(De)Generate
May 1 to 31st
Opening reception Saturday May 4th, 3-5pm (rain day Sunday)
Anthea Baxter-Page
Claudette Abrams
Eliza Moore
Gaye Jackson
Michael Dewdney
Rick/Simon
Curated by Kate Lawler-Dean, Studio Little Red
(De)Generate investigates the dichotomy of generate (cause to arise or produce) and degenerate (having lost or evidence of decline).
Each of these Toronto Island based artists interprets the opposing concepts individually or in relation to another. As part of an aging community living within urban parklands, each artist explores marks, patterns or memories we carry as well as those we leave behind. Studying the effects of our existence on our environments through themes of physical deterioration, consumption, artifacts and synchronicity. Both manmade materials and nature’s impact on us; ever evolving and deteriorating through time creating echoes we recognize from within.
Exhibited outdoors as a collective of individual freestanding vitrines and on a residential home mapped around Ward’s Island.
EXHIBITION
Jump to exhibition info
ANTHEA BAXTER-PAGE
Rejuvenation 2024, Things We Left Behind (Wings) 2010 & Growth 2024
Archival Digital Print
8" x 6"
*Available in other limited edition sizes
ANTHEA BAXTER-PAGE
Creation 2024, Beauty 2024 & Things We Left Behind (Wings) 2010
Archival Digital Print
6" x 8"
*Available in other limited edition sizes
CLAUDETTE ABRAMS
Equivocalence 01 Expand and Collapse
Archival Pigment Print
17” x 23” (framed)
2024
*Editions of 20, in variable sizes, available as single and paired images
CLAUDETTE ABRAMS
Equivocalence 02 Cause and Effect
Archival Pigment Print
17” x 23” (framed)
2024
*Editions of 20, in variable sizes, available as single and paired images
CLAUDETTE ABRAMS
Equivocalence 03 Cut and Cover
Archival Pigment Print
17” x 23” (framed)
2024
*Editions of 20, in variable sizes, available as single and paired images
CLAUDETTE ABRAMS
Equivocalence 04 Raze and Rebound
Archival Pigment Print
17” x 23” (framed)
2024
*Editions of 20, in variable sizes, available as single and paired images
ELIZA MOORE
Prickly Pain No. 1
Digital Print
9” x 7” (image), 14” x 11” (frame), Edition of 3
2024
ELIZA MOORE
Prickly Pain no. 4
Digital Print
9” x 7” (image), 14” x 11” (frame), Edition of 3
2024
GAYE JACKSON
Untitled with Poem from Artifact and Memory
Digital C-print
12" x 8"
2024
GAYE JACKSON
Untitled from Artifact and Memory
Digital C-print
12" x 12"
2024
MICHAEL DEWDNEY
Portals of Parallax
Archival Pigment Prints
9.5” x 4.5” ea
2024
RICK/SIMON
Bayview Ice
33"x 64" on front wall at 6 Lakeshore Ave
RICK/SIMON
Algonquin Ice, Iced Over series
16" x 20" framed on outside wall 2nd St
RICK/SIMON
Big Ice, Iced Over series
16" x 20" framed on outside wall 2nd St
RICK/SIMON
Docks Ice, Iced Over series
16" x 20" framed on outside wall 2nd St
RICK/SIMON
Whole Ice, Iced Over series
16" x 20" framed on outside wall 2nd St
ARTISTS
Anthea Baxter-Page
Anthea Baxter-Page is a contemporary photo-based artist and curator from Toronto, Canada with an exhibition history spanning nearly 20 years. Series work includes architecture, portraiture and still life from India as well as analogue film shot on Holga here at home. Recurrent themes of consumption and cultural impact are revisited with particular interest in the human imprint on historical settings, cultural artifacts and the mundane objects that occupy our time and space.
Website: antheabaxterpage.com
Instagram: @antheabaxterpageart
Always looking for something new created from deterioration, Anthea Baxter-Page explores growth from decay, beauty from the discarded, rejuvenation from the fatigued. From the series, THINGS WE LEFT BEHIND, ABP revels in rust and etchings, imprints and debris as both signifiers of our footprint and the possibility of new life ahead. There will forever be beauty in the once glorious.
Claudette Abrams
Claudette Abrams is a Canadian, Toronto-based multimedia artist, curator and art educator. Her work employs photography, video, projection, holography, fabricated material construction, site-specific and immersive installation.
Website: claudetteabrams.ca
Instagram: @claudetteabrams
EQUIVOCALENCE is a series of paired images, marking tipping points in scales of consequence large and small. Human-made and naturally generated/degenerated, dynamic forces and processes, mediate alongside each other, and in synchronicity, to mixed effect over the progressions of time and place.
Eliza Moore
Eliza Moore is a self-taught documentary and art photographer based in Toronto. Her other work in urban design, architecture and project management creates the context for careful observation and documentation of development and conservation in the city, the infrastructure behind it, and other topical issues. Many of her works are set in the Toronto waterfront and other parts of the Great Lakes. Moore’s work has been shown in numerous group shows in Toronto and Montreal, and at Gallery 44 and the Rectory Gallery on Toronto Island.
A cancer diagnosis and the resulting treatments last year was a stark reminder of how fragile and painful life can be. In Contact 2024, Moore will be showing a new series that likens the pain of recovery to the prickly thorns of the cactus.
