2018 exhibition program

Oakville Galleries is pleased to announce its exhibition program for 2018, which includes solo presentations, site-specific commissions and a group exhibition presented at both of the Galleries’ venues.

Winter 2018

Allison Katz: Diary w/o Dates
Oakville Galleries in Gairloch Gardens & at Centennial Square
January 21–March 18, 2018

Reflecting the diverse range of Allison Katz’s production, Diary w/o Dates considers the unique character of each of Oakville Galleries’ exhibition sites: at Centennial Square, the UK-based Canadian artist reacts to the theatrical black-box design of the gallery with a large-scale installation of new paintings “in the round,” while at Gairloch Gardens, she presents a series of new works—including posters, ceramics and a sand painting—that play on elements of circulation and repetition inherent to both her own process and the architecture of this former residence on the shores of Lake Ontario. At the centre of the exhibition is an understanding of painting as an expansive medium that is not static or contained, but constantly in flux, forming a chain of visual associations with myriad points of connection. 

Allison Katz: Diary w/o Dates is organized in collaboration with MIT List Visual Arts Center.

Spring 2018

Nadia Belerique: The Weather Channel
Oakville Galleries in Gairloch Gardens
April 8–June 3, 2018

Investigating the expanded status of the image in our current moment, Toronto-based artist Nadia Belerique cannily combines photo-based image-making with sculptural installation to mine the dynamic relationship between the perceptual, the psychological and the representational. For her first solo exhibition in a museum, Belerique will present an installation of new works that extends her recent Bed Island series. Featuring a series of photo-driven sculptures and an elevated steel and glass frame (or “bed”) that responds to the architecture of Gairloch estate, The Weather Channel continues Belerique’s ongoing engagement with the image plane as an index for the actual and imagined limits of the body, human identity and the spaces they generate.

Sara Cwynar
Oakville Galleries at Centennial Square
April 8–June 3, 2018

In her first museum exhibition in Canada, Sara Cwynar presents her acclaimed works Soft Film (2016) and Rose Gold (2017) alongside her newest film and a suite of recent photographs. Using voice-over, a fast-moving collage of found images and footage of the artist herself working in the studio, Cwynar’s densely layered films range over a number of subjects relevant to our image-saturated society. These include the circulation and value of objects through time, our relationship to technology and advertising culture, the potent emotional and aspirational charge of material consumption, and how colour can be coveted as an object of desire. Her photographs enlarge on these themes, asking critical questions about the power at play in the distribution and consumption of images and things.

Summer 2018

An Assembly of Shapes
Oakville Galleries in Gairloch Gardens & at Centennial Square
June 24–September 1, 2018

An Assembly of Shapes explores painting as a methodology. Moving between figuration and abstraction, the works in this exhibition emerge from an underlying curiosity about both form and content that reflects the stakes of creating and circulating images. Through thoughtful consideration of subjects such as perception, politics, technology, language, intuition, and humour, painting is positioned here as a site for inquiry. The exhibition presents works by Canadian artists working both locally and internationally, including Sascha Braunig, Anthony Burnham, Patrick Cruz, Brenda Draney, Elizabeth McIntosh, Veronika Pausova, geetha thurairajah, Charlene Vickers, Ambera Wellmann and others.

Fall 2018

David Hartt: in the forest
Oakville Galleries in Gairloch Gardens
September 23–December 30, 2018

in the forest continues David Hartt’s ongoing interest in how societal values are expressed in the built environment. The exhibition investigates Moshe Safdie’s abandoned Habitat Puerto Rico, a continuation of the architect’s experimental housing typology initiated by Montréal’s Habitat 67. A project of particular resonance in Canada and originally intended for regions across the globe, Hartt considers the symbolism of this moment in late modernism, both the failure to build a better world and its colonial and nationalist undertones. 50 years later, the issues it attempted to resolve are ever more acute. Borrowing its title from a chapter in Claude Levi-Strauss’s Triste Tropique, the exhibition includes the Montréal-born, Philadelphia-based artist’s newest film, related photographs, sculptural objects, and an installation of tropical plants.

David Hartt: in the forest was commissioned by the Graham Foundation, Chicago, with additional support from Oakville Galleries.

Gabriel Kuri: spending static to save gas
September 23–December 30, 2018
Oakville Galleries at Centennial Square

Encompassing work in sculpture, collage, installation and other media, Mexican-born, Brussels-based artist Gabriel Kuri often uses repurposed materials—natural, industrial and otherwise—to link questions of form with larger conversations surrounding how commodities are valued, circulated and assigned function. For his first solo exhibition in Canada, Kuri will present a new site-specific installation that recasts the architecture of Oakville Galleries’ Centennial Square space, creating a static field to contain the gallery’s energy use during the run of the show. Accompanied by a series of new and recent sculptures that translate facts and figures into form, this gesture not only sets in motion a looping system (regulating a flow of energy, money and labour), but also functions as a tautology: an occasion that speaks about its occurrence, a space that assesses space, a possibility that reflects on possibility.

Gabriel Kuri: spending static to save gas is organized in collaboration with the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin.

About Oakville Galleries
Oakville Galleries is a contemporary art museum located 30 km west of Toronto. Housed in two spaces—one alongside a public library in downtown Oakville, and another in a lakeside mansion and park—Oakville Galleries is one of Canada’s leading art museums, with a primary commitment to presenting the work of early and mid-career artists from across Canada and around the world.

Oakville Galleries operates with support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Corporation of the Town of Oakville.