in Out from among the tranquil woods, Xiaojing Yan revisits her own identity as a first-generation Chinese Canadian. Yan’s migration experience provides her with a unique perspective through which she integrates the long history of Chinese traditions and rituals into her contemporary, global understanding of the natural world. In so doing, Yan approaches a central theme of the exhibition – the gaps between the foundations of Western and Eastern ways of knowing. In much of Western philosophy, culture, and nature exist as a duality, two different and segmented arenas of everyday life. In Chinese philosophy, however, the two are viewed as an inseparable continuum, they are one and the same. As such, Yan incorporates into her practice the idea that every living thing is imbued with a spirit – a vitality or ch’i that flows through all flora, fauna, animal, and human beings. Her work thus provides a lens through which the viewer might uncover some of what is lost in translation between languages and ways of knowing. Yan offers an optimistic vision of the seemingly unbridgeable gaps between the East and the West, between the past and the present, between culture and nature, and ultimately between life and death.

Curated by Anik Glaude

Xiaojing Yan is a Chinese-Canadian artist working and living in Markham, ON. She received an MFA in Sculpture from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and a BFA from Nanjing Arts Institution, China. Yan has received numerous awards and grants, and her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums internationally. Suzhou Museum will present her first solo museum exhibition in China in January 2018. Yan’s work has been included in many collections, and she has created many public art projects. Recent projects include Cloudscape in the collection of Seneca College at Newnham Campus, Toronto; Moon Gate, a public sculpture, commissioned by Jinji Lake Art Museum, Suzhou, China; and Sound of the Rain, a public wall sculpture, which was recently commissioned by Elora Centre for the Arts. The artist gratefully acknowledges the support of the Chalmers Arts Fellowships program administered by the Ontario Arts Council.

Xiaojing Yan: Out from among the tranquil woods was awarded the 2018 Exhibition Installation And Design award from Galeries Ontario / Ontario Galleries (GOG)

January 21 – April 23, 2017

Susana Reisman’s photographic and sculptural practice investigates the reasoning and decision-making behind the ‘shape’ of things. She is interested in the natural environment and how it adapts (or is adapted) to the urban landscape. The two bodies of work on view, Standardizing Nature and On Technology (in the Collections Gallery) continue the artist’s exploration of wood as both subject and object. The enduring individuality and uniqueness of this material are highlighted, despite the various natural and technological modifications it experiences.

In Standardizing Nature, Reisman explores the transformation of trees into lumber. The photographs in this series document the various processes (cutting, sawing, and drying) that wood undergoes before it becomes the standardized product we buy in hardware stores. Paired here with F.H. Varley’s Second Growth, Lynn Peak (c. 1932–1936), these works speak to Reisman’s concern for the natural resources we harness from the earth and the role they play in our everyday lives.

Curated by Anik Glaude

Susana Reisman was born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1977. She received a BA in Economics from Wellesley College (Boston, 1999) and an MFA in photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology (Rochester, 2005). After teaching photography for a number of years, Susana now dedicates her time to making art and running Circuit Gallery. She lives and works in Toronto.

This project is part of Present | Perfect | Continuous, a year-long exhibition celebrating the Varley Art Gallery’s 20th anniversary. The contemporary artists participating in the show bring new insights to the study of F.H. Varley’s work from their collection.

September 24, 2016 – January 8, 2017

Jeff Nye’s paintings are physical explorations of loss and memory. His work reflects upon the ways in which time and emotion distort our relationship with the built environment. The artwork featured in Recovery Rooms depicts abstracted elements of both domestic and institutional spaces, settings of particular significance to the artist. Architectural details, such as walls, windows, and floorboards seemingly appear and disappear from these canvases, caught somewhere between the physical present and the remembered past. Amidst these interiors, leaves, and vines can be seen to weave on top of and within these settings, at times indistinguishable from the spaces in which they grow.

While Nye’s work is grounded within an abstracted painterly discourse, the artist uses the painting process to key into an emotional response – the grief experienced following the loss of his daughter. Through these works, the artist invites us to witness his private struggle, one that has affected both his professional and personal life. Like scars accumulated upon the surface of the canvas, Nye uses the colour and texture of the oil paint to bring up memories of a specific time and place.

Curated by Anik Glaude

Jeff Nye is a Canadian artist, writer, teacher, and curator based in Newmarket, ON. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from Concordia University, Montreal (1998) and a Master of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Regina (2007). Nye’s paintings and multi-media installations have been exhibited in galleries across the country including the Art Gallery of Regina, 5th Parallel Gallery, and the Aurora Cultural Centre. Nye has received several distinctions and awards for his work, including grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. His work is in the permanent collections of the Saskatchewan Arts Board and the University of Regina.

