Genetic modification, climate change, land rights, technologies of war and related concerns are discussed every day in the media. This is also the subject of many contemporary art pieces.
Twelve artists in the McIntosh Gallery’s latest exhibition — Barbara Astman, Carl Beam, Ron Benner, Susan Dobson, Murray Favro, Elle Flanders, Wyn Geleynse, Frances Leeming, Gwen MacGregor, Dennis Oppenheim, Heidi Schaefer and Jamasie Teevee — address these issues and the broader relationship of nature and human nature to culture and technology.
The opening reception for Natural. Disaster is Thursday, March 4 from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Remarks begin at 6:30 p.m. The exhibit will be on display until April 24.
With specific reference to topics ranging from cultural colonialism to energy production and consumption, these artists address the problem of achieving balance between nature and the world created through culture and technology.
As a series of forces to be navigated and, variously, overcome or accommodated, nature may produce disasters, but it is in the encounter with human will that the meaning of the disastrous can be discerned.
Natural. Disaster is the culmination of research undertaken by Jessica Wyman in 2009 during the first contemporary curatorial residency at the McIntosh Gallery. It includes works from the collection and by artists in Canada and the UK. A publication is forthcoming.
Wyman is an independent curator, writer and art historian based in Toronto and teaching at Ontario College of Art and Design. She is a contributing editor to FUSE Magazine and a board member of the Toronto Arts Council.
Her writing on contemporary art has been published internationally in Springer Kunst, FUSE, Ciel Variable, Open Letter, Women’s Art Magazine and Performance Research. In 2007, her three-volume edited book Pro Forma: visual art/language/text was published by YYZBooks.