We present more reminiscences from past prize winners!
Gwen McGregor – Artist Prize 2003
“Receiving the Artist Award twenty years ago from TFVA was really important, just as I was finding my feet as an artist. It was also very special to have my parents at the awards ceremony, who stopped worrying about me quite so much and could see that maybe being an artist was an interesting thing to do.
Since then I’ve continued a very active practice exhibiting in Canada and internationally. Just before the pandemic I participated in an artist’s residency and exhibition in Athens, Greece. In the fall, I hope to complete my PhD in cultural geography at the University of Toronto. Congratulations on TFVA’s 25th anniversary! Your unwavering support and dedication to contemporary art in Toronto is inspiring.”
Paulette Phillips – Artist Prize Finalist 2005
”I think the work the TFVA does is enormously helpful to Toronto artists. For the past 40 odd years, I have maintained an active art career. My latest work is a 60 minute film titled The Quoddy Fold. The Quoddy Fold was an ambitious undertaking that took 5 years to realize. Financial support for artists from TFVA has a huge impact on artistic careers.”
Click Here to see the Quoddy Fold
Shellie Zhang Artist – Prize Finalist 2021
“I was very honoured to have received this award alongside a few talented artists, at a time when projects were postponed out of safety around the pandemic. The support afforded me the ability to continue working. In recent years, my practice has shifted into the realm of sculpture and in public spaces.”
Read about our prize winners early Spring activities…
Anique Jordan – Artist Prize 2020
Anique Jordan was one of several artists featured in the February 24th ACI Newsletter. Entitled Rising Up, 7 Black Artists to Watch, the edition highlights Jordan’s work, Nowing: a Political History of the Present, from the 2021 Contact Festival. In the exhibition, narratives create what Jordan calls ‘impossible images’. Using a method that involves note-taking and newspaper archives, Jordan asks viewers to actively reject the urge to look away from our present moment.
Click here to read the ACI newsletter
Click here to learn more about Nowing
Tangled Art + Disability Project – Project Support Award 2022
Tangled Art + Disability, 401 Richmond St. W, has a new show, Cripping Masculinity: Designing Fashion Utopias. The exhibition is a journey into the fashion worldbuilding of Disabled, Deaf, and Mad-identified men and masculine people. The show, which runs from March 10 – May 12, 2023, showcases a selection of the everyday clothing and re-made garments from participants in Cripping Masculinity. The clothing and stories highlight the fashion imagination and wisdom that comes from the experiences of disabled masculinities.
Click here to learn more
Winnie Truong – Project Support Award 2021
Shellie Zhang – Artist Prize Finalist 2021
Both these prize–winners are part of the current show, Surface Temperature, at the Patel Brown Gallery. This group exhibition offers a snapshot of how contemporary artists digest and challenge our understanding of being and creating. Collectively, these works take an interest in diverse and divergent themes, addressing immigration, decoration, capitalism, folklore, gender identity, architecture, intergenerational trauma, and mysticism, among others. The show opened March 9, and runs through to April 22, 2023.
Click here to learn more
Dr. Adam Cohen and Dr. Linda Safran – TFVA Fall Art Lecturers
TFVA congratulates Dr. Adam Cohen and Dr. Linda Safran! These two lecturers from the TFVA 2022 autumn series, A Romp Through Medieval Architecture, have recently published their book, Art and Architecture of the Middle Ages, Exploring a Connected World. At 400 pages, it’s both outstanding and comprehensive—filled with maps and photographs and an excellent text.
Erika DeFreitas – Artist Prize Finalist 2016
Erika DeFreitas has recently spent time at the University of Manitoba School of Art Gallery. On March 14, she gave a workshop on conceptual art entitled, compositions on a colourless blue, and on March 16 she gave a talk, The Performance of Shadows, with Lillian O’Brien Davis.
Click here to listen to the talk on YouTube
Tau Lewis – Artist Prize Finalist 2019
Tau Lewis’ work was featured in the March 3 ACI Newsletter, Know Her Name, Canadian Women Artists on the International Stage, published in honour of International Women’s Day.
Click here to read the newsletter
Tau Lewis’ show, Vox Populi, Vox Dei at 52 Walker Gallery in New York City was the subject of a March 15 article in Momus, The Soft Syncretism of Tau Lewis. In it, author Darla Migan describes Tau’s monumental sculptures as, “inspired by sci-fi, angelology, and ceremonial Yorubaland masks.”
Click here to read the article
Shary Boyle – Artist Prize Finalist 2006
Shary Boyle’s show, Outside of the Palace of Me, continuing its cross-country tour, opened at the Vancouver Art Gallery on March 4, 2023. If you haven’t seen it yet, perhaps that location would work for you!
Click here to learn more