This project is part of right here | right now, an initiative that aims to foster the work of contemporary artists in York Region by providing them with exhibition opportunities and ongoing professional development

January 23, 2016 – September 6, 2016

F. H. Varley (1881–1969), Kate Wilson, Claire Scherzinger, and Ed Pien

The On Your Mark series was the catalyst for a study of the products and processes of mark-making, a thematic thread which wove through the Varley Art Gallery’s 2016 exhibition programming. From both a historic and contemporary perspective, these exhibitions explored how artists use marks as both a means to an end and as ends in themselves. Nowhere is the mark more evident than in the practice of drawing. Curator Emma Dexter describes the drawing as a “map of time,” specifically, because of its ability to record the maker's actions, the sequence of stroke after stroke. One hundred years separate the earliest drawing presented in this exhibition from its contemporary counterparts. How has drawing evolved within this time frame?

When F. H. Varley learned to draw at the end of the 19th century, the medium was seen as the foundation of artistic practice. Line, shape, proportion, and perspective were the fundamental elements of every drawing and skill was assessed by the individual’s ability to create on paper a convincing illusion of the three-dimensional world. Today, contemporary artists defy this traditional notion and redefine our understanding of what a drawing can be. Now, the intention of the artist comes to the forefront and their choice of medium and support, as well as of scale and composition becomes as important as the imagery they produce. By comparing and contrasting these old and new practices, along with the ways in which the mark itself can be explored and manipulated, our hopes are that new connections may be established between past and present.

On Your Mark was an exhibition presented in two parts. While the work of F. H. Varley and Kate Wilson remained throughout the run of the exhibition, works by Claire Scherzinger were replaced by works by Ed Pien halfway through the project. This allowed for greater dialogue with the temporary exhibitions on view concurrently, Sarah Cale: Instants passing through the air I breathe, and Visualizing a Culture for Strangers: Chinese Export Paintings from the Nineteenth Century.

Curated by Anik Glaude

January 23 – May 8, 2016

Linen shards float upon a pink celestial void. Repeatedly, these fragments are pushed and pulled by the gravity of the nebulous plane upon which they lie. Subtle layers of colour — yellows and whites — surround and define each piece of material, giving them weight within this raw environment. Sarah Cale combines aspects of painting and collage to create colourful and intricate artworks. On one hand, her paintings are the result of a meticulous process that exploits the physicalities of her medium, while on the other, they are poetic musings on the creative process itself.

Cale’s work stems from a desire to move beyond conventional forms of abstraction. For this reason, there is a large degree of experimentation and spontaneous creation in her process. This exploration is evident in the aesthetics of each work, for example, how certain pieces are created using “second-hand” brushstrokes. In some early pieces, acrylic paint is applied first to a plastic surface and once dried, peeled off and glued onto to a canvas or linen support. Paintings, such as The Looming (2014), may seem initially to have been inspired by the gestural works of early modernist abstract painters, yet, Cale’s calculated approach to questions of materiality and gesture results in complex canvases that challenge the preconceptions of her viewers. In these works, Cale’s brushstrokes are not, in fact, splashes of paint, but layers of colour carefully and systematically glued down to create the illusion of spontaneity. The artist’s process is also impelled by a desire to expand the notion of mark marking. When assembled side by side, acrylic “marks” of various shapes and sizes create depth and dimension within an otherwise flat field. Smaller marks recede, while larger ones ascend to the surface. As seen in Cuts Fall (2013), these collaged elements also create a patterning effect, bringing a distinctive visual style to Cale’s work.

In Ask Me Anything (2015) and Broke Down Portal (2015), Cale breaks from the confines of her canvases and reaches beyond the edge of the painted frame. Strips of canvas or unravelling linen hang down toward the gallery floor and into the realm of sculptural intervention. While these elements are visually striking, not all of Cale’s collage elements are as immediately apparent. More recently, older paintings have been recycled as fodder for new works, cut up and grafted onto another surface. Despite mutilation, the cut-up remnants have received a new life on new skin and often dictate the direction that the added-to paintings will take. Some of the cut-up pieces of canvas applied to the surface are left bare, while others become embedded within previously painted surfaces. In Awkward Ritual (2015), layers of paint and collaged material create complicated relationships within each plane, often requiring the viewer to take a second look in order to understand how an effect has been produced. These various processes prompt us to contemplate the artist’s techniques and how a specific work was created.

The title of the exhibition is derived from the prose of Clarice Lispector, whose novel, Água Viva is conceptual and non-narrative in nature. What attracts Cale to Lispector’s work is its innovative formal qualities, its stream of consciousness, and its deconstructive mediation of life and time. Both artists create work that is always evolving and that seemingly exists within a never-ending continuum. In this place, there is no pressure to create in a linear fashion and words (or paintings), can exist in the past, the present or the future. The title of one of Cale’s most recent paintings, Muscle Memory (2015), hints at this idea. The artist is free to move back and forth, like a breath, pausing only to contemplate her individual experience. As an attempt to go deeper into her own artistic process, Cale has created a body of work that is an extension of herself and integrated into her everyday life.

