Forthcoming

 

Multiples Multiples Multiples

This time last year a group of artists and publishers arranged a pop-up shop at the Toronto gallery MKG127, with the idea that the worst case scenario would be an afternoon spent with friends. It turned out to be a huge success, packed with visitors all day, and with little time to socialize. 

The 2nd annual event is taking place tomorrow at Art Metropole. We won’t be there with the Nothing Else Press, but all of the others will be present, many with new projects to launch. 

Drop by between noon and five pm tomorrow at Art Met to finish up your holiday shopping. 

Multiples Pop-Up Shop

 

In Toronto there’s a tight-knit community of publishers interested in editions. Today, several of us are presenting a pop-up shop at MKG127, from noon to six. Participants include Paul+Wendy Projects, Slow Editions, GuyGuyGuy, Alicia’s Klassic Kool Shoppe, Jimmy Limit & Maggie Groat and our own Nothing Else Press. 

For several years the Toronto Art Fair accommodated publishers of artists’ books and multiples but this stopped during Covid, and hasn’t returned. So this event harkens back to something four of us (along with Bywater Brothers) hosted years ago at G Gallery. 

Whether you’re doing some last minute Christmas shopping (or Christmas shopping), or nearby enough to stop in and say hello, please drop by. There will be things available for every price range, including risographed zines, rubber stamps, t-shirts,  tote-bags, hats, scarves, postcards, prints, pins, clocks, sculpture, stickers, ceramics, cards, etc. etc. 

Hope to see you there. 

Thanks to Masanao Hirayama [Himaa] for the graphics, Michael Klein for the space, Panya Clark Espinal for altering her beautiful exhibition today to accommodate us, Mercer Union for the tables and Micah Lexier for handling most of the organization, despite only participating in an unofficial capacity. 

Micah Lexier book signing

Warby Parker, the New York based eyeglass company founded in 2010 (and named after Jack Kerouac characters), is launching their first Canadian store in Toronto this week.

To celebrate their grand opening they are hosting a book signing with Micah Lexier on Saturday August 6th, at 2 pm. Lexier will be signing three new newsprint books made in collaboration with VSVSVS, Maggie Groat and Mark Laliberte. Members of VSVSVS and Laliberte will also be in attendance.

The series Free 4 The Taking are produced by Warby Parker, and available in their store for free. The store is located at 684 Queen Street West and is open daily, from 11am to 7pm.

Prints as Last Minute Presents (Toronto, Vancouver, New York City, Edinburgh)

Mungo Thomson
Negative Space (STScI-PRC2012-26f)
Vancouver, Canada: Contemporary Art Gallery, 2015
22 x 22", Archival inkjet print
Edition of 20 signed copies

Available for $200.00 here, where you'll also find affordable editions by Damian Moppett, Kay Rosen, Rodney Graham and others.

Kelly Mark
Frankfurter 5 
Toronto, Canada: Nothing Else Press, 2013
30.5" x 31" inkjet on archival paper
Edition of 20 signed and numbered copies

Available for $350, here, alongside multiples by David Shrigley, Jonathan Monk, Micah Lexier, Cary Leibowitz, Jon Sasaki, Vanessa Maltese, and many others.

Maggie Groat
Fragmented abstractions, non-representational visions, one-sided cubes, forms, lines, and other moments of mystical clarity 
Toronto, Canada: Paul+Wendy Projects, 2013
22 x 30" Archival digital print (Ultrachrome HDR Ink on Hahnemuhle Fine Art Paper)
Edition of 20 (+ 2 AP) signed and numbered copies

Available for $150, at Paul + Wendy Projects, here, where you'll also find affordable prints by Kay Rosen, Michael Dumontier, Daniel Eatock, Neil Farber and many others.

Katie Paterson
All The Dead Stars
Edinburgh, Scotland: Merkske Books, 2012
uncoated paper offset printed in black, sleeve
99 x 66 cm (map sheet)
12.4 x 22 cm (folded)
Edition of 100 signed and numbered copies

A map documenting the locations of just under 27,000 dead stars – all that have been recorded and observed by humankind.

Available here, for 120.00 pounds.

André Saraiva
New York I Love You
New York City, USA: Creative Time,
22" x 30"Silk print on coventry rag.
Edition of 50 signed copies

"This print is based on my Dream Concert series. For Creative Time, I wanted to create a fantasy lineup of the city's iconic figures. The people included are the reason I always dreamed of coming to New York."

- André Saraiva

Available here, for $350.00 US.

Holiday Recommendations Guest Post #11: Crystal Mowry

[Maggie Groat, ed]
The Lake
Toronto, Canada: Art Metropole, 2014
148 pp., 27 x 21 x 1.3 cm., softcover
Edition size unknown

Edited by Maggie Groat, with contributions by: Cheyanne Turions, James Algie, Gina Badger, Diane Borsato, Joseph Boyden, Jennifer Castle, Sarah Cullen, Dana Fountain, Maggie Groat, April Hickox, Elle Kurancid, Tiziana La Melia, Maryse Lariviere, Leisure (Meredith Carruthers & Susannah Wesley), Jimmy Limit, Duane Linklater, Tegan Moore, Julie Nagam, Parker Branch, Simon Pope, Sandra Rechico, Ann Sanderson, and Simon Starling.

