Gallery Stratford Begins New Year of Exhibitions with

BUGS, BLOOD CELLS, VIRUSES, LANGUAGE and SCIENCE

Sunday, January 5, 1-5 pm

Two new exhibitions and a suite of prints from the permanent collection kick-off the New Year at Gallery Stratford Sunday, January 5. Artists’ talks will be held from 1-2 pm prior to the opening reception beginning at 2 pm continuing until 5 pm. Admission is free and all are welcome.

Swiss-born, Toronto artist Therese Bolliger continues the gallery’s ongoing annual series Contemporary Canadian Drawing with part four: Diagnosis: A Work in Progress. Working on paper with ink, Bolliger looks at the construction of identity through an exploration of the body. Juxtaposing images and words in a grid-like installation the artist wants the viewer to ponder how fragile and vulnerable the body can be. The interior body has become increasingly demystified through new technologies and these point to a new and potentially unresolved understanding of the relationship between the mind and the body. Western culture has generally separated the two, however, Bolliger expresses "a desire to see the relationship between mind and body not as two disparate and discontinuous entities, but as two parts enfolding and informing each other."

Therese Bolliger is Assistant Professor of Art and Art History Program in a joint program of Sheridan College and the University of Toronto. She has also been an instructor at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto and the University of Guelph. Drawings and installations of Therese Bolliger have been shown in galleries in Ontario in Toronto, London, Kingston, Hamilton and Oakville. Nationally her work has been exhibited in Lethbridge, Cornerbrook, Vancouver, Kamloops and Halifax, among others. Therese Bolliger has been a featured artist internationally as well, showing in such centres as Basel, Switzerland; Madrid, Spain; Florence, Italy; Rochester, USA; and Brussels, Belgium. She has also been the recipient of many Canada Council grants and is widely collected in both public and private collections.

Relic by Jennifer Angus investigates some ideas very similar to Therese Bolliger but in quit a different format. Using real bugs harvested and imported from Malaysia, Angus reproduces a pattern on the gallery walls, loosely based on the wallpaper patterns of William Morris and the Liberty companies of the mid to late 19th century. These companies created wallpapers lush and abundant with flora and fauna. Relic alludes to this mediated historic expression of nature, however, creates a tension of repulsion and attraction through the three-dimensional use of exotic insects and sound. The installation occupies a twelve by twelve-foot room covering walls that are just over 8 feet high. The artist says, "The installation is a visual metaphor for our unseen world. We are surrounded, enveloped in the environment. A kind of giddy hysteria sets in." Entities move around and in us all the time; rodents and insects live and die in our homes, mites perpetually live in our beds and carpets, bacteria live on our skin, viruses invade our bodies, moulds and spores are inhaled to our lungs and expelled again. Yet, in our civilized and cultured society we tend to view ourselves and our bodies as being separate from the environment and the unseen spectacle of nature. Relic makes us think twice.

Canadian-born Jennifer Angus lives and teaches in Madison, Wisconsin. She is Assistant Professor in the School of Human Ecology, University of Wisconsin. She received her Master of Fine Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her Bachelor of Fine Art from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax. Working out of an interest is textiles, Jennifer Angus has exhibited widely throughout Ontario and the USA. She has received numerous grants and awards from granting agencies, foundations and through her participation in juried and invitational exhibitions.

As a complement and bridge between the two exhibitions, a suite of prints from Gallery Stratford’s permanent collection by Vancouver artist, Torrie Groening entitled Studio Tests of the Senses will also be on exhibit. Six richly coloured silkscreen prints present pseudo-scientific and artistic examinations of the senses in the format of experiments set up in the artist’s studio. Romanticizing scientific investigation, they also point to the creative and subjective nature of trying to know the real world through the body’s senses. Common to all three bodies of work – Angus, Bolliger and Groening – is the notion of our inability to know with any finite, true sense of certainty.

Gallery Stratford gratefully acknowledges the support of The City of Stratford, Ontario Arts Council, Ontario Trillium Foundation, J.P. Bickell Foundation and our many individual members and corporate sponsors.

The exhibition will continue at Gallery Stratford until February 16. Admission to Gallery Stratford is Adults $5, Seniors and Students $4, children under 12 and Gallery Stratford Members are free. Gallery Stratford hours are Tuesday to Sunday, 1 pm to 4 pm and Saturday 10 am to 4 pm.

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For further information please contact Robert Windrum, Director/Curator or Caryn Scott, Marketing Coordinator at (519) 271-5271 extensions 24 or 22 respectively. Photo Images available on exhibitions or contact cscott@gallerystratford.on.ca