If Walls Could Talk | Exhibition Catalogue

IWCT is produced by the Gladstone Hotel 1214 Queen St. W Toronto 416.531.4635

@gladstonehotel

EXHIBITION HOURS Thurs March 6 – Sun March 30, 2014 12-5pm daily

OPENING RECEPTION: Thurs March 6, 2014 7-10pm

Special thanks to

and thanks to Alëna Skarina for featured illustrative design as seen on hotel exterior.

IF WALLS COULD TALK

The Gladstone Hotel and curator Leila Courey are pleased to present If Walls Could Talk, a juried exhibition of experiential illustration that features work by emerging and established artists. The show will be on public display at the Gladstone Hotel from March 6–30, 2014. Selected projects use illustration—or other art forms related to it— to occupy or alter the hotel’s 2nd floor gallery and public spaces, in dramatic, conceptual, and experimental ways.

In May, the Gladstone’s website hosted the exhibition’s national call for submissions, with promotional support provided by media sponsor Applied Arts Magazine.

In August, Leila and the exhibition’s jurists, reviewed, discussed, and selected proposals.

Leila has collaborated with each participant to designate specific rooms and public spaces, and has lent support to each artist through the development of their projects.

2014 Jury Ari Elkouby creative director Zulu Alpha Kilo Diti Katona partner, creative director Concrete Design Gary Taxali fine artist, illustrator Jason Logan creative director Rogers Publishing Mikey Richardson partner, creative director Jacknife Design Paul Dallas chair of Illustration OCAD University Virginia Johnson illustrator, textile designer + founder Virginia Johnson Lifestyle

Curator Statement If we do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality. —Yann Martel

Illustration brings remarkable meaning to nearly any part of our existence. From Mother Goose to Dr. Seuss, Stan Lee to DC, galleries to street art, and beyond, the drawn line decorates the mind with vivid wonders. The discipline is in permanent flux, its dominant forms currently shifting from handmade to computer generated, but the spirit of drawing remains pure and cherished.

The greatest illustrators, artists, and designers are conceptual thinkers. They have an intuitive connection with their cultures, and speak distinct visual languages. Their voices resonate through varied mediums. If Walls Could Talk welcomes illustration into the exhibition space, creating a destination for public engagement and participation.

Viewers are invited to experience two and three-dimensional works, sometimes at the same instance. In an effort to shift expectations, ideas have been drawn, folded, painted, constructed, cut, sculpted, built, illuminated, projected and transformed. By challenging artists and creators to explore their craft beyond the framed image, it is my hope that this exhibition will precipitate a new and spontaneous reaction to this traditional art form, while further developing each participant’s growth of artistic expression.

GLADSTONE HOTEL The Gladstone Hotel is Toronto’s oldest continually operating hotel. In fact, this year, we’ll be turning 125 years young!

Identifying as an art hotel since 2005, when local artists came together to transform our original 19th century hotel rooms into 37 unique rooms/functional art installations, we know that being an art hotel means more than hanging a few paintings. Inspired by the building’s history, exposed brick walls, high ceilings, huge Victorian windows and longstanding neighbourhood connections to Toronto’s arts and culture scene, we were able to create an internationally recognized art hotel that defies traditional expectations and fosters design and creativity.

More like a gallery that never sleeps, we provide access to locally-made works 365 days per year. Our exhibitions and cultural programs host hundreds of artists, designers, craftspeople, musicians, performances, literary projects and social change events which illustrate Jane Jacobs’ assertion that ‘Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.’ Every year, we partner with community organizations and arts curators to produce a long list of exhibitions and programs relevant to communities across the city, including: That’s So Gay, a celebration of Pride; Grow-Op, a provocative exploration of landscape and place; Come Up To My Room, alternative design event; Hard Twist, a juried textile exhibition; Fly By Night which coincides with Nuit Blanche and many more.

