PUBLIC ART: Billboard on Shaw by Sarah Nasby
September 14, 2017 - November 26, 2017In partnership with Artscape Youngplace, Critical Distance is pleased to present the Fall 2017 Billboard on Shaw, featuring an image by Sarah Nasby, curated by Lauren Fournier.
Fermentation requires vessels to hold and contain its transformative processes. In her Living Things series, Toronto-based artist Sarah Nasby takes vessels designed by women throughout history and re-stages them in light of fermentation as both a practice and a metaphor. Here, a vessel designed by Hungarian-born American designer Eva Zeisel is filled with kombucha, a fermented tea. Nasby graphically interprets the vitality of the kombucha tonic and the undulating design of Zeisel’s pot with her own squiggle pattern, creating a work that is both elegant and excessive in its form. The objects become living things in more than one sense: vessels that we live with, and vessels containing living, bubbling matter.
This project is presented in conjunction with Fermenting Feminism, Critical Distance’s Fall exhibition curated by Lauren Fournier and featuring Sharlene Bamboat, Hazel Meyer, Leila Nadir and Cary Peppermint, Sarah Nasby, Kayla Polan, Walter Scott, and Agustine Zegers. On view Friday–Sunday 12–5 pm and by appointment in Suite 302 at Artscape Youngplace from September 14–November 26, 2017.
Please join us to celebrate the new billboard on Thursday, September 14th from 6–9 pm
A reception for artist will take place in our third floor gallery at Youngplace and will coincide with the opening of Fermenting Feminism. Refreshments will be served and all are welcome.
Critical Distance Centre for Curators (CDCC)
Suite 302, Artscape Youngplace, 180 Shaw Street, Toronto, ON M6J 2W5
See Google map of location
About the Artist
Sarah Nasby works primarily in sculpture and drawing. She received an MFA from NSCAD University and a BA from the
University of Guelph. Her work has been shown recently in Para//el Room at DNA Artspace, London; Taking [a] part at
Mercer Union, Toronto; Who’s Afraid of Purple, Orange and Green? at the Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina. She lives and works in Toronto.
About the Curator
Lauren Fournier (Regina, Saskatchewan) is a writer, curator, artist, and PhD candidate currently based in Toronto. She has exhibited her work across Canada and in Berlin, Athens, and Houston. Her writing has been published in Canadian Art, Magenta, Kapsula, Milkweed, Canadian Journal of Woman Studies, The Journal of Comparative Media Arts, and West Coast Line. Recent curatorial projects include The Sustenance Rite at the Blackwood Gallery and Out of Repetition, Difference at Zalucky Contemporary.
Sarah Nasby is grateful for the support of the Toronto Arts Council for her work in this exhibition. Critical Distance thanks Artscape Youngplace for their support of the billboard.
image: Sarah Nasby, Living Things (Eva Zeisel vessel, kombucha, squiggle pattern), 2017, on view at 180 Shaw Street in Toronto’s West Queen West neighbourhood through December 2017