Curated by Anik Glaude

Sarah Cale received a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and an MFA from the University of Guelph. In 2009 and 2010 she was shortlisted for the RBC Canadian Painting Competition and has been awarded numerous grants and residencies. Her work has been included in recent solo and group exhibitions at Galerie de l’UQAM, Montréal (2013), Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton (2014), Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Fredericton (2014), Jessica Bradley Gallery, Toronto (2015) and Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, Kitchener-Waterloo (2015). Sarah Cale is represented by Clint Roenisch Gallery, Toronto. The artist would like to thank the Toronto Arts Council and the Ontario Arts Council for their support.

September 19, 2015 – January 10, 2016

A monochromatic landscape sets the stage for Jennie Suddick’s newest body of work; a series of white architectural models of tree houses and forts. The inspiration for this installation, aptly nicknamed The Tree House Project, comes from Suddick’s own experience of growing up in Markham’s suburban neighbourhoods. A recurring theme in the artist’s practice is the mediated relationship between inhabitants and nature that results from the growth of such manufactured environments. As the green spaces around us change, the contact we have with nature and the relationship we forge with our surroundings evolve.

The tree house offers Suddick a means through which to explore this contemporary condition as well as to ponder issues of autonomy, fantasy, and nostalgia. During a residency at the McKay Art Centre from March 16 to 22, 2015, Suddick invited visitors to contribute to her project through discussion and collaborative sketching. Over one hundred participants visited her converted studio and were encouraged to recall their own childhood dreams of outdoor play areas. Several of the resulting drawings, which served as inspiration for her models, are exhibited alongside the artist’s own detailed sketches and blueprints.

Curated by Anik Glaude

Jennie Suddick is a Markham-born, multi-disciplinary artist based in Toronto, ON. She earned her Master of Fine Arts from York University and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts and an Advanced Visual Studies Certificate from OCAD University. Suddick has participated in numerous residencies and her work has been exhibited in Canada, the U.S., Europe, and Asia. She is currently an Assistant Professor at OCAD University where she is also Associate Chair, Contemporary Drawing, and Print Media. This project is organized by the Varley Art Gallery and curated by Anik Glaude. It is part of right here | right now, an initiative that aims to foster the work of contemporary artists in York Region by providing them with exhibition opportunities and ongoing professional development

September 19, 2015 – January 10, 2016

Organized by the Varley Art Gallery of Markham, in partnership with Kitchener- Waterloo Art Gallery (Kitchener-Waterloo, ON), Rodman Hall Art Centre (St. Catharines, ON), Southern Alberta Art Gallery (Lethbridge, AB), Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery (Halifax, NS) and Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver, BC).

Curated by Anik Glaude

A ballet dancer steps onto an empty stage and performs an arabesque. With one leg firmly on the ground, she lifts the other behind her straight into the air; with arms extended, she arches her torso into a back bend. She takes two steps forward and repeats this series of movements as another dancer arrives behind her. They continue advancing until thirty-two of them come together in a single file, winding gracefully back and forth across the stage. The performers are precise and synchronized, their elegance amplified through the repetition of their movements. This group of dancers, or corps de ballet, is working as one to perform “The Kingdom of the Shades,” a famous scene from La Bayadère, choreographed by Marius Petipa in 1877. The ballet is set in India and relates the tragic story of Nikiya, a temple dancer, and her lover, the warrior Solor.

This scene is the impetus for Brendan Fernandes’ exploration of the arabesque, as both a dance step and as an element of Islamic design. This central motif is articulated in various ways throughout the exhibition space and brings forth issues of power, balance, labour and translation. Stylized cutouts of dancers performing the arabesque anchor the installation and speak of the strength and endurance needed to make this position look effortless. In other works, the notations used by choreographers to convey movement and body placement are transformed into individual configurations and larger decorative patterns that play on their Islamic origins. These works unite the artist’s research into classical dance with questions of ethnicity and migration within the charged framework of an Orientalist ballet.

Having studied ballet and modern dance techniques, but forced to quit the discipline due to injury, Brendan Fernandes seeks to explore the ways in which dance has affected and shaped his sense of self. Fernandes sees the body as a kind of object, endowed with cultural meaning, viewed by others and laboured on by ourselves. Through movement, he aims to recover the language of dance embodied within his own identity. His exploration of physicality, stillness and gendered stereotypes in dance allows him the opportunity to challenge tradition through the lens of contemporary artistic expression. Over the past few years, this exploration has resulted in a multi-disciplinary group of works that span performance, sculpture, photography and dance.

Brendan Fernandes is a Canadian artist of Kenyan and Indian descent. He completed the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art (2007) and earned his MFA (2005) from The University of Western Ontario and his BFA (2002) from York University in Canada. He has exhibited internationally and nationally including exhibitions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Art and Design New York, The National Gallery of Canada and Mass MoCA. Fernandes has been awarded many highly regarded residencies around the world, including Robert Rauschenberg Residency Fellowship in 2014. He was a finalist for the Sobey Art Award Canada’s pre-eminent award for contemporary art in 2010 and was on the longlist for the 2013 and 2015 prizes. In 2016, he will be an artist in residence at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL in the Department of Dance Studies.