Naomi Yasui, Maggie Groat & LEISURE
ESP Mtl
November 14–December 21, 2013
Battat Contemporary gallery is pleased to announce a joint initiative exhibition exchange with Toronto gallery Erin Stump Projects to debut at Battat Contemporary on November 14th with the presentation of ESP Mtl. This inaugural event will be followed by a corresponding exhibition of works by artists from Battat Contemporary with Erin Stump Projects in Toronto in April 2014. Open since 2011, Erin Stump Projects was quickly identified as among the most promising and dynamic of Toronto's new galleries, with a noteworthy roster of emerging Canadian artists. ESP Mtl provides an insightful and imaginative survey of convergences in the practices of Erin Stump Projects artists and collaborators Maggie Groat, Leisure (Meredith Carruthers & Susannah Wesley) and Naomi Yasui.
Maggie Groat is a visual artist working in a variety of media including collage, sculpture, artists' books, site-specific interventions, and field studies. Forming an ongoing research-based practice, her work explores studies for possible futures, relationships and reconnections to Indigenous land and the interdisciplinary potential of artistic intervention and envisioning.
Shared Armature is a new body of work by Leisure (Meredith Carruthers & Susannah Wesley) that explores the creative act of framing and reframing, of exhibition and display as a creative medium. Inspired by the creative dialogue of floral artist Constance Spry (1886-1960) and painter Gluck (1895-1978), Shared Armature delves into the gaps and shadows of historical documentation with the aim of activating and inhabiting the underlying framework of a shared visual and formal vocabulary.
With an interdisciplinary practice that locates itself between installation, performance and sculpture, the work of ceramic artist Naomi Yasui puts into question the relations between object and creator, and those between creator and viewer. Also inspired by the work of artist Constance Spry, the series presented in ESP Mtl invites the viewer to interrogate, through formal references and art history, the object.
