MKG127 is pleased to present Somebody a group exhibition curated by Liza Eurich with work by Lorna Bauer, Deanna Bowen, Vanessa Brown, Kara Hamilton, Karen Kraven, Graham Macaulay, Ella Dawn McGeough and Geoffrey Pugen
Opening Saturday, July 6, 2:00 – 5:00 PM
Somebody looks at work that engages with figuration through gestures that depict traces of activity, accessories, or fragmented representations of its form.
These renderings point to manifestations of self that are in continuous states of flux, constituted through processes of erasure, accumulation and revision. They are adjacent to the illustrative and intact, separate from any notion of fixity. Instead, their malleability foregrounds agency and favours the possibility of impermanence and fluidity.
Though tactile and material in their approach, these works speak to the absence of their subject, and to the temporality of the constructed self. The figure is not replete; it is formlessness being continually reshaped, a process that is illuminated through the objects and imprints that persist. Vestiges of iterative selves have the potential to seed new thoughts and formations elsewhere. In this shifting of contexts, it is not the form itself that is of significance, but these moments of/in transformation.
Lorna Bauer recently presented her work at Franz Kaka, Clint Roenisch Gallery, The Loon (Toronto); Darling Foundry, Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal, Gallery Nicolas Robert (Montréal); CK2 Gallery (New York); Model Projects (Vancouver), Eleftheria Tseliou Gallery (Athens) among other venues. Bauer has participated in numerous national and international residencies, including stays at Despina-Largo das Artes, Rio de Janeiro; funded through the Conseil des arts de Montréal; The Couvent des Récollets, Paris; the Quebec-New York Studio Residency funded through the Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec; The Banff Centre, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts (Florida), working with Josiah McElheny. Writing on Bauer’s work has been featured in publications such as Artforum, Canadian Art, C-Magazine, Le Devoir among others media outlets. She has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, The Montréal Council for the Arts and the Quebec Council for the Arts. Most recently Bauer was awarded the 2018 Barbara Sphor Memorial Award that supports the development of Canadian contemporary photography. She is represented by Gallery Nicolas Robert in Montréal.
Deanna Bowen is a Toronto-based interdisciplinary artist whose auto-ethnographic practice examines race, migration, historical writing and authorship. In recent years, Bowen’s work has involved rigorous examination of her family lineage and their connections to the Black Prairie pioneers of Alberta and Saskatchewan, the Creek Negroes and All-Black towns of Oklahoma, the extended Kentucky/Kansas Exoduster migrations and the Ku Klux Klan.
The artistic products of this research have been presented most recently at the Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), Western Front (Vancouver), Gallery 44 (Toronto), SAVVY Contemporary (Berlin), Mercer Union (Toronto), Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery, the Banff Centre, the Royal Ontario Museum of Art (Toronto), the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, and the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia). Her 2017 Mercer Union (Toronto) exhibition ON TRIAL The Long Doorway was awarded the 2018 Ontario Association of Art Galleries’ Monographic Exhibition of the Year award. Bowen has also received numerous awards, grants and fellowships including the 2014 William H. Johnson Prize, 2016 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, and a 2017 New Chapter Grant; and most recently, a 2018 Canada Council Concept to Realization Grant. Opening at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto this fall is God of Gods: A Canadian Play, curated by Barbara Fischer.
Bowen’s first solo exhibition with MKG127 will open October 12 and run until November 9, 2019.
Vanessa Brown is based in Vancouver on unceded Musqueam,Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish land. Brown graduated with a BFA from Emily Carr University, Vancouver in 2013 and was the recipient of the Chancellor’s Award. She has exhibited in Canada, Germany, Luxembourg, the USA, and Mexico, notably with solo and two-person exhibitions at The Esker Foundation, Calgary; Arsenal, Toronto; Projet Pangée, Montreal; The Western Front, Vancouver; The Armory Show, New York; and group exhibitions at the Nanaimo Art Gallery; Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; and King Street Station, Seattle. She is represented by Galerie Antoine Ertaskiran in Montréal.
Kara Hamilton studied architecture at the University of British Columbia and art at Concordia University and Yale. She has shown extensively in North America and Europe, at such spaces as Salon 94, EFA Project Space, Kate Werble Gallery, in New York; Siegel House, in Marfa, USA; Taut and Tame, in Berlin, Germany; Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, in Winnipeg; G Gallery, Cooper Cole Gallery, AGO, in Toronto. She is director of Kunstverein Toronto and is represented by Cooper Cole Gallery.
Karen Kraven is a Montreal-based artist working with photography, sculpture and installation. Recent solo exhibitions include Pins & Needles at the Toronto Sculpture Garden, Deadstock, Maw Gallery, NYC (2017), Slack Tide, Parisian Laundry, Montreal (2016), Flip Flop Punch Front, Mercer Union, Toronto (2015) and Razzle Dazzle Sis Boom Bah presented at the ICA, Portland, Maine and the Darling Foundry, Montreal (2014/5). Her work has also been included in exhibitions in Marseille, Mumbai and Baltimore. Reviews have been published in C Magazine, Canadian Art, Momus and Artforum. Her work is in the collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario, TD Bank Group, RBC, Banque Nationale and private collections. Karen Kraven is represented by Parisian Laundry in Montréal.
Graham Macaulay completed an MFA at Western University (London ON) in 2018. He received his BFA from the University of Victoria (Victoria BC) in 2014, after which he was awarded a BC Arts Council Early Career Development grant. He has recently exhibited at Forest City Gallery and DNA Gallery (London ON); Untitled Arts Society and Stride Gallery (Calgary AB); Xchanges (Victoria BC). He is currently based in Toronto ON.
Ella Dawn McGeough‘s practice involves making, writing, organizing, and teaching–often collaboratively. She has a BFA from UBC (2007), an MFA from Guelph (2013), and is currently pursuing a PhD at York. Recently, her work has been presented at the AGYU, Varley Art Gallery, Goodwater Gallery, Kikospace, the 2nd Kamias Triennial, Moire’s Catwalk, Critical Distance, Usdan Gallery – Bennington College, and Forest City Gallery among others; has participated in residencies at Banff Centre, Flaggfabrikken in Bergen Norway, and Trelex in Peru’s Tambopata National Reserve; and has curated numerous projects in Toronto. Her writing has been published by Arsenal, Public Journal, Moire, C Magazine, ESP, Open Studios, and Susan Hobbs. She is from Vancouver (unceded territories) and lives in Toronto.
Geoffrey Pugen is a multidisciplinary artist living in Toronto, Canada. He explores relationships between real and staged performance, the natural and the artificial, and tensions of virtuality, through altering and manipulating image material. Working with video, performance, sculpture and photography, Pugen renders situations that examine our perceptions of how history, documentation, and simulation intersect. His videos and art have been exhibited at galleries and festivals in Canada, the USA, Australia, Argentina, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, South Korea, the UK, Portugal and Japan. His next solo exhibition at MKG127 will open in January 2020.
The exhibition continues until August 17.