Blackwood Gallery, UTM
FREE and open to the public.
This series of public readings is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Take Care on view at the Blackwood Gallery from September 11, 2017–March 10, 2018.
Blackwood Gallery is pleased to announce its first Readers-in-Residence program. Adapting the familiar artist’s residency format to one that focuses on practices of reading—reading an exhibition, reading a text, reading as interpretation—each residency will respond to a specific exhibition context and encourage the development of new interpretive possibilities and creative responses to exhibitions and programming.
Facilitated by Danielle St-Amour on behalf of Art Metropole, the residency will host monthly public events with guest readers who are invited to respond directly to the gallery’s programming.
Public reading by Joshua Vettivelu
Wednesday, September 27, 12–1pm
Blackwood Gallery
Public reading by Alize Zorlutuna
Wednesday, October 25, 12–1pm
Blackwood Gallery
Public reading by Lisa Myers
Wednesday, November 22, 12–1pm
Blackwood Gallery
Public reading by Maggie Groat
Wednesday, January 24, 12–1pm
Blackwood Gallery
Public reading by Yaniya Lee
Wednesday, February 28, 12–1pm
Blackwood Gallery
Maggie Groat is an artist who works in a variety of media including works on paper, sculpture, textiles, site-specific interventions and publications. Her current research surrounds site-responsiveness with regards to shifting territories, alternative and decolonial ways-of-being, methodologies of collage, and the transformation of salvaged materials into utilitarian objects for speculation, vision and action. Groat studied visual art and philosophy at York University before attending the University of Guelph, where she received an MFA degree in 2010. She has taught at the University of Guelph, the University of Toronto, and at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, where she was the Audain Artist Scholar in Residence in 2014. In 2015 she was longlisted for the Sobey Art Award.
Yaniya Lee’s interdisciplinary research draws on the work of Black Studies scholars to question critical reading practices and reconsider Canada’s art histories. From 2012-2015 she hosted the Art Talks MTL podcast, a series of long-form interviews with art workers in Montreal. She is a founding collective member of MICE Magazine and a new member of the EMILIA-AMALIA working group. She is the 2017-2018 writer-in-residence at Gallery 44 and currently works as the Associate Editor at Canadian Art Magazine.
Lisa Myers is an independent curator and artist with a keen interest in interdisciplinary collaboration. Her curatorial practice considers different kinds of value placed on time, sound, and knowledge. Myers has an MFA in Criticism and Curatorial practice from OCAD University. Her writing has been published in many exhibition publications, Senses and Society, Public, C Magazine and FUSE Magazine. Myers is a member of Beausoleil First Nation based in Toronto and Port Severn, Ontario. She is an Assistant Lecturer in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University.
Joshua Vettivelu is an artist working within sculpture, video, performance, and installation. Their work seeks to explore how larger frameworks of power manifest within intimate relationships. Recently, their practice has been examining the tensions that emerge when personal experiences are mined for art production, and how this allows institutions to posture and position themselves as self-reflexive. Vettivelu currently teaches in the Faculty of Continuing Education at OCAD University and is the Director of Programming for Whippersnapper Gallery.
Alize Zorlutuna works with installation, video, performance, and material culture. Her work investigates themes concerning identity, queer sexuality, settler-colonial relationships to land, culture and history, intimacy with the non-human, and technology. She received her MFA from Simon Frasier University and currently teaches courses in contemporary sculpture, installation, performance, and hybrid media practices at OCADU in Toronto.
The 2017-18 Readers-in-Residence program is presented in partnership with Art Metropole.
The Blackwood Gallery gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the University of Toronto Mississauga.
The Blackwood Gallery is grateful for additional support from the Department of Visual Studies (UTM) and University of Toronto Affinity Partners Manulife, TD Insurance, and MBNA.
Funding for additional staff support was made possible through the Young Canada Works in Heritage Organizations program, Department of Canadian Heritage. The Canadian Museums Association administers the program on behalf of the Department of Canadian Heritage.