From the thoughtfully created dishes served in our Café restaurant on the first floor to the top of the iconic Tower suite’s private rooftop patio, we hope you enjoy the art — wherever you find it!

www.gladstonehotel.com

MARCH 6 - 16, 2014

EXHIBITION MAP

A. B. C. D. E. F. G. H. I. J. K. L. M.

Beata Kruszynski Betty Zhang Jen Spinner & Hazel Eckert Jennifer Ilett Kat Gomboc & Rebecca Ladds Kerry Zenter Mike Ellis Min Gyo (Daniel) Chung Nat Janin P.K. (Adam Hilborn) Rachael Ashe Sawhorse Design Co. Selena Wong

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BEATA KRUSZYNSKI Face Hole

www.beekski.blogspot.ca

Beata Kruszynski engages the esoteric explorer. She creates ideas about society and their environment, delving into the real and the make believe, and discusses human connections to their environments.

The Face Hole is an interactive experience for the peeping tom in you, and, for those who have ever wondered what the life of a cat lady, consists of. We often make up stories about cat ladies.

Often they are based on newspaper articles, internet stories, friends' confessions about their cat lady habits, and observations of real life cat ladies.

The Face Hole experience gives viewers a chance to view the life of a cat lady and her cats.

BETTY ZHANG Follow Us After living in 3 continents, Betty’s work has evolved over the years, as she is influenced by many cultures. She now combines her fine art experiences with her design background. Her artwork draws a relation between emotion, culture, and experience. The texture in her artwork is a way to conserve the process; a process of making art, and a process of thought.

www.bettyzhangart.com

If walls could talk, they would say “Follow us.” In the modern society, we are surrounded by technology and social media as a new way of interaction.

“Follow us” is a phrase often heard amongst many other new vocabularies as a result of this new social behaviour.

In this interactive and immersive project, viewers are invited to have a conversation with the walls and follow them.

JEN SPINNER & HAZEL ECKERT Three-Star Quality Inn Three-Star Quality Inn is inspired by an economy motel where travellers might stay on a Canadian road trip. The paper installation is constructed in the tradition of theatrical set staging. When viewers walk amongst the large paper objects, they are invited to reflect on the nature of their relationship to travel, transition and nostalgia.

www.jenspinner.com www.hazeleckert.ca

Jen Spinner is an artist, graphic designer and illustrator whose personal work explores the possibilities of delicate paper sculpture through installation and illustration.

Hazel Eckert is an artist and letterpress printer. By combining found objects, photographs, and drawings of her surroundings, she creates collages that verge on installation. Her work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions across Canada, and she is the 2013–2014 recipient of the Nick Novak Fellowship at Open Studio.

JENNIFER ILETT As Seen From Space

www.jenniferilett.com

Jennifer Ilett is a multi-disciplinary artist living in Toronto, ON. Her work has been featured in American Illustration, Communication Arts, CMYK Magazine, and on various art and design websites. She currently works as a freelance illustrator, designer, and fine artist. She has exhibited in Canada and the USA. Jennifer’s work draws upon elements of the every day, infused with her own observations and the fantastical. Her latest works interpret subjects and ideas with which she has little personal experience, creating feelings which teeter between bold assumption and shy discomfort, while at the same exuding an overall familiarity.

“As Seen From Space” is an immersive approach to Jennifer’s illustrative work, with a combination of illustration, sculptural elements, and viewer interaction. The installation presents an exploration of Earth and humankind from the viewpoint of an extraterrestrial being. Entering the space will transport the viewer to an otherworldly hoarder’s private collection of Earthly observations. The works will present a unique interpretation of every day life, emotions, and interactions.

KAT GOMBOC & REBECCA LADDS Ornament, Lament Kat Gomboc finds inspiration in the shared human experience, which has manifested itself in an interest in mythology where she explores its impact on contemporary culture and the rift between fact and fiction.

She applies this subject matter to conceptually appropriate mediums such as oil painting, intaglio, and book-making.

Rebecca Ladds interest in history informs her current work which is completed in carbon pencil and ink on paper. By combining techniques of heavy baroque figuration with intricate and detailed ornamentation in ink, she explores the dualities that exist between historical warfare artifacts and narratives and their effect on the contemporary body.

www.katgomboc.com www.rebeccaladds.com

While living and working in Florance,

use of black ink on white walls. Kat and

Italy, Kat Gomboc and Rebecca Ladds

Rebecca create bold graphic images with

became engulfed in a sea of inspiration

intricately detailed line-work as an ode

surrounded by the Renaissance’s

to the interior aesthetic of Renaissance

ornamentation, architecture, and

building while hinting at influences like

the rich history that accompanies it.

