Who could resist this proposal?

Just another reason why we love karaoke every Friday and Saturday at 11pm.

From now until June 1, 2013, at Paul Petro Contemporary Art you have the opportunity to happen upon Marlene Creates: selected works from 30 years, 1982-2012.

The exhibition collects photographs from each decade of Marlene Creates‘ career, focusing primarily on work which illustrates the artist’s preoccupation with the imprint of human presence on the landscape of Newfoundland and Labradour.

Excerpt from Sleeping Places, Newfoundland 1982

In much of her work, the landscape is communicated through a series of personal and interpersonal interactions, documented through photographs and text. For example, the work pictured above is a collection of photographs depicting the particular location where she had slept the night before. This action renders the landscape both intimate and autobiographical, as the land now bears the memory of her interaction. In this way, the images do not just present portions of geography, they also reveal the impact of experience and memory on our experience of that geography.

Marlene Creates: selected works from 30 years, 1982-2012 is on view at Paul Petro Contemporary Art, located at 980 Queen St West, Toronto. The exhibition is part of the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival.

Toronto’s most anticipated annual juried show of fibre arts—Hard Twist VII will reinvent the way you think about fibre and textile. Unrestrained by size and subject matter, curators, Helena Frei and Chris Mitchell will challenge the scope of fibre arts exposing everything from the exceptional to the unusual. Sounds interesting? Then be sure to have a look at the call, the deadline is quickly approaching.

A star-studded opening reception is our idea of a good night. And, that’s exactly what we had on May 02nd at the Maclean’s Magazine Contact Photography opening of Face to Face, 50 captivating portraits from their extensive 108 years worth of archives.

Face to Face with David Cronenberg

And Olivia Chow

Photos by Cam Hopkins

Our practice uses queer and feminist frameworks in order to reimagine borders and reexamine historical patterns of movement and migration through images, architectures language and bodies. We explore these ideas alongside an analysis of memory and remembering in a playful manner, working to “queer” approaches to these themes within contemporary art practice. Working in various media (print, video, sculptural installation and performance), we explore these constantly shifting narratives through a wide variety of approaches and frameworks.

Bambitchell (Sharlene Bamboat and Alexis Mitchell) have been collaborating since 2008. In 2009, they created Inextricable, a 5-Channel film and video installation, which queered an imagining of diaspora and nationhood. In 2011, they co-created Border Sounds, examing figurative and territorial borders. Bambitchell’s most recent collaboration is a trilogy of videos titled, Citizen Kenney: A Love Letter in 3 Parts, which responds to the immigration and human rights policies of the Canadian government. Bamboat and Mitchell both have independent art practices and they are both members of the Pleasure Dome Experimental Film & Video Programming Collective.

Image at top: Inextricable (2009)

“I’m nostalgic for a country that doesn’t yet exist on a map” – Eduardo Galeano

Inextricable is a 2-part video installation that looks at queering notions of diaspora through a consideration of nation, gender, post-colonialism and affect. To be tied to nation, is to be tied to the very set of rules, regulations and policed boundaries that queer bodies (affected by race, class, gender, sexuality, ability…) cannot fit neatly into. Our transgressive bodies, rejected by nation, therefore queer the boundaries of the nation-state by our lack of coherence and our constant longing for a place that does not exist. Each of the 3 parts looks at a different experience of diaspora and examines some of the pedagogy that exists surrounding it.

Citizen Kenney: A Love Letter in 3 Parts (2012)

There was a man from the West 

With a medal on his chest

Who runs swiftly to the border

To give the big boys a rest

The Honourable Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, hero of Canada’s most vulnerable: migrants, women, and LGBTQ peoples. Bambitchell responds in this 3-part video which directly interrogates some of Mr. Kenney’s finest moments.

Boarder Sounds (2011)

contact@bambitchell.com

That’s So Gay is the Gladstone Hotel’s annual gay pride art exhibition that explores themes around sexuality, gender and identity. That’s So Gay 2013 is curated by Elisha Lim and runs from June 12th to July 28th on the 3rd and 4th floors. Opening reception June 27th from 7pm to 10pm.

