MERCER

PAST EVENT

SOLID GOLD

Mercer Union again delivers its big gift to small collectors in this year’s SOLID GOLD rendition of the annual member’s show & sale. Nothing but SOLID GOLD quality works, all priced at $149.99. Watch the gold rush when the sale begins. Bar opens 6 PM. Sale begins 8 PM. The earlier you join the line, […]

PAST EVENT

Offsite Screening: Identifications

Identifications, 1970 Saturday 28 November, 8PM Cinecycle, 129 Spadina Avenue Co-presented with Pleasure Dome in conjunction with the exhibition We Interrupt this Program The landmark TV project Identifications was initiated by the German gallerist Gerry Schum, who envisioned television as a new exhibition platform distinct from the art market. Schum announced the project’s aim thus: […]

PAST EXHIBITION

THINGS THAT MEAN THINGS AND THINGS THAT LOOK LIKE THEY MEAN THINGS

Ryan Gander

6 November 2009 - 12 December 2009
Opening Reception 6 November 2009 7pm

Back Gallery: Things That Mean Things And Things That Look Like They Mean Things In this recent video by Ryan Gander, the artist imbeds a work within a work. Key elements in the hall of mirrors include an interview with writer and filmmaker Dan Fox, art students sketching Francis Bacon paintings installed at the Tate […]

PAST EXHIBITION

WE INTERRUPT THIS PROGRAM

Curated by Sarah Robayo Sheridan with Steven Leiber and Ted Purves

6 November 2009 - 12 December 2009
Opening Reception 6 November 2009 8pm

Front Gallery: We Interrupt This Program The artworks grouped in this survey exhibition originally circulated by alternative distribution, appearing through the platform of a magazine ad or TV spot rather than through the formal avenues of gallery or museum display. Many evidence a conceptual tendency, preferring to disseminate ideas over objects and each performs a […]

PAST EVENT

TERROR BINGO! TUESDAY 27 OCTOBER 2009, 7-11PM

TERROR BINGO TUESDAY 27 OCTOBER 7-11PM First Round: 7 – 8:30PM Second Round: 9 – 10:30PM Transylvania Twist dance party follows WANNA PLAY? $15 cover + free bingo kit (one round of bingo, bingo card booklet, dabber, lucky charm, and a beer) WANNA PLAY MORE? $5 extra rounds/booklets Play for spooktacular prizes! MERCER UNION a […]

PAST EVENT

ARTIST TALK: TAKU DAZAI IN CONVERSATION WITH LISE HOSEIN

Saturday 26 September 2009 Artist Talk + Canadian Art Gallery Hop / Canadian Art 25th Anniversary Celebration and Launch Artist Talk 4:30PM Launch 5:30PM–7:30PM At 4:30 PM Mercer Union hosts a free conversation between exhibiting artist Taku Dazai and writer Lise Hosein as part of the Canadian Art Gallery Hop. Following the talk, join us together […]

PAST EXHIBITION

NATURE MORTE

Taku Dazai

11 September 2009 - 24 October 2009
Opening Reception 11 September 2009 7pm

Back Gallery: Nature Morte In this solo exhibition of installation-based works, Taku Dazai employs a taxidermied cast of characters—a rattlesnake, an owl, a mountain goat and a mouse—in order to explore boyhood fascination with animals in battle. Download the exhibition brochure

PAST EXHIBITION

THE CHINATOWN FORAY

Diane Borsato

11 September 2009 - 24 October 2009
Opening Reception 11 September 2009 8pm

Front Gallery THE CHINATOWN FORAY In this exhibition, Diane Borsato will present a new series of public actions and discreet interventions. In works such as The Chinatown Foray (2008), Borsato invited the Mycological Society of Toronto to hold one of their weekly mushroom identification excursions in Markham supermarkets and medicinal shops; and in Italian Lessons […]

PAST EVENT

MERCER MULTIPLES: OFFICIAL IN-GALLERY LAUNCH

Friday 11 September 2009, 7PM Official Launch: MERCER MULTIPLES Mercer Union is pleased to announce the formal launch of our latest series of artist’s multiples by Johanna Billing, Jonathan Monk, Scott Rogers and the release of the audio art CD compilation Mercersound 09. Full listing of titles.

