L’atelier d’ecriture (beside writing)
Manon De Pauw

October 26, 2007 – December 1, 2007
Opening Reception: Friday, October 26, 6-9pm
Artist Talk: Saturday, October 27, 2-4pm

Montreal-based artist Manon De Pauw’s L’atelier d’ecriture (beside writing) is a video installation exploring the gestures of writing as a form of communications that is just as powerful as the written word itself. In the video, we see eight people sitting at a table each with a piece of paper in front of them. In near unison they perform a series of acts with the paper that evoke the processes and frustrations of writing. They write on the paper, fold it, tear it, crumble it and start over. Throughout the session, the act of writing is transformed into line, drawing, collage, and audible rhythms. It is creative and destructive by turns. Physical attitudes reveal group levels of synchrony, complicity, tension, or confusion. The tabletop becomes a field to invest or to share, a sensitive zone of interactions between individuals and the community. Visitors to the gallery may return throughout the run of the exhibition to find the activities at the writing workshop have substantially changed, at times becoming aggressive or quite playful, demonstrating a constant push and pull between collective and individual expressions. The eight participants form a collective choreography with their movements, but one is left wondering who is leading the dance and who is following?

L’atelier d’écriture (beside writing) was filmed at the Banff Centre. Manon De Pauw would like to thank those who participated: Nancy Atakan, Marilyn
Booth, Marna Bunnell, JR Carpenter, Paulo da Costa, Joey Dubuc, Simon Glass, Janice Gurney, Catherine Hamel, Rachelle Viader Knowles, Ernie Kroeger, Nate Larson, Laurel MacMillan, Michael Maranda, Billy Mavreas, Joni Murphy,
Emilie O’Brien, Baco Ohama, Sylvia Ptak, Jen Rae, John Richey, Adriana Riquer, Nina Serebrianik, Ken Singer, and Jessica Wyman. This project received financial support from the Canada Council for the Arts.

Artist Bio:
Manon De Pauw works in the field of video art, installation, performance, and photography. She has presented solo exhibitions at Optica (Montreal, 2007), La Bande Vidéo (Québec city, 2007), Expression (St-Hyacinthe, 2005), Sylviane Poirier Art Contemporain (Montreal, 2004) and DARE-DARE (Montreal, 2003), amongst others. Her work has been shown in numerous exhibitions and festivals in Canada, Europe, and Latin America. It can be found in the collections of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, and the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec. She lives and works in Montreal, and teaches in the Photography Department at Concordia University. www.manondepauw.com

Organised by: Trinity Square Video

Opening: Thursday, September 6
TSV 5 – 7 pm
Gallery TPW 7 – 9 pm

ARTIST TALK: Saturday, October 13th, 2007, 2-4pm @ Trinity Square Video

Gallery TPW and Trinity Square Video (TSV) are pleased to co-present Grand Gestures, an exhibition in three parts by the 640 480 Video Collective. Reflecting on the rapid obsolescence of video technology, Grand Gestures, memorializes and commemorates the vain attempts we make at preserving our memories. An essay by Sally McKay accompanies the exhibition.

People make ‘home movies’ in order to create permanent reminders of moments they might otherwise forget. More often than not, it is the video itself that replaces the actual memories, and it is only through this medium that moments can be (re)experienced at all. Pushing at the possibilities of video as a memorial object, Grand Gestures consists of three linked projects – installations at TPW, TSV and in public spaces along Queen St West. Each project uses the aesthetics of public memorials and museums to discuss the preservation of video and its inherent value system.

Part 1: Trinity Square Video
The Trinity Square Video component will be an installation of hundreds of wearable memorial pins made out of VHS tape, that visitors are encouraged to take with them as a memento of the project. People can choose to wear them or leave them at the public sites of the plaques.

Part 2: Public Sites
The public component consists of ten ‘memorial’ style plaques interspersed along Queen West between TSV and TPW. Each bronze plaque will contain a partial transcription of a personal video that has been created on Queen St., which 640 480 sourced from youtube.com. By memorializing these banal and inconsequential videos with such markers of public remembrance, 640 480 draws our attention to the fleeting nature of video. A map of the plaque sites is available on the exhibition postcard and on the websites of both TSV and Gallery TPW.

Part 3: Gallery TPW
In the final component of the exhibition, the 640 480 Collective finds the ultimate method for preserving memories from the burden of decay by distilling them into the strongest material in the world: a diamond. Through a manufacturing process that converts carbon remains into diamonds, 640 480 are able to preserve memories – captured via aging video technology – into an everlasting state. As everyone knows, “A diamond is forever” and now one’s memories can be too.

The 640 480 Video Collective
The 640 480 Video Collective is Jeremy Bailey (MFA, Syracuse University, 2006), Patrick Borjal (BA, University of Toronto, 2002), Shanan Kurtz (MFA, Parsons the New School of Design, 2005), Phil Lee (MFA, Goldsmiths University of London, 2004), Jillian Locke (BA, University of Toronto, 2003), and Gareth Long (MFA, Yale University, 2007). Since meeting at the University of Toronto in 2001 the award winning collective has created and curated projects for galleries, art fairs, rock bands and on the web. Though seldom the end product, video is the starting point for most of their projects. Their work has often explored the value of the medium by translating video to other forms. For more information please visit 640480.com

Grand Gesture is an exhibition in three parts:

Please also visit

Gallery TPW – 56 Ossington Avenue

Public site locations

MOCCA – 952 Queen St. West
Between Givins St. and Shaw St. on the North side of Queen St. West

The curbside at South West corner of Trinity Bellwoods Park

At the end of Massey St. on the North side of Queen St. West

Concrete retaining wall at the South East corner of Trinity Bellwoods Park
At the corner of Queen St. West and Gorevale Ave.