Currently on view at InterAccess is the installation Oh!m1gas: Biomimetic Stridulation Environment, by Kuai Shen (pictured above, at centre).

Oh!m1gas offers us a rather unique opportunity: to not only see, but hear, the inner workings of an ant colony. Ants, and other insects, can create audible vibrations by rubbing together two parts of their body. This process, called stridulation, is similar to dragging a vinyl record back and forth on a turntable, or “scratching” a record. The installation investigates the depth of this comparison, directly aligning the turntable with the ant’s stridulations, both being means of social communication.

The ants are monitored by a video camera, which feeds a custom computer program with the visual data it needs to activate the accompanying turntables. Not only do the ants act as if they were a DJ, the records themselves contain recordings of leaf-cutter ants producing their own stridulations. So, here Kuai Shen amplifies all aspects of the colony’s daily life, and gives his ants the opportunity to be both vocalist, and turntablist in what the artist calls a “cybernetic bio-acoustic space”.

Oh!m1gas will be on view until May 18, 2013 at InterAccess, and is presented in conjunction with the 26th Images Festival.

All photographs by Brenda Liu.

Michèle Pearson Clarke is a Trinidad-born filmmaker and photographer who lives and works in Toronto, Canada. She is the director of Surrounded by Water (2003) and Black Men and Me (2006). NOW Magazine’s Cameron Bailey named Michèle one of Toronto’s 10 best Filmmakers of the Year in 2006, and the following year she won the Best Canadian Female Short Award at the Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film and Video Festival. Her most recent photography project, Diplomatic Communication, was presented at Axe Grinding Workshop, part of the Civil Partnerships? Queer and Feminist Curating conference at The Tate Modern in May 2012. Michèle has served on the board of directors for the Inside Out LGBT Film and Video Festival and Trinity Square Video and she was a jury member for the Ontario Association of Art Galleries annual awards in 2010. Currently she is on the boards of the Feminist Art Gallery and Gallery 44. Michèle will be pursuing an MFA in Documentary Media Studies at Ryerson University beginning in September 2013.

Images: Both images are from the series It’s Good to Be Needed, a photography project exploring the possibilities afforded by a simple gesture of physical intimacy between ex-partners. In this project,  Michèle photographs queer women who are ex-partners, but who are not friends, holding hands with each other. The project title is both a reference to the relationship that once existed between each pair of subjects and also to the act of holding hands. You can read more about the project here.

That’s So Gay is the Gladstone Hotel’s annual gay pride art exhibition that explores themes around sexuality, gender and identity. That’s So Gay 2013 is curated by Elisha Lim and runs from June 12th to July 28th on the 3rd and 4th floors. Opening reception June 27th from 7pm to 10pm.

This hilarious video of Jimmy Fallon and John Krasinski lip syncing makes us laugh til we’re crying. But, most of all, it makes us crave karaoke.

Luckily, it’s Friday and that means Karaoke with Peter Styles is only a few short hours away. So, if you’re craving it too, make sure you come to the Melody Bar tonight for 11pm and show John Krasinski how Katy Perry is really supposed to be sung.

Fresh out of the studio from recording their sophomore album with Juno award-winning engineer/producer Michael Phillip Wojewoda, Roam are performing in the Melody Bar tonight at 9:30 pm and June 13th, part of a global roots music residency.

Check out these pics from Roam’s April 11th show, and get ready to Roam into Spring tonight!

Photography by Krystle Merrow.

Here is your chance! The call for submissions for the 11th installment of Come Up To My Room is now open. Join the ranks of dozens of amazing curators, designers and artists who have made this show one of the most anticipated events in Toronto.

Come Up To My Room (CUTMR) is the Gladstone Hotel’s annual alternative design event. CUTMR invites artists and designers to show us what goes on inside their heads. Coming together in dialogue and collaboration, participants are limited only by their imaginations, making CUTMR one of the most exciting shows in Toronto.

Click here to download the call.

Image: Some of the CUTMR alumni from the past 10 years. Photo by Agata Piskunowicz