The Lake is anthology of images and text that serve as “an alternative body of research” on Lake Ontario. If you are familiar with Maggie Groat’s artistic gestures, you will immediately recognize her sensibility throughout the pages of this book. The book’s contributors do a fine job of making Lake Ontario seem elusive, resistant to any singular role within a collective imagination. What I love about this book – and Maggie’s work in general – is how it makes room for aspiration and speculation in the guise of knowledge. By reworking a basic definition of taxonomy to include fiction, poetry, and criticism, The Lake makes a convincing argument for an unconventional approach to the writing of natural histories.  


The Lake can be purchased at Art Metropole in person or online here.

Maggie Groat is a visual artist working in a variety of media including collage, sculpture, artists books, site-specific interventions, and field studies. Forming an ongoing research-based practice, her work explores studies for possible futures, relationships and reconnections to Indigenous land and the interdisciplinary potential of artistic intervention and envisioning. Maggie studied visual art and philosophy at York University before attending The University of Guelph, where she received an MFA degree in 2010. She is lives and works on the southern shore of Lake Ontario. She is represented by Erin Stump Projects, Toronto.



Crystal Mowry is Senior Curator at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery

Maggie Groat Book Launch

Art Metropole launches its newest publication, Maggie Groat's The Lake, on Saturday March 22nd. The event is accompanied by a window display, called Drinking The Lake which will be installed from March 12th to April 5th.

"The Lake is an alternative body of research about the lake, including contributions from: James Algie, Gina Badger, Diane Borsato, Joseph Boyden, Jennifer Castle, Sarah Cullen, Dana Fountain, Maggie Groat, April Hickox, Elle Kurancid, Tiziana La Melia, Maryse Lariviere, Leisure (Meredith Carruthers & Susannah Wesley), Jimmy Limit, Duane Linklater, Tegan Moore, Julie Nagam, Parker Branch, Simon Pope, Sandra Recicho, Ann Sanderson, Simon Starling, cheyanne turions."

The title retails for $30 CDN.

The event takes place Saturday March 22, from 4 to 7pm, at Art Metropole (1490 Dundas St. W, at the intersection of Dufferin Street, Toronto).

For more information, visit Art Metropole, here.

Paul + Wendy Projects interview

To coincide with the exhibition of their prints at the Burnaby Art Gallery (which remains on view until the end of March), the gallery has posted an interview with Paul Van Kooy and Wendy Gomoll of Paul + Wendy Projects. The conversation details the origins of the publishing venture, the origins of Bookclub, and a short wish list of favourite artists' books.

Read it here:

http://burnabyartgallery.tumblr.com/post/77844689814/paul-wendy-projects

The above photographs document P+W Projects publications (by Micah Lexier, Michael Dumontier, Neil Farber, Maggie Groat, Derek Sullivan, Jon Pylypchuk, Roula Partheniou and the Royal Art Lodge) in situ, in buyers homes (taken from their Facebook page, here).

Paul + Wendy Projects Installation Shots

A small exhibition of prints published by Paul + Wendy Projects opened yesterday at the McGill Library in Burnaby. The show features limited edition prints (primarily silkscreens) by Michael Dumontier, Neil Farber, Maggie Groat, Micah Lexier, Jason McLean and Kay Rosen, and continues until April 1st, 2014.

For more information, visit the gallery site, here, or the publishers, here.

Maggie Groat | Free Land

Toronto's Nuit Blanche, now in it's 8th year, typically has a few projects yearly which involve free take-aways that multiples and artists' ephemera collectors might be interested in. Last year Rhonda Weppler and Trevor Mahovsky made beautiful glowing lanterns out of scanned consumer packaging. In 2008 40,000 Yoko Ono Imagine Peace pins were distributed.

This year's projects include Marian Wihak and Martha Griffith's Take a Penny, (X)Static Clown Factory by Ruth Spitzer & Claire Ironside and FREE LAND by Maggie Groat. The latter features a site in Simcoe Park for "temporary occupation and collective intervention through the excavation and dispersal of public soil."

From seven o'clock tonight until seven tomorrow morning, a hole will be dug in the city park and the unearthed soil (and other items?) will be parceled up and their stewardship entrusted to Nuit Blanche audiences. Early visitors will also receive a lapel pin (pictured above). At the end of the event the resulting hole will be filled with new purchased soil, rendering the gesture of the intervention invisible.

"The park is located along what was once the original shoreline of Lake Ontario, and aptly named for John Graves Simcoe, one of the major developers of early Canada. The built environs of the park resemble nothing of its indigenous roots, and its recent history is one of landfill, concrete and urban development. FREE LANDwonders: What are the implications of relocating and repurposing land? How do the lasting impacts of settler-colonialism and associated attitudes surrounding land use and the commodification of natural resources affect the places we live? Are civic spaces really ours?"

- Maggie Groat

FREE LAND is at 270 Front Street West. Visit the Nuit Blanche site, here, for more information. Groat's exhibition Other Visions & Tools for Alternatives runs until October 5th at Erin Stump Projects. 

Nuit Blanche runs from sunset tonight to sunrise tomorrow, rain or shine, and features hundreds of artists including Ai Wei Wei, Diane Borsato, Germaine Koh, vsvsvs, David Harper, David Hoffos, Michel de Broin, Kelly Richardson, Kim Adams, etc. etc.

For suggestions as to what to check out, see Murray Whyte's pics in the Toronto Star, here and Toronto Life's Sue Carter Flinn's choices here.