Fern Bayer served as the Chief Curator of the Government of Ontario Art Collection between 1977 and 1995, during which time she was responsible for the research and promotion of the collection, its exhibition, and the acquisition of new artworks. In this position she also served as International Cultural Promotion Consultant (1987-1995), responsible for the international promotion of Ontario artists, primarily in Japan. More recently, Bayer has worked as an independent curator and consultant, completing a number of curatorial and research projects, including the processing of the General Idea fonds. Bayer has also been a guest lecturer at Project (Dublin), the National College of Art & Design (Dublin), the Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art (Dublin), and the Centre d’art contemporain de Basse-Normandie (Caen). Prior to her appointment with the Government of Ontario, Bayer completed a Masters of Arts at the Department of History of Art of the University of Toronto, Toronto (1975); a Diploma of Museum Science and Restoration of Works of Art at the Università Internationale dell’ Arte, Florence (1972); and a Bachelor of Arts, in Anthropology and Art History, at McGill University, Montreal (1971). Bayer has received numerous awards, including the Independent Critics and Curators Grant from the Canada Council for the Arts (2004 and 2006) for the publication of General Idea Editions, 1967-1995; the 2004 Melva J. Dwyer Award for Excellence in Canadian Art Publishing from the Art Libraries Society of North America (2004); the National Gallery of Canada Research Fellowship (2003-2004); the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal for the publication of The Ontario Collection (2002); and the 1998 Best Historical Research & Writing Award from the Ontario Association of Art Galleries for texts in The Search for the Spirit: General Idea 1968-1975 (1998). Bayer currently sits on the Board of Directors of Art Metropole, a not-for profit artist-run centre in Toronto, which publishes and distributes artists’ book works, audio and video works, and multiples. She is authoring a catalogue raisonné of the works of General Idea.

Yam Lau was born in Hong Kong and is currently based in Toronto, Canada. He received his Master of Fine Arts in painting from the University of Alberta. His creative work explores new expressions and qualities of space, time and image. His most recent works combine video and computer-generated animation to re-create familiar spaces and activities in varied dimensionalities and perspectives. Also, Lau publishes regularly on art and design and is active in the local art community. Certain aspects of his art practice, such as using his car as an on-going mobile project space, are designed to solicit community participation.

Lau has exhibited widely across Canada, United States and Europe. He is a recipient of numerous awards from the arts councils in Canada. Currently Lau is a Professor of painting at York University, Toronto. In addition to his teaching and research, Lau also serves on the board and advisory committee on two public galleries. His work is represented by Leo Kamen Gallery in Toronto and Yuanfen New Media Art Space in Beijing.

Peggy Gale has published extensively on time-based works by contemporary artists in numerous magazines and exhibition catalogues, the first being “Videoscape” at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1974. Having edited three anthologies in Art Metropole’s “By Artists” series, she prepared “Video re/View: The (best) Source for Critical Writings on Canadian Artists’ Video” with Lisa Steele in 1996, and among many other titles was editor of “Artists Talk 1969-1977”, from The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax (2004). A selection of essays on the role of narrative in artists’ video, “Videotexts”, was published in 1995 by Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

A long-time independent curator, she was co-curator for “Archival Dialogues: Reading the Black Star Collection”, inaugurating the Ryerson Image Centre (Toronto, 2012) and most recently, was co-curator for the Biennale de Montréal 2014, titled “L’avenir (looking forward)”, at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and elsewhere.

She received the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2006.

Gendai was founded as a not-for-profit public art gallery in 2000 to promote excellence in contemporary art and design with an emphasis on work made by Canadian and international artists of Japanese ancestry (and beyond that, by the broader East Asian community.) In 2009 the mandate of Gendai was shifted to cultivate dialogue through contemporary art, focusing on experimental collaborations with contemporary artists and organizations for the production and dissemination of artwork from East Asian perspectives. Gendai’s original location was in Toronto’s Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre (JCCC) in the suburb of Don Mills.

In September 2011, Gendai embarked on a new stage in its development by opening a satellite space at Bloor and Lansdowne in downtown Toronto, referred to as the Gendai workstation. With this new space, Gendai d its activities and programming into two parts: focusing on experimental site-specific projects rooted in everyday life and fostering research into sustainable models for small, not for profit arts organizations that, like the Gendai, operate from a basis of ethnic identity. With this extension, Gendai posits itself as an alternative public research entity with an audience that consists of local publics in the various locations Gendai works with, Toronto’s downtown art community, and practioners and researchers from different disciplines that share similar concerns. Our year at the Gendai Workstation saw both our most dynamic, critical and intense year of programming and growth of a community and network of partner organizations, while at the same time being our most financially strenuous year, causing us to have to close its doors after one year of operations.

Gendai is currently carrying out its activities from a mobile landscape, reorganizing into a lightweight, modular and flexible structure to navigate this transition period. We’re operating from a desk at the Centre for Social Innovation (Annex) in Toronto and operates with only one part time staff member who works with a Programming Committee and Board of Directors made up of active and dedicated practitioners in the fields of cultural production. Gendai is currently undergoing fundraising activities to bring the organization operating funding for a more well-funded, sustainable and thriving future.

As a whole, Gendai remainscommitted to its original mandate of creating multi-disciplinary programming encompassing contemporary art, design, performing arts, literature and architecture. Through the work of exemplary cultural producers, Gendai continues to present frameworks within which historical and cross-cultural connections are made to enhance the public understanding of its physical, cultural, social and political environment. In line with Gendai’s recent directions, Gendai has been expanding the curatorial emphasis beyond current Japanese Contemporary art to embrace broader geographic and cultural perspectives. By collaborating with different communities and multidisciplinary organizations, Gendai experiments with and produces mechanisms to engage audiences in diverse ways. To be an intellectual resource and provide thought leadership, Gendai seeks to research and address issues relevant not only to the racial constituency of East Asians living in Canada, but also aims to become a globally-conscious gallery that provides a broader context for re-examining the notion of cultural diversity today.