The Gypsy Co-op – 815 Queen St. West
Queen St. West between Claremont St. and Manning Ave.

Hero Burger – 650 1/2 Queen St. West
Queen St. West between Euclid Ave. and Palmerston Ave.

The Reverb – 651 Queen St. West
Queen St. West and Bathurst St.

Westside Tobacco – 578 Queen St. West
Queen St. West just East of Bathurst St.

Digitimes – 550 Queen St. West
Queen St. West between Bathurst St. and Ryerson Ave.

Second Cup – 535 Queen St. West
Queen St. West between Augusta Ave. and Vanauley St.

King Shawarma – 392 Queen St. West
Just west of Spadina Ave.

A big thanks to all the businesses who allowed 640 480 to locate plaques on their property.

Organised by: Trinity Square Video

aluCine Toronto Latin@Media Festival presents Argentinian artist Jorge Castro’s video installation Witness at TSV Gallery from June 2-16, with a live performance, Umbral, at the opening reception on June 2, from 12-2:30pm. Jorge Castro’s works are part of Space Invaders, a selection of video, sound and light installations that re-frame space definitions by artists from Canada, Argentina, El Salvador, Chile, Brazil, Mexico and Colombia that will take place during aluCine Toronto Latin@ Media Festival.

Bio:
Jorge Castro is an Argentinean artist, who received a Degree in Fine Arts at the National University “Figueroa Alcorta” and a Master in Digital Art at the Maryland Institute of Art in Baltimore, USA. He has exhibited internationally in places such as: Biennial of The Mercosur, MicroWave Hong Kong, WizArt NYC, Center of Art MX Mexico, 6E Bienale Champ Free Montreal, among others. He has also been awarded with different prizes, such as: Maryland State Council Award, First Prize Digital Award ArteUna and Second Prize ICI IberoAmerican Institute.

Organised by: aluCine Toronto Latin@Media Festival

Presented by A Space Gallery in partnership with the Mayworks Festival and TSV.

Opening Reception takes place at both A Space Gallery and TSV.

This solo retrospective exhibition celebrates an artist whose work has influenced and worked towards social change in East London and beyond for over 30 years. There are two dimensions to Loraine Leeson’s practice that are unique and critical. The first is her relationship to communities and the working process that evolves from it. The second is her attitude to the form and aesthetics of the work itself. In the language of community art, she maintains a critical balance between process and product.

This exhibition includes photo-montage posters, large-scale images, audio-visual, digital and online work, plus contextualisation by artists and long time friends of Loraine’s, Carole Condé & Karl Beveridge. A team of German researchers initially investigated Leeson’s practice in depth and developed an exhibition exploring her process-based approach and artworks from the public domain. This show opened at the Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst in Berlin in November 2005 and has since toured to the UK, where it was exhibited at SPACE Gallery in East London in November 2006.

Loraine Leeson is a visual artist based in East London (England) whose practice since the late 70’s has centred on the exploration of art as a catalyst for social change. This has involved engagement with trades unions, tenants and action groups, local communities and young people around issues of regeneration and identity. She has co-founded and directed organisations for this purpose including the Docklands Community Poster Project, The Art of Change and currently cSPACE.

Art for Change: A Loraine Leeson Retrospective is being exhibited at A Space MAIN Gallery, A Space WINDOWS, and Trinity Square Video.

A Space Gallery is located at 401 Richmond Street West, Suite 110

Organised by: Trinity Square Video, A Space Gallery and Mayworks Festival

Trinity Square Video, the 20th Images Festival and the Drake Hotel are pleased to present the premiere of Tunnel Vision, a site-specific video installation by Montréal-based artists Isabelle Hayeur and Eric Raymond running from March 29 to April 28, 2007. Developed during their artist-in-residence at TSV, Hayeur and Raymond use 3D animation, video, lighting and sound to create the illusion of a deep and sinuous tunnel that extends from the end of the gallery.

In Tunnel Vision, Hayeur and Raymond have adopted the history of the trompe l’oeil painting to the realm of video by literally “tricking the eye” into believing that the flat wall of the gallery recedes deeply into a cavernous corridor. The artists transport us through this fictional environment until we come to the light at the end of the tunnel. Here the artists overwhelm the senses with light and sound, causing a rupture in our understanding of the space and leaving the viewer with a disoriented, but not unpleasant sensation.

Bios
Photographer Isabelle Hayeur lives and works in Montreal. She completed a BFA in 1996 and a MFA in 2002 at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). Her works have been presented across Canada, in Europe, in the United States, Latin America and Japan. She has participated in many artist-in-residence programs, in particular at the Wall House #2 Foundation (Groningen, Holland), at Studio national d’art contemporain Le Fresnoy (Tourcouing, France) and at Centre international d’accueil et d’échanges des Récollets (Paris, France).

Eric Raymond is a sculptor and new media artist based in Montréal. His work combines scientific research with large-scale sculptures and installations composed of industrial objects. His work has been included in major art fairs including Art Basel Miami, the Chicago International Art Fair and the Bologna International Art Fair.

Organised by: Trinity Square Video, 20th Images Festival and the Drake Hotel