Letter from our Director
In 2020, our primary focus at the Varley Art Gallery is to support emerging Canadian arts professionals, particularly those from York Region and the Greater Toronto Area.
The new year begins with our second iteration of NEXT | WAVE, presenting works by students enrolled in York University’s Graduate Program in Visual Arts. Opening on January 11, 2020, this project offer us the exciting opportunity to discover new artistic talents.
Curated by Tak Pham, the exhibition Emotional Landscapes will respond to established, and at times problematic, narratives of historical Canadian landscape painting. It places objects from the Varley’s permanent collection in conversation with works by contemporary performance artist Jessica Karuhanga and printmaker R. M. Thompson to present new perspectives on Canadian landscape traditions.
Spring 2020 also sees filling the Klein bottle (x) {, curated by Belinda Kwan. A multi-venue project mounted in partnership with Toronto organizations InterAccess and Bunker 2, this is an ambitious undertaking for the Varley Art Gallery. Featuring new media works by Xuan Ye (Toronto) and Wenxin Zhang (Shanghai), filling the Klein bottle (x) { stages a pseudo-travel agency offering an “all-inclusive” vacation package to reflect on the philosophical implications of travel and tourism – topics that could not be more timely today.
