Steven Shearer

Josée Drouin-Brisebois

Adopting and elaborating upon stylistic repertoires drawn from the history of figure painting, Steven Shearer makes formal and thematic parallels between art history and the iconography associated with various contemporary subcultures, including their modes of dissemination such as fanzines and image shrines on personal websites. Seen in this light the resemblance between the long, flowing hair of his metal-head rockers and the tresses of Pre-Raphaelite heroines is not fortuitous. By showing us aspects of popular culture anachronistically, Shearer exposes the false hierarchy of high and low art and prompts us to consider the differences between the cultural industries and the art world.

Exhume to Consume

Shary Boyle

Otherworld Uprising is the first major monograph for Toronto-based Shary Boyle, who is becoming known for her uncanny and exquisite porcelain figurines that skillfully subvert the historical expectations inherent to this traditional material. Boyle's multifaceted practice also includes figurative drawing, painting and performances that give voice to the under-represented--children, animals and women--while also taking on aspects of the spiritual and the metaphysical. Through dream-like references to mythology and fairytales, her imagery illustrates female desire from a female point of view. Boyle is also known for her multi-layered audio-visual performances, during which she does live drawings on an overhead projector. Many of these have been incorporated into shows by musicians such as Feist, Peaches, Christine Fellows and Will Oldham. This volume contains new stories by novelist Sheila Heti, illustrated by Boyle, as well as texts by the Curator of Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Canada, Josée Drouin-Brisebois, and Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Ben Portis.

Otherworld Uprising

Dominique Rey

Leon Bernard Johnson

Dominique Rey is a photographer, painter, video artist and a performance artist whose work is marked by a fascination with the marginal figure. This publication documents two new series, one photographic and the other pictoral. In Erlking, Rey takes on a host of personas linked to the German and Scandinavian mythical creature that lures foolish travelers to their death. Drawing from psychoanalysis and the literay works of Angela Carter, Rey invokes personas in flux. Her painting series Pilgrims shows the influence of her involvement as a performer and attests to the intimate knowledge and experience she invests in her work. Recalling sideshow circus 'freaks' and 1950s burlesque, Pilgrims, explores notions of the 'unbeautiful' and how the unbeautiful becomes permissible, and even desirable, under the guise of performance and public display. Alterity is a central facet of Rey's practice. She chooses not to simply document, but to immerse herself within these peripheral cultures

Erlking/Pilgrims

Publication accompanying a group exhibition of Canadian artists whose sculptural works engage, and even rely on, the active spectator. The histories of performance, installation, environmental, minimal, and body art combine to foreground the interaction between art object and viewing subject. In contrast to the conventional relationships between work, artist, and spectator, these sculptures and installations emphatically declare the role of the participant over the authorial role of the artist indeed, over the very art object itself. Whether immersive environments, sculptures involving a bodied spectator, or encounters that promote interaction, all of these works may be considered in relation to the recent interest in participatory art practices.

Josée Drouin-Brisebois

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