Art Metropole

17 Aug. 2020

Art Metropole Announces Search for New Space

Art Metropole is pleased to announce its search for a new retail, collection, and exhibition space, following the end of its 2-year residency at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto. In the interim, Art Metropole will continue disseminating artists’ publications and editions by mail through the postal system, and via curb-side pick-up from its inventory space at 163 Sterling Road. We’ll also be participating in online book fairs around the world, producing occasional outdoor pop-up projects (as weather permits), and continuing our series of online and disseminated art projects and publications.

Art Metropole’s project at MOCA, later titled ‘Clouds & Horizon’, was conceived and developed as a community platform for artist-initiated publications, and a publication in and of itself, replete with its own ISBN: 978-1-989010-07-5.

Over the past two years, Art Metropole hosted 23 events at Clouds & Horizon, including publication launches, musical performances, film screenings, panel discussions, artist talks, and more. We hosted events featuring local, national, and international artists ranging from emerging to established, all with the goal of enriching the city’s artistic culture through dynamic exchange and community engagement.

Art Metropole’s project at MOCA also coincided with a commitment to expanding its distribution capacities. Continuing a naming motif that draws on meteorological and topological subjects pertaining to dissemination, Art Met developed pop-up shops and ongoing mini-shops such as 4-Day Forecast at Stackt Market, and Altocumulous at SAW Gallery, and Ephemeral Streams at Robert McLaughlin Gallery. The organization also promoted work of Canadian artists at international book and art fairs and through collaborations in Tokyo, Mexico City, Basel, Montreal, New York, Toronto, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Detroit, Vancouver, and Miami.

As Art Metropole looks ahead to its 50th anniversary in 2024, it continues to reflect on its history as a collecting institution with a keen interest in artists’ multiples, publications, and ephemera. As we conduct research into the some 13,000 objects in the Art Metropole collection at the National Gallery of Canada, we remain committed to developing the second part of the organization’s holdings initiated in the late 1990s, with a renewed emphasis on works by BIPOC/QTPOC artists.

Art Metropole seeks a new space that will allow us to develop and showcase our collection, that will act as a hub for our publication and distribution activities, and that provides a community meeting place for talks and events pertaining to artist-led publishing in any media. We welcome any leads on suitable spaces.

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