intaglio, tattoo, and cartoons. Subtly

Upon returning to Canada, they were

they place Toronto signifiers among this

confronted with a new perspective on

imagery, inviting the viewer to uncover

the very contemporary city of Toronto,

them. The installation parallels this

and its own historical identity. Common

juxtaposition, and harmonizes a classic

ground between Florentine artwork and

aesthetic with their own contemporary

contemporary illustration manifests

practices.

itself in this installation through the

KERRY ZENTER Protocosmos Kerry Zentner is an award winning Toronto-born visual artist. His work playfully confronts the existential terror of post-twentieth-century being, examining the ebb and flow between cosmic forces of entropy and the effects of our fundamental collective human will to imagine.

www.kerryzentner.com

In Zentner’s installation, he shows the relationship between living entities and their nonliving environment to be a calamitous playground for pure ontological struggle. Zentner creates a new entropic territory in which the definitions of matter as living or nonliving, and the temporal division between these states, comes under conceptual prosecution.

MIKE ELLIS Room For Rent

www.mikellis.com

Mike Ellis is an illustrator and designer based in Toronto whose illustrations have graced the pages of The New York Times, Boston Globe, The Globe and Mail and many other fine publications.

While never limiting himself to just illustration, Mike wears many hats in a large spectrum of media.

From art directing his record label, Legwarmer Records, to multimedia installations and fine art. Mike is constantly pushing his own envelope in an effort to engage his audience in new and exciting ways.

A good room is hard to find. As a twentysomething in a booming city with rent soaring to almost unobtainable levels, the quest for the perfect apartment has never seemed more impossible.

As luck would have it, a room just opened up down the street!

Welcome to the Huron House, a classic example of Toronto’s once abundant Bay and Gable marvels. On a street once prided for its whimsical architecture, its days of grandeur have long been forgotten. This three dimensional installation provides viewers a chance to peer into the lives of it’s tenants.

MIN GYO (DANIEL) CHUNG Unconquerable Dreams Korean born Min Gyo (Daniel) Chung (b.1990) is an emerging illustrator based in Toronto, Canada. His work has been recognized by the American Illustration, 3x3, CMYK and Creative Quarterly. In 2013, he won the Adobe Design Achievement Awards in the Illustration category, including the Grand Prize for Traditional Media.

He is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Design (BDes) in the Illustration program at OCAD University. www.mingyochung.com

“Unconquerable Dreams” is a sculptural installation presenting a comparative study between the Terracotta Army sculptures in China and blow up sex dolls. It examines the idea of massproducing inanimate objects with humanistic features to compromise one’s unattainable desire. Furthermore, it questions the repetition of history, the absurdity of mass production and the human inclination to manipulate the ephemerality of life.

NAT JANIN Realm Of Hungry Ghosts

www.natdraws.com

Nat Janin is a freelance illustrator and designer from Toronto, Canada. She makes work for publications, galleries and private clients and has received recognition by American Illustration and the Adobe Design Achievement Awards. She is keen on adventuring, animating and harmonizing art and science.

Her left wrist is reinforced with titanium and her hands are cold even in the summer. She is inspired by wanderlust and the small discoveries attached to everyday life around the world.

Using smart pigments and materials, Realm of Hungry Ghosts addresses impermanence, the Buddhist notion of existence in our contemporary lives, through the narrative realms of Samsara; Life, Death and Rebirth. “Things and experiences are in constant flux, and there is no inherent or fixed nature to any object or experience.

Things are constantly coming into being and ceasing to be. Everything we can experience through our senses is made up of parts, its existence is dependent on external conditions.� from The Law of God by Syed Ali Raza.

P.K (ADAM HILBORN) Untitled 6

www.pkartdept.com

Practicing as a multi-disciplinary designer and illustrator, P.K. (Adam Hilborn) has worked for some of Canada’s acclaimed branding and industrial design companies including his own boutique studio and gallery. While designing and illustrating, Adam has also been an instructor at OCADU for the past 8 years teaching drawing and conceptual process. Working under his pen-name “Peekay”, Adam creates fine art in the form of drawing, painting and sculpture for small and large-scale installation.

In this installation for If Walls Could Talk, P.K. explores further into optical illusions and obsessive drawing on a greater scale.

