We had a beautiful day last Saturday for Akin's first East-End Gallery Crawl! Thank you to everyone who joined us and all of our gracious hosts: Project Gallery , Creative Space, Cobalt Gallery, Yellow House Gallery and The Great Escape Book Store.
Here are some photos from our day of fun!
Akin Projects would like to extend their sincere thanks to Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts (TFVA) for their generous award totaling $9,600.
Support from TFVA will enable Akin Projects to offer extensive creative programming throughout the summer and autumn at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) for their Youth Concurrent Disorders Program in collaboration with Toronto artists from Akin's Lansdowne and Dupont studios. This gift will enable clients and their families to use artistic expression to create artwork while confronting challenges in a healthy manner while exploring photography, ceramics and weaving with Akin artists Jessica Thalmann, Rebecca Jane Houston and Colleen McCarten.
Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts is an independent non-profit organization founded in 1998. The organization gives financial support to the visual arts in the greater Toronto area and provides an educational program for its members. TFVA presents annual awards, which were recently announced at May Tribute Night. They have now awarded over $555,000 since 1998.
For more information on this years other award recipients, please see the full press release here.
Interested in supporting Akin and our community programs? Learn more here or get in touch! michael@akincollective.com
Teens aged 13-17 can have the chance to train with leading professionals in acting, singing and dancing during the 2017 Toronto Fringe Festival. Applicants are required to audition and perform a monologue of their choosing and a song from the Musical Theatre Repertoire list. Participants can expect 5 full days of training with industry professionals, the chance to perform at Edge of the Sky’s closing night show at the 2017 Toronto Fringe Festival and a Rush Pass to all 2017 Toronto Fringe Festival productions.
Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition is accepting applications from visual artists and makers with disabilities, newcomer and indigenous artists to participate in the new Art Encounters Program during the 56th Exhibition on July 14 – 16, 2017 at Nathan Philips Square. Through this program Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition will provide exhibition assistance and free booth space to offset the costs and relieve the economic pressure of exhibiting in the fair to a select group of five artists with disabilities, newcomer and aboriginal artists.
Neighbourhood Arts Network's has partnered with Workman Arts on Arts and Minds: A Community Arts Series, exploring the theme of mental wellness and public space. Arts and Minds will convene members of the Victoria Village community together to have conversation around the importance of mental health management in all our lives. This will be a helpful series of collaborative workshops using community arts as a tool to talk about how mental health can possibly be managed, and some of the challenges it can present. The City of Toronto’s 2011 Neighbourhood Demographic Estimates revealed that 67% of community members in Victoria Village are accessing mental health services, so these workshops will be responsive by convening a space for community members to gather and discuss their own mental health issues, while encouraging the reduction of the stigma associated with seeking support. Victoria Park Village community members will be consulted in sparking the project objectives and support community outreach. The project in 2018 will celebrate this growth of stories told through a public art piece reflecting dialogues from the workshops. Workman Arts Members are asked to submit Request for Proposals to apply to partake in community consultations, as well as design and deliver hand-on workshops
Regent Park Film Festival's call for submissions is now open and free. Regent Park Film Festival welcome films of all lengths and genres that reflect the multitude of experiences that make up our cities and communities. Regent Park Film Festival is especially dedicated to showcasing works by Indigenous filmmakers and filmmakers of colour, as well as works by trans, queer and female identified filmmakers.
Serving as a fundraiser for their new project relating to Latin America (specifically Peru and Ecuador), Sick Muse Art Projects is hosting a Multicultural Night Event that features a variety of music and food. This will also be a great opportunity to network with cultural workers and cultural leaders from different organizations, artists from different disciplines and backgrounds, and arts/culture dreamers and doers. The Multicultural Night Event will be at 918 Bathurst Centre for Culture, Arts, Media and Education and will run from 7-10 PM.
"High Mesa", John N.Inglis, watercolour on paper, 17"x22"
Help Yellow House Gallery celebrate their anniversary tomorrow night! The show brings together a diverse group of Canadian contemporary artists in celebration of Yellow House's Third Birthday!
Enjoy some music, art, divine treats, and great conversation as Yellow House thanks Toronto's East End community for its ongoing support.
Show Dates:
May 12th- June 10th 2017
Reception:
Friday May 12th- 7-10pm
Can't make it to the opening reception? Then join Akin Projects on Saturday May 13 at our Akin East-End Gallery Crawl! We will be visiting Yellow House Gallery along the way! Click here for details.
