Art

From Here To

from here to (2104-ongoing) is a multi-city project that collects hand-drawn directions from helpful passers-by in order to generate a visual script of space and memory. The subtle encounter, framed by the act of asking for directions, is a contemporary re-interpretation of conceptual artist Stanley Brouwn’s this way brouwn (1961). from here to has moved through Amsterdam, Toronto, New York, London, Brighton and St. Louis. It has been part of the YTB Gallery, Toronto (2016), The Luminary, St. Louis (2015), the International Visual Methods Conference, Brighton (2015), and The Art of the Danforth Festival, Toronto (2014),

Asking Physicists About Momentum & Cues for Living

Asking Physicists About Momentum (2014) is an email project with theoretical and experimental physicists based on the question: how do you negotiate the everyday when set against the backdrop of infinity? I sent these cold-call emails while participating in the Nes Artist Residency in Skagaströnd, Iceland. I received many replies. I sent messages back. Some correspondences took on their own life. I collected bits of these exchanges and compiled them into a book titled Asking Physicists about Momentum.

These emails also developed into a project titled Cues for Living (2014-2016) where I printed selections of advice on small cards and left them around various corridors in Toronto. A cross between a Fluxus Event Score and Ask Ann Landers column. Cues for Living was also part of the The Multiple Li(v)es of Art/ists &…. at OCADU, Toronto, ON, and the Neighbourhood Spaces Symposium in Windsor, ON.

Precarity at the Roundtable

Precarity (2017) is the theme of the 4th Annual Roundtable Residency, an annual summer artist residency program hosted at The Dragon Academy in downtown Toronto. The goal of the residency is to provide emerging artists from a range of visual art disciplines— including installation, performance, and sound works— with free studio spaces within a peer-to-peer mentoring community. Selected artists are encouraged to work on communal, collaborative as well as individual projects throughout the residency term. Artists have the opportunity to connect with the broader arts community through weekly scheduled workshops, a lecture series, and reading groups. I was creative director of the 2017 residency.

Learning to Give Up the Ghost

Learning to Give Up the Ghost (2013) is a series of quiet ‘events’ culminating in a final installation. In October 2013, I opened a free store in my bedroom. I invited people to come to my room and take whatever they wanted (which, let’s face it, was mostly clothes, books, trinkets, shelves, and a bed). The free store also travelled with me throughout my day to friends’ houses, coffee shops, the library and my workplace. I stuffed all my remaining possessions into torn jeans and boots to resemble severed limbs that I left around the halls of Artscape, Gibraltar Point for Halloween hauntings. Learning to Give Up the Ghost was part of the Ghosthole Residency at Artscape, Gibraltar Point on the Toronto Islands.

The Science Magic Art Economy: An Elemental Bartering System.

The Science Magic Art Economy (2014) was an installation at the Long Winter Takeover at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). Since Science Magic didn’tt have any art to sell at the AGO’s Artist Bizarre, we thought that we’d barter off the table of elements instead. Why not? We invited people to come by and swap some aluminum for carbon dioxide, some nickel for oxygen, or even some combination of Ag, As, Au, Cd, Cu, Hg, Fe, Pb, Se, Sr, U and Zn for a single grain of Na. We were hoping to (perhaps) afford some art once we’d readjusted these value systems…. hoarding the free packets of salt from the downstairs café to help buy that old Rubens in the back.

Rochdale College: A Free School Happening

Rochdale College: A Free School Happening (2009) was curatorial project with Sunny Kerr at the University of Toronto Art Centre (UTAC). Following the trajectory (and stealing the name) of Rochdale College’s open-sourced education model, we presented a month-long free school, art show, and archive asking anyone and everyone to lead a class, make an art, and perhaps learn a thing. All housed inside an institution that is becoming more and more impossible to afford.

Glass House Archive at Wreck City

Glass House Archive (2013) is part of the Wreck City Project. An installation of an abandoned home’s detritus encased in glass for a special viewing before the whole building (and street) was demolished, making way for condos. Let’s take a final look at the dust, shall we? Part of Wreck City, An Epilogue for 809 in Calgary, Alberta.

Read more: https://www.wreckcity.ca/wreck-city

Insert Title

[Insert Title] (2013) is an installation in the library at the Elsewhere Living Museum in Greensboro, NC. [Insert Title] encourages museum visitors to arrange book titles into poems and short stories on shelving that looks like a sheet of ruled notebook paper. Visitors then record their poem in the installation’s notebook- an alternative library catalogue for the museum.

The Analogue Internet

The Analogue Internet (2012-2015) is an international mail art project. The premise is simple and futile — I mail the internet to people. Each mailing, a legal-size airmail envelope, contains excerpts of printed materials and curios that directly reference the Internet or broadly reflect a rich information landscape. The contents are pieces of deaccessioned library materials and discarded books from private collections. The Analogue Internet has been sent to over fifty international subscribers and has been exhibited at Dublin’s Forgotten Zine Library in Ireland, The Floating Library in Minnesota, The Richmond Art Gallery in BC, Humboldt University in Germany, the Don Blanche Art Residency in Ontario, and has collaborated with the LIBREAS Information Studies digital journal based out of Berlin, Germany.