Sandra Meigs, Purgatorio, A Drinkingbout (Series of Drinkers – Smokey The Bar, No. 2), 1981. NGC Collection © CARCC
Organized by the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art
Curated by Rae Johnson and Herb Tookey.
Curated by Rae Johnson and Herb Tookey.Organized by the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art
This Is Paradise/ From the National Gallery of Canada Collection
Curated by Rae Johnson and Jonathan Shaughnessy.
The Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art is pleased to launch our sizzling summer exhibitions program featuring This is Paradise / Place as State of Mind: The Cameron Public House and 1980′s Toronto, and This is Paradise / From the National Gallery of Canada Collection. Following the exhibitions, Impulse Archaeology in 2007 and Art Metropole Top 100 in 2008, This Is Paradise is the third in MOCCA’s ongoing series that recall the rambunctious and fascinating history, evolution and context of contemporary culture in and around Toronto’s Queen Street West scene.
This is Paradise/ Place as State of Mind: The Cameron House and 1980′s Toronto presents a selection of groundbreaking visual art, fashion, performance, music and theatre created by artists whose playground, sometime-home, laboratory, stage, gallery and canvas was the infamous Cameron Public House of the Queen Street West art scene of 1980’s Toronto.
The exhibition provides an overview of 1980s Toronto and an art scene marked by collusion between creative angst, experimentation and vanguard explorations of a burgeoning image-based, media-saturated culture. Curated by active participants in the scene, Rae Johnson and Herb Tookey, the exhibition features an eccentric array of work in all media produced mostly in the 1980s by 47 artists who were key players on the scene, John Abrams, Stephen Andrews, Isaac Applebaum, Rebecca Baird, Napoleon Brousseau, Brian Burnett, Derek Caines, Pauline Choi, Barbara Cole, Cathy Daley, Tom Dean, Reid Diamond, Lynn Donoghue, Andy Fabo, Elinor Rose Galbraith & John Scott, Eldon Garnet, General Idea, Oliver Girling, Sybil Goldstein, Matt Harley, Hummers (Deanne Taylor, Janet Burke, Jennifer Dean, Alan Bridle),Tim Jocelyn, Rae Johnson, Donna Lypchuk, Peter MacCallum, Tanya Mars, HP Marti, Michael Merrill, Handsome Ned (Robin Masyk), Andrew James Paterson & Alan Fox, Evan Penny, Randy & Berenicci, John Scott, Joanne Tod, Renée Van Halm, Video Cabaret (Deanne Taylor & Michael Hollingsworth), Julie Voyce, Lorne Wagman, George Whiteside, Tony Wilson
Joanne Tod, Having Fun? / The Time of Our Lives, 1984 Oil on canvas NGC Collection. © Joanne Tod
In conjunction with the main space exhibition and the National Gallery of Canada at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art program MOCCA presents the exhibition This is Paradise/ From the National Gallery of Canada Collection, that features seminal works of the era by Susan Britton, David Buchan, Tom Dean, General Idea, Tanya Mars, Sandra Meigs, John Scott, and Joanne Tod, This is Paradise/ From the National Gallery of Canada Collection, is curated by Rae Johnson and Jonathan Shaughnessy, Assistant Curator, Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Canada, and is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art and the National Gallery of Canada.
These projects are a featured component of Paradise Now, an extensive, neighbourhood-wide program of concurrent exhibitions and events from the community-taking place throughout the summer celebrating the phenomena of 1980’s cultural production.