Creative Time, The Power Plant and The Art Gallery of Ontario invite artists, activists, and cultural producers in the Greater Toronto Area to propose ideas for breakout sessions for The Creative Time Summit: Of Homelands and Revolutions, a two-day convening for thinkers, dreamers, and doers working at the intersection of art and politics.
Following the first day of presentations at Koerner Hall, the Summit will offer a second full day of community driven, hour-long sessions designed to share tools, strategies, and actions with over 1000 international and local attendees. Sessions could take the form of roundtable discussions, workshops, panels, field trips, interactive performances, screenings,or other creative formats and may reflect on the themes ofthe larger Summit [see below]. At the same time, we encourage sessions that engage with the field of socially engaged art more broadly.
If you or your organization are interested in planning a to bring into focus pressing issues within your practice and communities, please submit a proposal for review by Wednesday, May 31 to summit@creativetime.org.
All selected organizers will receive a modest honorarium.
How to apply:
All proposals should be sent via e-mail to: summit@creativetime.org with the subject line "CT Summit Toronto - Community Proposal." Sessions will take place on Saturday, September 30, 2017 at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Summit | Summary & Themes:
The 9th Creative Time Summit in Toronto will be co-presented by The Power Plant, with collaboration of the Art Gallery of Ontario, from September 28 to 30, 2017.
2017 is a year in which we commemorate two significant, but different historic events: the 150th anniversary of the Canadian Confederation and the Centennial of the Russian Revolution. These two events serve as fluid axes for the title and overarching thematic of Summit 2017, “Of Homelands and Revolution.”
From here, we journey inside-out, moving to the hearth and realms of domesticity, the struggle for vibrant community life and sovereign homelands, and further, to the violent borders that produce exile, displacement, and refugeeism. On this path, we invite poetic, philosophical, and practice-based ruminations on belonging, sovereignty, security, and renewal. An urgent thematic throughline will be the ongoing struggles of indigenous peoples across continents and the multiple relations between home, land, culture, and community that they bring to bear.
For its part, despite a tragic end in violent and authoritarian regimes, the Bolshevik Revolution was an extraordinary event that, in the words of Leon Trotsky, one of its principal architects, allowed for the “direct interference of the masses in historic events.” 100 years later we look back at the contradictory legacies of the Marxist tradition and at the many forms of radical sociality, aesthetics and anti-capitalist organizing that it has inspired. A global turn to the right, as evidenced by the recent election of Donald Trump to the White House and the Brexit referendum increases the urgency of such reflection.
Summit 2017 invites participants to consider the many-layered political and aesthetic understandings of home alongside social movements—revolutionary ones at that—which have sought to summon a broader dream of social justice.
The Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) is taking place in On May 13 & 14 with corresponding events happening throughout May. The main event is a two-day exhibition and vendor fair featuring hundreds of comics creators from around the world and will be held at the Toronto Reference Library with readings, signings, panels, workshops, gallery shows, installations and more taking place in the surrounding Bloor/Yonge neighbourhood.
The first Toronto Comic Arts Festival was held in 2003. The Toronto Comic Arts Festival exists to promote the breadth and diversity of comics, and what is considered comics, as legitimate medium of literary and artistic worth. They seek to promote the creators of these works in their broad and diverse voices, for the betterment of the medium of comics and to reach as wide an audience as possible for them.
Main Exhibition: Saturday May 13 and Sunday May 14 at Toronto Reference Library
Some of the Other Events and Exhibitions (Full listing on the TCAF website):
Professional Development for Librarians and Educators: Friday May 12
TCAF Kick-Off: Celebrate 25 Years of Image Comics: Friday, May 12, Doors at 6pm
TCAF KIDS DAY: May 13, 10am-5pm @ St. Paul’s On Bloor
French Comics Framed Exhibition: May 2 -31 @ Toronto Reference Library
My Brother’s Husband – Artwork by Gengoroh Tagame: May 9-30 @ Toronto Reference Library
Guy Delisle: An Exhibition: May 2-31 @ Toronto Reference Library
All TCAF events are FREE and suitable for all ages.
Congratulations to Michael Vickers of Akin Lansdowne on being featured Artist Profile in the Toronto Guardian.