PAST EVENT

MIAS Performance: Pony Da Look / Thursday 27 August 2009, 8PM

Music in Alternative Spaces: Pony Da Look Thursday 27 August 2009, 8PM Mercer Union FREE The Night: The sorcerer reclines in the tender grasses under the forlorn willow tree. It stands strong of heart, rooted deep within the layers of fermenting generations. Upon each lonesome leaf hangs a Magpie’s tear that reflects the moon in […]

PAST EXHIBITION

You Don’t Love Me Yet / Toronto 2009

15 August 2009

Saturday 15 August, 3PM YOU DON’T LOVE ME YET / Toronto, 2009 Toronto-based musicians and artists will perform an afternoon of Johanna Billing’s ongoing project, You Don’t Love Me Yet. Fascinated by the ritualized potential inherent in performing cover versions of pop songs, Billing conceived a concert format based on one song only, to be […]

PAST EVENT

Music in Alternative Spaces: Eric Woodley and Anna Friz

Thursday 30 July, 7 PM Music in Alternative Spaces: Eric Woodley and Anna Friz In this collaboration, Woodley and Friz explore phenomenologies of recording, radio, and electricity, and the materiality of the transmission environment. Resonance becomes palpable in the meeting of historical recorded material and a multi-channel micro-watt radio intervention involving a broadcast to a number […]

PAST EVENT

Free Screening 16 July, 7PM @ Mercer Union: Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell

Special screening in conjunction with the current exhibition This Is How We Walk on the Moon by Johanna Billing. Thursday 16 July, 7 PM Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell, 2008. Directed by Matt Wolf 71 minutes FREE! Wild Combination is director Matt Wolf’s visually absorbing portrait of the ground-breaking avant-garde composer, singer-songwriter, cellist, […]

PAST EVENT

SATURN RETURN

SATURN RETURN: MERCER UNION’S 30th ANNIVERSARY BASH Friday 10 July 2009 Mercer Union celebrates 30 years in orbit On 10 July 2009, Mercer Union turns 30. In astrological terms, a 30-year interval equals the full orbit of Saturn around the sun. This phenomenon⎯known as “Saturn Return”⎯is associated with revising old patterns and moving forward with […]

PAST EXHIBITION

A FUN TIME IS A GREAT TIME

Sarah Gregg Millman

3 July 2009 - 15 August 2009
Opening Reception 3 July 2009 7pm

Front Gallery: A Fun Time Is A Great Time In her first solo exhibition in Toronto, Millman expands on her ongoing, cinema-inspired lexicon of single working girls. Millman’s work portrays a fantasy world inhabited by characters going about daily life⎯where light and airy narratives mask the presence of oppression and anxiety lurking beneath the surface. […]

PAST EXHIBITION

THIS IS HOW WE WALK ON THE MOON

Johanna Billing

3 July 2009 - 15 August 2009
Opening Reception 3 July 2009 8pm

Back Gallery: This Is How We Walk On The Moon In the video This Is How We Walk on the Moon (2007), a group of local musicians learns to sail in the Firth of Forth, off the coast of Edinburgh, Scotland. Set to the 1980s song of the same title by the late experimental musician […]

PAST EVENT

ALVIN LUCIFER

Thursday 21 May 6PM – 12:06AM Performance: Alvin Lucifer by Brian Joseph Davis and Steven Kado In 1977, the same year that punk rock crossed over from a presumed New York underground and gained horrid legitimacy through the medium of the British popular music press, Alvin Lucier created Music on a Long Thin Wire. The […]

PAST EVENT

Music in Alternative Spaces: Matt Smith (Nifty)

