Ontario – curated.

Ron Tucker | Black and White and Silver and Platinum

September 8, 2023

Ron Tucker | Black and White and Silver and Platinum
I’ve overthought this. The downfall of writers in general… arts writers in particular. I got so tied up wanting to write something that would do justice to the work of an amazing photographer who I am absolutely honored to know, that I tied myself in knots and got a serious case of writer’s block. It’s never happened before.

So – I’ll let the work speak for itself, and scribble down a few things I did manage to get out.

Here it goes.

Snapshots – Emerging Artists in Waterloo

September 25, 2023

This past summer, The COVERT Collective’s Waterloo contingent of curators (Mark Walton and Conan Stark) gathered a group of 3 young artists from Waterloo Region to put on an exhibition of their work. With assistance from The City of Waterloo and The Region of Waterloo Arts Fund, Snapshots was created from the combined works of Raha Rahman, Ernst, Rullmann and Daniel Burton, and hung at the city’s Visitor Information entre through the summer.

On Saturday September 23, 2023, the group’s work was shown in a large format video on the walls of The Clay and Glass Gallery in Uptown Waterloo, during the annual Lumen Festival. Over 40,000 were wandering through the streets that night… and this is what they saw…

Click HERE to see the video!

~ Mark Walton

Robin Claire Fox | Reflections

March 17, 2023

Robin Claire Fox | Reflections
Photography is inherently nostalgic. Every image taken is essentially the capturing of a moment from the past. That moment no longer exists, just the memory of it and an analogue print or a digital impression trapped on an electronic device. Many modern photographers harbour longings for the saturated or contrasty renderings of images made with processes and media (like Kodachrome) long out of use or no longer in production. Quite a few of them try to recreate the look and feel of these processes digitally, running their captures through filters and algorithms to bring back the visual past. While many are overdone (why keep it at 3 when you can dial it up to 10?), there are a few who have mastered the ability to make us believe that we are viewing an image taken decades ago. The evocation of this photographic past is (I believe) an effort to physically reconnect with it in a way that seems familiar, safe and warm… like sitting with your family watching slides projections of photos from a vacation taken years ago.

Ancaster, Ontario’s Robin Fox started taking photographs around the time of the birth of her most recent child as a conscious attempt to document her family’s childhoods for her future self to enjoy. She is a natural at capturing the uncertainties alongside the joys of growing up. A huge fan of Saul Leiter’s colour work, she has found a method of perfectly capturing the deep saturation and contrast Leiter exhibited in his work with Kodachrome and other slide films[1] in the 1950’s. Her images seem imbued with palettes that exist only in the memory of childhood, where everything was so much bigger and the world was awash with primary colours.

Catherine Mellinger | Whips

March 17, 2023

Catherine Mellinger | Whips

Originally from Saskatoon, mixed media collage artist Catherine Mellinger is a valued contributor to the Kitchener-Waterloo Region art scene. A graduate of the CREATE Institute in Toronto, Mellinger states that her work has always centered on her “own personal experience of being a human being.” While stating that she was originally shy and would not “blatantly state things” when it came to her work, Mellinger’s work developed after having children. As her life “exploded and imploded at the same time”, Mellinger explains how her art evolved as she “realized and connected to other feminist artists, other contemporary artists who were not having to hide. They were talking about trauma, mental illness and their personal lives as inspiration.” Today, Mellinger works with the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery and other community organizations and initiatives.

To read more click here.

Julianna D’Intino’s Connecting Rods | Mahtay Cafe | St. Catharines

October 26, 2022

Julianna D’Intino’s Connecting Rods: A Survey of Industry in the Niagara Region, 2015 – 2022 is currently on display at Mahtay Café & Lounge in their main space.

The exhibition has been on display for two weeks and will be on display for two more, into the month of November.

This is the first in a series of curated exhibitions of Niagara based artists, that I’ve put together to show in the downtown of St. Catharines.

Connecting Rods, to cite the words of the artist, “is but one personal case study in the myriad of lost industry of the Niagara Region.”

Much more about this body of work can be seen here: https://juliannadintino.com/Connecting-Rods

I also offered some thoughts about this fine body of work for curated., which can be read here: https://curatednow.ca/julianna-dintino-connecting-rods-a-survey-of-industry-in-the-niagara-region-2015-2022/

This exhibition is exceptionally relevant right now, with the recent election where the fate of the old GM site was a topic of concern, and the legacy of that time – both in terms of the physical site but also the people who worked there, and the larger social and economic echoes – still resonates.

Come to Mahtay and experience Connecting Rods in person: it is as much history as it is art.

~Bart Gazzola