“Michael Vickers is a Toronto-based artist with a practice that works in the space between sculpture, painting and installation. His recent work investigates the limits of different materials and presentation methods – painted, curled and bent forms made of various painted aluminums and steels, etched and engraved stone and marble works, and installations that activate the exhibition space in different ways. ”
The Toronto Etsy Street Team (TEST) invites you to join them for the gala opening of Wunderkammer: Cabinet of Curiosities, a science art show inspired by the eccentric, encyclopedic, natural history collections gathered since the Renaissance. Featuring work by a variety of local artists including Erin Candela of Akin Dufferin.
Cabinets of Curiosities featured treasured zoological, botanical, anatomical, fossil and gem specimen. Art and craft work depicting these specimen, cabinets of curiosity and the wonder of natural history are sought. Artists are encouraged to consider how their art might be displayed in ways which allude to the wunderkammer.
Show runs May 11-28 at TEST Gallery, 906 Queen Street West. Opening Reception May 13.
Metrolinx has issued a call for submissions for the first of a two-stage competitive process to identify artists to be considered for upcoming integrated public art opportunities in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area.
Professional artists who have a strong professional profile, peer recognition, a history of public exhibitions, and who are experienced in creating large, permanent, urban scale works for exterior and interior locations or who have successfully worked on collaborative projects are encouraged to apply.
The first opportunity is a 1.4km elevated guideway and green corridor in an urban setting that will increase community connectivity and create new public spaces including a multi-use trail. The total integrated art budget for this project is $4 million CAD all-inclusive, and will incorporate up to four artwork sites.
Integrated Art may take many forms, such as:
About Metrolinx:
Metrolinx is planning, building and operating to create connections across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, giving people the transportation options they need, now and in the future. Guided by its 25-year Regional Transportation Plan, Metrolinx is bringing real benefits to the region and its people.
www.metrolinx.com
The Toronto Design Directory (TDD) is an online listing of design studios, shops and agencies in Toronto created by designer and art director Margot Trudell.
The TDD recently launched a listing of Toronto Printers, an ever-growing list of print services available in the city. Search by location, service, name, or printer type! Don't see your favorite Toronto Printer on the list? Submit a recommendation!
On the last Wednesday of every month Akin host’s a relaxed and fun ‘Show and Tell for Artists’ at one of the Akin Collective studios. This is a time for Akin members and other Toronto artists to show completed works or works in progress and get friendly feedback and answers from their peers in a casual studio setting.
Feel free to bring art to share, bring a friend or two, bring snacks or drinks or just bring yourself! Come for the conversation or just to meet people and hang out.
This month we are meeting at Akin Lansdowne - 87 Wade Ave - Studio 101. Everyone is welcome! Open to the public! If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to get in touch! See you there!
The InterAccess Studio is happy to announce a series of new media art workshops running from May to July in a wide variety of disciplines. Led by established and emerging new media artists, these workshops will introduce artists to a wide variety of practices. Click here for a full listing or to register.
Here is a selection of our favorites:
Solution Culture (Co-presented with Subtle Technologies)
Learn the basics of hydroponics and creating customized soil-less gardening systems for artistic and expressive applications.
Saturday, May 13, 1-4pm / Instructor: Paul Chartrand / More info
Sonic Geography
Explore sound and place by learning techniques for field recording. Then, bring field recordings back to the studio and learn how to manipulate them using interactive interfaces.
Saturday June 10, 12-4pm / Instructor: Dan Tapper / More info
Intro to 3D Printing
Learn how to use 3D printers safely and creatively in this introductory workshop.
Tuesday June 20, 7-10pm / Instructor: Amir Far / More info
Atari Punk Console
Make your own legendary DIY sound synthesizer! Learn about the 555 chip, practice your soldering and circuit building skills, and make some old school sounds with the Atari Punk Console!
Tuesday July 25, 7-8:30pm / Instructor: Gerald Grison / More info
You are invited to join Adrienne Crossman and Thirza Cuthand for a presentation and Q&A at Akimbo's Art Intersections Meetup on Tuesday, May 16 from 6:30pm to 9pm at Gamma Space Collaborative Studio (862 Richmond Street West). Free! Wheelchair accessible. Please RSVP.
