Artists from a multitude of galleries across Canada carve a pathway through domestic spaces and handmade creation, retracing deep histories and unearthing contemporary issues.

By Grace Henkel

Dangling from the ceilings, stretching along the floor, or creeping up along the walls, artworks at the Art Toronto Focus Exhibition generated an intimate exchange with the earth and the complex threads of human experience intertwined with it.

“Some of the works in “Good Foot Forward” direct our eyes downward toward the ground and by extension toward issues of land sovereignty and ancestral knowledge as well as the political economy of real estate, the undersides of domesticity and the labour of the handmade and assembled,” said renowned curator Kitty Scott, who brought the exhibition together.

Confronting themes like patriarchal perceptions of aging and womanhood, empowerment of queer love, and Indigenous ancestral knowledge and sovereignty to the land, “Good Foot Forward” incorporates a variety of multimedia works.

“There’s a long history of artists subverting conventions in artwork through uses of gravity,” said Jonah Strub, an artist who guided visitors through the exhibition. This has included “throwing things on the ground, [art] that doesn’t take place on a wall, that takes up space and [is] attached to the physics of the real world.”

Scott identified Duane Linklater’s “i want to forget the english language (ulterior)” as a piece that drew her to the themes explored in the focus exhibition.

“This title, written in lowercase letters, is provocative and it brings to the fore, a much larger and richer conversation about what it means to willfully want to lose a language,” said Scott.

Linklater’s piece, constructed of tipi poles, wooden and plastic crates, a museum dolly, and a chandelier suspended just above the ground, initiates tension between movement and fragility, and the deeper forces shaping contemporary life; Indigenous ancestral histories and inextricable ties to the land.

“Diviner’s Grasses” by Charlene Vickers stands solemnly against one wall of the exhibition. The sculpture of reed-like forms is rendered from braided grasses, bamboo, strips of cotton, and human hair, mourning the tragedies of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada, while invoking regeneration, hope, and healing.

Artist collaboration FASTWÜRMS explores “primordial geo-queer liberation” through their painting “Rainbow Volcano Atoll #1.” The vivid piece centres the volcano as both a generative and destructive force of nature, an allegory for realms of human self and experience intrinsically tied to the earth: queer joy, sexual euphoria and empowerment.

Elizabeth Zvonar’s sculpture, “History, Onus, Old bag” calls to terminology used against women as they age, initiating a dialogue on value as perceived from outside and within. There is a stark contrast between the carpet bag, cast into a heavy, cold, unmoving shell, and the organic quality of the tree stump it rests upon.

The process, according to Strub, represents “something that doesn’t traditionally have value,” being “[cast] in bronze to make it a commodity and a valuable object.”

Some of the “undersides of domesticity” surface with Brenda Draney’s painting “Split Pea.” The piece depicts a jarring scene of an abstracted figure in a darkened kitchen, a smattering of green escaping their blender. The piece is evocative of unexpressed anxieties and frustrations of domestic space and isolation.

Resting on a raw shipping palette, Kara Hamilton’s piece “Nothing is Wild” presses brass instruments between a canvas cushion, with the opening of the instruments peeking out underneath, vaguely reminiscent of something living and organic beneath the constraints of commodification.

The Focus Exhibition title selected by Scott, “Good Foot Forward,” is borrowed from lyrics in Bob Dylan’s “Gonna Change My Way of Thinking.”

“In a time of great change, high anxiety levels and deep despair, art offers a different register and new perspectives. What will lift us out of the current situation we find ourselves in?”

— Kitty Scott, curator

CanCulture had the opportunity to do an email interview with Curator Kitty Scott, who brought this year’s Focus Exhibition together:

What conversations are you hoping to spark through the Focus exhibition?

Group exhibitions have the ability to do many different things. They call on us to think about individual art works and the distinct ways in which artists are makers. They ask us too, to look at the whole and the meaning inherent in these objects as they are read one after the other. Duane Linklater’s work is titled, “i want to forget the english language, ulterior.” This title, written in lowercase letters, is provocative and it brings to the fore, a much larger and richer conversation about what it means to willfully want to lose a language. If we start to look closely at the objects in the work we see the makings of a tipi, a dolly, a box, a chandelier….

As the Focus exhibition’s title, “Good Foot Forward” emphasizes making contact with the land and with others, how do you hope the themes explored will resonate in the post-pandemic world that is returning to tangible spaces and experiences?

Some of the works in “Good Foot Forward” direct our eyes downward toward the ground and by extension toward issues of land sovereignty and ancestral knowledge as well as the political economy of real estate, the undersides of domesticity and the labor of the handmade and assembled. In a time of great change, high anxiety levels and deep despair, art offers a different register and new perspectives. What will lift us out of the current situation we find ourselves in?

What aspects of the subject matter, whether technical or thematic, did you find most compelling when putting together the exhibition?

I greatly enjoyed the time I was able to spend with art and artists in the process of making the exhibition. Art and artists open up new ways of looking at the world. We are in immense need of new ways to see and understand the places we inhabit. I am looking to the artists.

Are there any aspects of the exhibition that resonate with you on a personal level?

In recent years I have found titles for exhibitions in the world of music. The title I used for the Liverpool Biennial, “Beautiful World Where Are You” came from a book I was reading on Schubert. “Good Foot Forward” was borrowed from one of my favourite Bob Dylan songs, “Gonna Change My Way of Thinking.” Listen to it…