Alison S. M. Kobayashi, Ryan Park, Roula Partheniou, Jon Sasaki and Josh Thorpe
June 14 – August 2, 2015
Curated by Julia Abraham
Opening Reception
Sunday, June 14, 1 – 3PM
A FREE shuttle bus will depart from Mercer Union (1286 Bloor Street W) at 12:30pm and return for 3:30pm. Artists will be present.
ARTBus Tour
Sunday, June 21, 12 – 5pm
The tour starts at the Ryerson Image Centre (33 Gould St, Toronto) 12noon and then departs for Blackwood Gallery and Oakville Galleries. A $10 donation includes afternoon refreshments by the Trafalgar Brewing Company and Whole Foods Market, Oakville. Seating is limited. To RSVP contactartbus@oakvillegalleries.com or call 905-844-4402 ext. 24 by Friday, June 19 at 4pm.
In 2013 the Blackwood Gallery began a new acquisitions programme after a 13-year moratorium.
The acquisitions draw on two facets of the gallery’s history. First, its initial collecting programme from 1969-1996 that amassed a collection of prints by Canadian artists. Second, the recent Blackwood exhibition programme which supports young Canadian contemporary artists, especially those with strong conceptual and performative practices. Keeping in mind these two lineages, the gallery’s new collecting priorities are focused on artist’s editions and non-object based art from Canadian contemporary artists.Always Already presents the Blackwood Gallery’s ten recent acquisitions of work by Alison Kobayashi, Ryan Park, Roula Partheniou, Jon Sasaki and Josh Thorpe.
The exhibition highlights the character of this new collection as one that functions in a continuum of potential prospects and imminent iterations. Each of the artists has been included in previous programmes at the Blackwood Gallery, all of which were compound presentations curated by Christof Migone: Fall In(2009) followed Fall Out (2009), The Projects: Port Credit (2009) followed The Projects: Port Credit (2010),WOOD TWO (2012) followed WOOD (2011).  Always Already refers to each of these exhibitions, all the while collapsing the history of the gallery, its curatorial experiments and creative leadership, with future stratospheres of rolling rehearsals, arrangements, and formats. Here, the artworks crystallize in a [somewhat] material form.
Surfacing between multiple points of manifestation, this exhibition is the articulation of just one moment, one example:
A poem feasts the wall.
Take a postcard, pass it on.
Two bananas: watch your step.
One fall, ten falls, how many will follow?
A looping cube and a pulsing landscape.
Graphited silence spills over a monochrome.
A crate holds everything, withholds nothing.
Voices layer and connect points, between you and me.
For more information on Blackwood Gallery’s permanent collection and recent acquisition, please click here.