Schedule:
6:30pm - Doors Open
7pm - Guest presenters Adrienne Crossman and Thirza Cuthand, plus Q&A
8pm - Networking, Food & Beverages
Adrienne Crossman is an artist, educator and curator. Her practice involves the manipulation and deconstruction of digital media and popular culture in order to create new artifacts through formal re-interpretations. In the pursuit of creating a queer aesthetic, Crossman's work is concerned with the exploration of non-normative and non-binary spaces, while attempting to locate queer sensibilities in the everyday.
Thirza Jean Cuthand has been making short experimental narrative videos and films about sexuality, madness, youth, love, and race, which have screened in festivals internationally. In the summer of 2016 she began working on a 2D video game called A Bipolar Journey based on her experience learning and dealing with her bipolar disorder. It showed at ImagineNATIVE and she is planning to further develop it. She has also written three feature screenplays and sometimes does performance art.
Art Intersections Meetup is a meeting place for artists, moving image-makers, gamers and technologists who are experimenting with art-related digital content and how the moving image is presented in a connected world. Digital culture, social media and networks encourage new ways of storytelling, image making, idea sharing and collaboration. This Meetup celebrates artists and innovators who are embracing change leading the next wave of creativity.
Gamma Space Collaborative Studio is a not-for-profit arts organization, and community of 200+ members making, playing, and talking about videogames. They strive to be a welcoming and accessible space for everyone interested in games as art.
Produced by East End Arts and curated by Labspace Studio, Main Squared is a multidisciplinary 10-day public art festival that will activate and explore the under-used public square at the corner of Main Street and Danforth Avenue in Toronto (August 26 – September 3, 2017).
Drawing inspiration and insight from historical “public squares” while tapping into community aspirations, the festival will invite residents, community members, and the general public to reimagine the square as a space for social engagement, discourse, and civic activism.
Blending contemporary art and community art projects, the festival will feature art installations, interactive activities, workshops, performances, and more.
Toronto and GTA artists and collectives are invited to submit proposals for the creation of new public art projects in addition to existing projects that are thematically aligned.
Deadline May 18, 2017
WEAVE ME is a new series of weaved photographs by Jen Arron of Akin Dupont. The exhibition will be shown at The Blackcat Artspace as part of the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival 2017. The exhibit is a duo show with photographer Alexa Mazzarello and runs May 16 - 31. Opening night May 16th, 7-10pm, all are welcome.
What the show is about:
Two artists finding meaning in natural materials and how they can inform the way we live. Mazzarello has turned to plant life and landscapes to study connections between this world and the human form in her series THE DREAMING PLANT. Arron’s WEAVE ME pieces are woven studies, each one exposing raw edges and hidden meanings through imagery and natural fibres.
Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival 2017 is the largest photography event in the world with over 1500 artists in 200 exhibitions and happenings throughout the month in the Greater Toronto Area.
The Akin Vitrine Gallery launched on October 1, 2016 at our Dupont studios. This miniature gallery features the diverse talent of our members with a new installation each month.
Our current exhibition running for the month of May, features new work by Akin Lansdowne member, Jessica Thalmann.
“These people were content with their environment, and felt no particular objection to an impersonal steel and concrete landscape, no qualms about the invasion of their privacy by government agencies and organizations, and if anything welcoming these intrusions, using them for their own purposes. These people were the first to master a new kind of 20th century life. They thrived on the rapid turnover of acquaintances, the lack of involvement with others, and the total self-sufficiency of lives which, needing nothing, were never disappointed.”
– JG Ballard
High-Rise is a site-specific installation of hand-folded archival pigment prints investigating the exploding steel and glass landscape of downtown Toronto as a veritable condoland converges onto the apex of the city. The strange lives of condo-dwellers seem at once compact, luxurious and quietly desperate as reflected sunlight bounces between glass curtain walls, almost folding one unit onto one another, never knowing where one begins or ends.
Photographs of glass condos are folded using a special Miura pattern named for its inventor Japanese astrophysicist Koryo Miura. A Miura fold can be packed into a compact shape, and unfurled in a single motion. This pattern has even been used in solar panel arrays for space satellites in the Japanese space program have been Miura folded before launch and then spread out in space.
Jessica Thalmann is an artist, curator and writer currently based in Toronto and New York City. She received a Master of Fine Arts in Advanced Photographic Studies from ICP-Bard College and a BFA in Visual Arts from York University. She has worked at the Doris McCarthy Gallery, Toronto International Film Festival, C Magazine, the Art Gallery of York University and Yossi Milo Gallery. She has shown at various venues in Toronto, Vancouver and New York City including the Art Gallery of Mississauga, Flash Forward 2010, Whippersnapper Gallery, Nuit Blanche, the Artist Project, VIVO Media Arts Center, Aperture Foundation, the International Centre of Photography, Photoville, the Camera Club of New York and Printed Matter’s New York Art Book Fair.
