Dianne Davis, Untitled, 2024, Cyanotype on paper.
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We live the opposite, dar(l)ing
Spring Opening: Saturday, May 11 at 3-5pm
*Please RSVP to jzylstra@riverbrink.org For the exhibition We live the opposite, dar(l)ing, artist Dianne Davis has fashioned an alternative history for RiverBrink, inserting imaginary characters within an invented historical queer community in Niagara. Working in the media of drawing, photography, and installation, Davis has created fictional characters and relationships which pay homage to queer artists from the past. The third installment of a series the artist initiated in 2017, the exhibition is intended to disrupt the history of RiverBrink, the former vacation home of London lawyer and collector Samuel E. Weir. In this imagining, the masculine space of the home, now a public art museum, becomes the site of an alternative domestic narrative. The exhibition is rooted in a reimagining and reconstructing of queer legacies from the past, with the goal of supporting dialogue with the present. Dianne Davis is a Niagara born, Toronto-based visual artist (www.diannedavis.ca). She has exhibited her photo-based work in solo exhibitions at Harbourfront Centre, Angell Gallery and Cedar Ridge Creative Centre as well as in numerous group shows. Her work, Richmond Park, is on permanent display in Toronto’s Bell Trinity Square. Davis is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, most notably Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts Council visual arts grants. She holds an MEng from the University of Toronto, a BFA in Photography from OCAD University, and an MA from Concordia University. Davis has created fictional characters and relationships which pay homage to queer artists from the past ‘and her current community’. |
Image credit: Millie Chen, Onguiaahra / Niagara River
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Turbulence: Millie ChenSpring Opening: Saturday, May 11 at 3-5pm
Turbulence is caused by unsteady vortices, chaotic eddies and other flow instabilities.
Turbulent events are caused by unrest, disruption, conflict and resistance. Millie Chen’s exhibition, Turbulence, contemplates the interrelationship of phenomenon, history, social justice and sorrow. The exhibition title is named after a new series of drawings; the first three works in the series will be exhibited at RiverBrink Art Museum, along with older (2015-2023) works on paper. Chen crosses the Onguiaahra (Haudenosaunee) or Niagara River almost daily. The new series of drawings emerges from years of walking along both banks of the river and gazing in awe at its flow. These drawings focus on river sites that have historic and symbolic significance, embodied in the turbulence created by disturbances under the water surface. All of the works in the exhibition are connected by the use of grids as a structuring device. The grid is a powerful generative mechanism that integrates singularities into an all-encompassing structure where everything is linked and empty space is matter. Chen uses the grid to both retain and release control, as a means to embrace unpredictability and “errors” and to express the wobbliness of being human. These incursions into uniformity and regulation amplify the grid’s enigmatic qualities, inviting chance and intuition. The grid contains order, chaos, grief, and limitlessness. Millie Chen’s artwork has been shown across North and South America, East Asia and Europe at venues and festivals including Buffalo AKG Art Museum, The Power Plant, Toronto, Centre Culturel Canadien, Paris, Centro Nacional des las Artes, Mexico City, The Contemporary Austin, Shanghai Expo, Hong Kong Asian Film Festival, and FILE-Rio: Electronic Language International Festival, Rio de Janeiro. Her work is in several public collections including Buffalo AKG, University of Colorado Art Museum, Art Bank of Canada Council for the Arts, Canadian Pacific Railway, and Toronto Transit Commission. Her most recent awards (media arts grants from Canada Council for the Arts and Ontario Arts Council, and a University at Buffalo Humanities Institute Faculty Research Fellowship) are for SRS (Silk Road Songbook) https://www.silkroadsongbook.com. Chen is a Professor in the Department of Art, University at Buffalo. https://www.milliechen.com |
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