RACHAEL ASHE Flight Path/Taking Flight

portfolio.rachaelashe.com

Rachael Ashe’s ceiling mounted installation, created from hundreds of paper wings, is inspired by the artist’s fascination with watching birds in flight, and the mystery and magic of their ability to move as one. Rachael explores the beauty of repetitive forms found in nature, and creates intricate and complex works through the simple process of paper cutting.

Rachael Ashe is a self­taught multi­ disciplinary artist, working in paper cutting, sculpture, installation, and book arts. A graduate of the Creative Photography program at Humber College, she works from a studio in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Rachael has been featured on Creative Mornings in Vancouver speaking on her experiences and learnings as a professional artist, surrounding the theme of Make.

Rachael’s work has been shown in Toronto, Vancouver, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, Portland, San Francisco, and the United Kingdom. Her work is included in Paper Works 2, and Design Genius and two upcoming books on design and craft to be published in 2014. Rachael’s work is held in private collections across Canada and the U.S.

SAW HORSE DESIGN CO. The Getaway

Kellen Hatanaka

“The Getaway” will explore the use of both two- and three-dimensional recycled objects to create a frozen action scene in an interactive space.

These flat and dimensional objects will be married within the installation to create a surreal environment. They

Adrian Forrow

have built a cinematic snapshot of a homemade car crashing into a motel, the contents of the trunk flying out, littering the landscape.

www.sawhorsedesign.com Viewers will be immersed in the installation, from the custom radio

Saw Horse Design co. represents the combined efforts of Torontobased designers Kellen Hatanaka and Jim Mezei. They have teamed up with their regular collaborators Adrian Forrow and Tyler John.

Each artists’ unique illustrative approach, coupled with a shared interest in employing all aspects of art, design, and making things, inform the aesthetic of this collective. Their common admiration for invention, has been the entry point for much of their work. They use a variety of traditional materials and techniques such as assemblage, collage, wood carvings, enamel, aerosol paint, and block printing ink and allow let the project to dictate the medium.

broadcast crackling over the scene to each view of the wreck. Every angle will offer a disparate perceptive experience. At once still and in motion, this car will set an urgent yet static tone for the room. It is an invitation to wonder at the juxtapositions in play: the dichotomy of dimensions, the binary of movement and immobility.

Jim Mezei

SELENA WONG Bunny Nests

www.selenawong.com Bunnies are sentient and intelligent creatures. They instinctively evolve

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Selena Wong’s pursuits in fine arts began at the age of five. At age ten, she and her family relocated to Toronto where she continued to make art and eventually earned a design degree from OCADU majoring in illustration. Today, she happily pursues her passion as her career. Working primarily in gouache and graphite, she displays her pleasure of drawing through her process. In her work, humans and animals share the natural world, secret thoughts, and are at times, weaved together in the flesh. With her Netherland dwarf rabbit at her side, Selena lives and realizes her dreams in Toronto.

and interact with the new environment in which it is introduced. Bunny Nests is about adaptation and establishing foundation. These bunnies, naturally quiet and wary but differing in temperament, have come to the Gladstone in search of tranquility, shelter, rest, as well as excitement.

Through their subtle body language, you will learn the techniques they develop in response to the imposed challenges and conditions of their new surroundings. Follow the bunnies, discover their nests, and learn to adapt by being conscious and alert to the surroundings and reliable walls.

You don’t have to be that creative to connect the dots, but it doesn’t hurt.

LIFE DRAWING

SPIN THE BOTTLE

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CUTE STAFF 19

CATERING

CHARETTES

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GLITTER

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COOL OLD ELEVATOR 18

INSPIRED ART SPACES

COMEDY 11

10 TOQUES

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DJS

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PARTY SPACE

12 ROCK STARS

17 GROUP RATES

BRAINSTORM STUDIOS 4

BURLESQUE

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16 15

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KARAOKE 7

BEER

QUEEN WEST

TECH SETUP STUFF

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ARTIST DESIGNED HOTEL ROOMS

JERK CHICKEN SANDWICHES

Host an actually fun creative offsite at the Gladstone Hotel.

416.531.4635 | @GladstoneHotel

If you liked IWCT as much as we did make sure you come back APRIL 24 - 27, 201 4

EXPLORING LANDSCAPE AND PLACE