High-Rise, 2017
Folded Archival Pigment Prints
dimensions variable
The gallery is located at the Clock Factory Building at 1485 Dupont Street (entrance on Campbell Avenue). Find Akin Studio 215 on the second floor and follow the sign into the hallway around the corner. The building is open from 9am to 6pm, Monday to Friday, or to arrange a viewing outside of those hours please contact the artist: jessica.thalmann@gmail.com
www.jessicathalmann.com
Instagram: @jessthalmann1
#AkinVitrine
Join us tomorrow at Akin Lansdowne in studio 203 from 6:30-8:30pm for our second Card Party of 2017! It will be a fun, crafty time for you to let loose and make a card or two for someone you love! (Make a card for your partner, best friend, enemy or a stranger! Maybe you want to make a card for yourself :) Or of course Mother's day is coming up!)
Bring a friend, a snack, and your creativity! $10 per person - all materials included! There is limited seating for this event. You must RSVP or register to attend. Email jen@akincollective.com to RSVP or get your ticket at www.universe.com/cardparty2017
Participants will be provided with one piece of heavy-duty hemp card stock, cut and scored to make a 4”x6” card as well as a brightly-colored 4”x6” envelope. You can purchase more card stock andj envelopes at the event for $0.50 each ($1 per set). We will also have beer for sale!
Supplies will be provided including:
- cardstock and envelopes
- a variety of coloured paper
- pencil crayons and pens
- watercolour paints and brushes
- spirograph and stamps
- stickers and stencils
- scissors and glue
- magazines to cut and paste
- glitter, beads, ribbon and more!
Feel free to bring additional supplies! See you tomorrow!
Tickets are still available for our Surrealist Collage Workshop with renowned collage artist Danielle Cole.
What will we cover?
What’s it all about?
Michelangelo said of his art ‘every block of stone has a statue inside and it is the task of the sculpture to discover it.’ This quote holds true for the construction of the collages. Sorting through hundreds of images, from magazines and books both new and old, until the magical moment when all the pieces come together to create a perfect piece of art. Collage is the perfect medium for creative thinkers, artists and crafty people. This is a hands-on workshop where you will be shown strategies for creating collages that are seamlessly built and helped towards creating a unique piece of art to take home at the end of the evening. All materials will be provided.
Free Contemporary Art Bus Tour! The tour begins at 12 noon at the Koffler Gallery (Artscape Youngplace, 180 Shaw Street) and continues to the Doris McCarthy Gallery and the Art Gallery of York University, returning to the Koffler Gallery by 4:15 pm. Guided tours will be offered at each venue.
The bus tour is FREE, seats are limited. To reserve, contact the Koffler Gallery at 647.925.0643 x 221 or ssaad@kofflerarts.org
Please note that light snacks and refreshments will be provided throughout the tour; guests are welcome to pack their own lunches.
For more information about the specific exhibitions you will see during the tour click here.
What’s the difference between a person and a story about a person?
Other Jesus, a new play by Toronto’s award-winning Public Recordings of Akin Lansdowne premiers on May 6 at St. Matthew's United Church (729 St Clair Avenue West, Toronto). The show runs from May 6-14 with performances from Tuesday-Sunday at 8pm.
Box Office Information:
$25 General // $20 Arts Worker/Student/Senior/Under Employed
Advance Sales: 416-531-1827 // publicrecordings.org/projects/other-jesus
Tickets also available at the door
About Other Jesus
In the occupied territories of ancient Judea, a group of spiritual workers consider what’s real while trying to break even–until one of them turns out to have the magic touch. Other Jesus is a performance on the risk and reward of believing and belonging.
Click here to read an interview with Other Jesus writer Evan Webber about the creation of the show.
About Public Recordings Performance Projects
Public Recordings develops and presents projects that test hypotheses about group work through performance, education, publishing and other collective gestures. With the goal of providing a readable index of problems and solutions in and through experiential practice, we use the structural and administrative framework of a dance company to question the meanings and possibilities of shared space. Click here to donate to Public Recordings.