Website: eccentricmontage.com
Instagram: @mooreeliza
PRICKLY PAIN STUDY
As one ages, body components and whole systems degenerate. Joints seize up, aches and pains abound, bits and pieces sicken and wither. The ultimate indignity of having a body part removed is overshadowed by constant prickliness, both physical and mental.
Gaye Jackson
Gaye Jackson is a Toronto-based artist whose practice explores environmental history, geology, and land use. She has exhibited in Canada and internationally including Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography, Toronto; A Space, Toronto; Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, University of Toronto; OR Gallery, Vancouver; Silver Eye, Pittsburg. Jackson’s recent work investigates the changing shoreline of Lake Ontario.
Website: www.gayejackson.com
Instagram: @jacksongaye8
ARTIFACT AND MEMORY includes images of fragments of electrical wire found at Leslie Spit. The Spit is a peninsula into Lake Ontario created from construction debris from demolition of Toronto buildings circa 1960 to 1990. It’s a place of ruins linked to the city’s political and social history embedded in the rubble. The wire fragments are artifacts from that time, their surface weathering a chronicle of time and change.
Rick/Simon
My home since 1968 has been an island house originally built in 1932 and named EDEN. From there I have traveled to work at the Coach House Press, many Shadowland and VideoCabaret venues and other locations including Trinidad, Tibet, Mali & Banff to photograph and sometimes dance on stilts.
Website: www.torontoislandart.org/artists-k-w/ricksimon
Instagram: @richardsimpley
ICED OVER
Always returning to Ward’s Island to enjoy the changing seasons especially the one we formerly called Winter. Conditions of temperature and wind could generate ice sculptures that would only exist until warmer weather degenerated them back to water. Catching those fleeting moments on film and digitally was important.
Michael Dewdney
Emerging Canadian photographer Michael Dewdney has centred his practice in and around the Toronto Islands where he was raised.
Instagram: @islandewd
PORTALS OF PARALLAX
Forests, both natural or in the urban environment, are places of constant generation/(de)generation. Leaves that fall in autumn provide nutrients to plants and animals through winter, allowing for a spring rebirth.
Human-made objects follow a similar cycle of generation/(de)generation. In the concrete wall in these images, small pebbles (broken down from larger rocks and worn smooth in rivers and lakes) help to fortify the earth-extracted ingredients that provide strength to the whole.
These too will (de)generate over time, their various parts returned to the earth from whence they came.
Coming in May - Currently On View:
CLAUDETTE ABRAMS
Claudette Abrams - 22 Bayview Ave
ELIZA MOORE
Anthea Baxter-Page - 14 Channel Ave
GAYE JACKSON
Gaye Jackson - 26 Lakeshore Ave
ANTHEA BAXTER-PAGE
Eliza Moore - 11 Fifth St
RICK/SIMON
Rick/Simon - 6 Lakeshore Ave front and Second St side
MICHAEL DEWDNEY
Michael Dewdney - 28 Lakeshore Ave
Visit
Ward’s Island Vitrine Galleries
Toronto Island
Claudette Abrams - 22 Bayview Ave
Eliza Moore - 11 Fifth St
Anthea Baxter-Page - 14 Channel Ave
Rick/Simon - 6 Lakeshore Ave front and Second St side
Gaye Jackson - 26 Lakeshore Ave
Michael Dewdney - 28 Lakeshore Ave
7 min walking approx. 400 m distance.
Dates
May 1st to 31st 2024
Opening: Wednesday May 1st
Reception Saturday May 4th, 3-5pm at 22 Bayview Ave. Ward’s Island (Rain day Sunday May 5th 3-5)
Hours
24 hours
Directions
Take ferry from the Jack Layton Ferry Terminal to Ward’s Island. Water taxis also available.
You can find the current ferry schedule here. Please purchase tickets online in advance here.
Water Taxis:
Toronto Harbour Water Taxi - 416-203-8294
T Dot Water Taxi - 647-370-8368
Ward’s Island
Accessibility
The exhibition is fully accessible. The ferry terminal and ferries have accessibility practices and Ward’s Island has an accessible public washroom. The vitrines are outdoor viewable from the sidewalk.
CONTACT Walking Tour:
Claudette Abrams - 22 Bayview Ave
Eliza Moore - 11 Fifth St
Anthea Baxter-Page - 14 Channel Ave
Rick/Simon - 6 Lakeshore Ave front and Second St side
Gaye Jackson - 26 Lakeshore Ave
Michael Dewdney - 28 Lakeshore Ave
15 min walking approx. 800 m distance.
CONTACT Photography Exhibition
CONTACT is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to celebrating and fostering the art and profession of photography with an annual Festival in May throughout Toronto and year-round programming in the CONTACT Gallery. CONTACT embraces an inclusive and accessible approach to the medium, and cultivates collaborations with and among artists, curators, institutions, and organizations.
Each year CONTACT showcases lens-based projects by Canadian and international artists. The Festival’s Core Exhibitions are comprised of collaborations with major museums, leading galleries, and artist-run centres as well as site-specific public art projects. These are cultivated through partnerships and commissions, and frame the cultural, social, and political events of our times. The Featured Exhibitions, selected through a jury process, and the Open Call Exhibitions present a wide range of works at galleries and alternative spaces across the city, The Festival’s Programs include photo-book initiatives, lectures, artist talks, panel discussions, and workshops. CONTACT exhibitions and programs are free and open to the public, with some exceptions at major museums.