Art Metropole

04 - 11 Jul. 2018

Art Metropole at Toronto Art Book Fair + Art Book Week

Chinatown Centre Mall (222 Spadina Avenue), Toronto, ON

The Toronto Art Book Fair | TOABF is a free public festival that celebrates and explores artists’ books and printed matter.

As TOABF’s Curatorial Partner, Art Metropole is pleased to offer direct support to a series of programs for 2018. Artist and small-press publishing have long been vital elements in the transmission of messages of resistance and refusal; shaping, challenging, building and engaging communities through both content and form. For this year’s TOABF, Art Metropole has invited a roster of distributors, artists, collectives and communities who draw to the fore the constantly growing role of print in advocacy, subversion and revolt.

TOABF HOURS

Thursday, July 5 6-8pm
Friday, July 6 12-8pm
Saturday, July 7 12-8pm
Sunday, July 8 12-6pm

Angry Asian Feminist Gang X Art Metropole

Chinatown Centre, Kem Xuân Hương Ice Cream: Unit C15
Open during fair hours

Art Metropole will be hosting an off-site store for TOABF 2018 curated by Toronto’s Angry Asian Feminist Gang (AAFG). Located in Kem Xuân Hương Ice Cream shop on the lower concourse level of the Chinatown Centre, AAFG will present a selection of printed material from Art Metropole’s shop as well as a new body of acquired zines, publications and artists’ books. AAFG will also be producing free prints and zines on-site with a risograph machine and hosting a number of local artists and writers for ad-hoc talks and workshops in the ice cream shop. The shop will feature work from Amy Wong, Emmie Tsumura and Shellie Zhang and conversations with Toronto-based Asian artists and collectives. Come have ice cream with us!

The Angry Asian Feminist Gang is an amorphous group of self-identifying Asian feminists with an interest in art and cultural production. The group’s mission is to create a network of Asian feminists dedicated to working collaboratively, making space and developing dialogue centred on Asian feminist concerns.

ART BOOK WEEK

Art Book Week (July 4 – 11) is a parallel series of city-wide events that coincide with the Toronto Art Book Fair. Art Book Week features artists’ book-driven exhibitions, projects, and programs held throughout the GTA. Click here for a full list of events – details for AM-curated programming below

Resistance is Futile! On Mental Wellness and Sensuousness — presented by Hard to Read x Pillow Talk

Friday July 6 | 6 – 8pm
401 Richmond St. W., The Roof Garden
RSVP to fad@hardtoread.us

Join organizing host Fiona Duncan as she brings her two LA-based events series to Toronto for one night of listening and talk. Usually separate events, Hard to Read, a lit series, and Pillow Talk, community organizing on sex, love, and communication, will be coupled for this hotel room special — a communal exploration of mental wellness and sensuousness. Featuring contributions by writer Cason Sharpe, poet Rosemary Georgia Flutur, musician Deidre, and more, the event will explore currents like Millennial anxiety, Jordan Peterson and incel, the wellness industry (class, health, and spirituality), eros as a creative force, compulsion, and more. Follow pillo_wtalk and hardtoread on Insta for updates and live event stories. http://hardtoread.us.

Emerging Art Writers Workshop instructed by Merve Ünsal

Saturday, July 7 | 12-3PM and Sunday, July 8 | 12-3PM

The Emerging Art Writers Workshop provides students, arts professionals and art writing enthusiasts with mentorship with an established art writer. The two-day hands-on workshop culminates into a publication entitled Pink& Green that includes participants’ experimental written works along with photographs of artworks chosen for discussion. The publication is then distributed and utilized as a learning tool or reference material. Free to participate but space is limited and participants must commit to both days of the workshop. To reserve your spot, please contact hello@torontoartbookfair.com

Merve Ünsal is a visual artist based in Istanbul. In her work, she employs text and photography, extending both beyond their form. Ünsal holds a MFA in Photography and Related Media from Parsons The New School of Design and a BA in Art and Archaeology from Princeton University. Ünsal is the founding editor of the artist-driven online publishing initiative m-est.org, founded in 2011.

Special thanks to Fogo Island Arts for their generous support of this project.

Index Art Book Fair at TOABF

Mexico’s Index Art Book Fair will install a pop-up highlighting a diverse collection of material from Mexico’s flourishing independent publishing scene.

Prras! Public Letters Open Mic — hosted by Index Art Book Fair
Chinatown Centre, Main Stage
Sunday, July 8 | 1:30PM

Continuing Prras’s aim of acknowledging the work of women working in the fields of art and culture, Index will have an open mic session where men and women are invited to publicly recognise the labour and careers of women they admire.

Dead Letter Office: White Glove Sale, window installation by Atelier Céladon

Art Metropole — 1490 Dundas Street West
On view for the month of July

Recalling the impersonal violence of North American immigration policies and informal networks of diasporic communication, ‘Dead Letter Office: White Glove Sale’ is an auction lot display from an intended future. The displayed valuables are constructed anew and shown with letters and items collected in Atelier Céladon’s first temporary Dead Letter Office housed at SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art, sewn into mousseline cotton chains. Canada Post forwards its dead letters—due scrambled addresses and no return sender—to Undeliverable Mail Offices in Mississauga, Ontario, or North Sydney, Nova Scotia. Domestic dead letters are destroyed, while international ones are returned to the country of origin. Objects are often auctioned, and these auctions become robust sites for things that have deviated from formal communication networks.

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