Visual Arts Department, Western University and the Artlab Gallery present a solo MFA Thesis Exhibition.

Anthea Black

How We Do It

August 7 - August 11, 2012

Closing Reception: Friday August 10 > 6- 8pm

Anthea Black's art practice sets a stage for collaborative encounters and inserts intimate gestures into public and natural spaces. Each work in How We Do It is a proposal for making a queer world in a mobile or temporary site. These proposals begin with traditional craft processes that she uses to transform scavenged black walnuts, invasive ivy vines, or worn-out bed sheets into handmade quilts, baskets, hankies, and garments. Black uses these objects as "orientation devices," to direct queer bodies towards collective activity. A series of videos trace the life of these objects as they become saturated in the excessive pleasure of queer belonging. The videos also document the routes by which we arrive in a place and come to know its local phenomena: heavy snowfalls, swollen riverbanks, cruising in gardens and forests. As a group, these works claim craft and collaboration as spatial and political orientations that bring us closer together and lead the way towards geographies of queer utopian feeling, however fleeting or fantastical they may be.

Anthea Black is a Canadian cultural worker. She has presented projects and exhibitions at The McIntosh Gallery, London, Ontario, Neutral Ground, Regina, The New Gallery and Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Calgary, The National Queer Arts Festival, San Francisco and The Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland. Her writing has been included in numerous publications, including The Craft Reader and Extra/ordinary: Craft and Contemporary Art (with Nicole Burisch). She is a contributing editor for FUSE Magazine.

Artlab Gallery,John Labatt Visual Arts Centre, Western University, Perth Drive, London, Ontario, Canada

Gallery Hours: Monday to Friday: 12- 6pm

PLEASE NOTE: The Gallery will be open on Saturday August 11th from 11AM - 4PM

Free admission, all are welcome.

For more information contact: Susan Edelstein, Director, ArtLab Gallery: sedelst@uwo.ca