Thursday 14 May, 8PM Music in Alternative Spaces: Matt Smith (Nifty) Known as one-third of Les Mouches, Matt Smith has made noise-folk songs that “teeter between cascading abrasion and soothing caress.” Smith’s solo work as Nifty is equally diverse but uses very different elements, pulling from the worlds of African percussion, grimy electro-soul, patchy big […]

PAST EXHIBITION

GOODBYE TO ROMANCE

Katie Bethune-Leamen, Dave Dyment, Lars Laumann, Jimmy Limit, Tony Romano, Alvin Lucifer, Brian Joseph Davis & Steven Kado

Curated by Elaine Gaito

1 May 2009 - 13 June 2009
Opening Reception 1 May 2009 8pm

Goodbye To Romance Popular music is rife with fan-generated legends and myths pertaining to premature exits and mortal excess. Invoking the logic of paranoia, the group exhibition Goodbye to Romance brings together works that harness obsessive musical fandom and highlight the romantic futility of conspiracy theory. Going beyond simple narrative explication, the artists assembled employ […]

PAST EVENT

3D BINGO

3D BINGO WEDNESDAY 22 APRIL 2009 Take a chance at Mercer Union… 3D BINGO 7PM to 10PM Post-bingo fun ‘til late WANNA PLAY? $15 / includes cover + free bingo kit (1 marker, 1 beer, 1 lucky charm, 1 pair 3D glasses) JUST WANNA PARTY? $5 cover / enter at any time Celeb Callers Alison […]

PAST EXHIBITION

MAGNETIC RESONANCE ON ABISSOLOGIC EXPERIMENTS

João Maria Gusmão And Pedro Paiva

6 March 2009 - 18 April 2009
Opening Reception 6 March 2009 7pm

Front Gallery: Magnetic Resonance On Abissologic Experiments Described as “poetic philosophical fiction,” João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva’s 16mm film installations explore pseudoscience through an odd alchemical compound: equal parts early silent cinema, archaeological dig, and late-60s land art. The films are often performative and though suggestive of narrative, ultimately revel in illogical and surprising […]

PAST EXHIBITION

RED SHIFT

Sylvia Matas

6 March 2009 - 18 April 2009
Opening Reception 6 March 2009 8pm

Back Gallery: Red Shift A series of sculptural works (a rope made of dental floss, for example) alongside a grouping of small sun prints, all exploring themes of perception, time and cycles. Sylvia Matas is a visual artist from Winnipeg, Canada. She received her BFA from the University of Manitoba in 2003 and her MFA […]

PAST EVENT

Curators Talk: Eugenio Valdés Figueroa and Marcio Botner

Working at the Intersection of Art and Pedagogy in South America: Reflections from Rio de Janeiro Part of the AGYU curatorial residency with Eugenio Valdés Figueroa and Marcio Botner Sunday 1 February 2009, 2–4PM Presented by The Art Gallery of York University (AGYU), Eugenio Valdés Figueroa, Director of Art Education and Research at Casa Daros […]

PAST EXHIBITION

AMUSICOLOGY

Craig Leonard

9 January 2009 - 14 February 2009
Opening Reception 9 January 2009 7pm

Back Gallery: Amusicology A series of mini-installations, charting art/rock coincidences and convergences through mixed dosages of sculptural inquiry, archival impulse and audio experiment. Subjects of exploration include King Tubby, DNA, Harry Partch, Jimmy Page, the Screamers and more.  

PAST EXHIBITION

STREET POETS & VISIONARIES: SELECTIONS FROM THE UBUWEB COLLECTION

Kenneth Goldsmith

9 January 2009 - 21 February 2009
Opening Reception 9 January 2009 8pm

Front Gallery: Street Poets & Visionaries: Selections From The Ubuweb Collection Talk by UbuWeb founder Kenneth Goldsmith at 7PM preceding the opening reception at 8PM. Street Poets & Visionaries: Selections from the UbuWeb Collection, an exhibition of posters and ephemeral writings from the streets of New York City. In the tradition of Jim Shaw’s “Thrift […]

PAST EVENT

Artist Talk: Kenneth Goldsmith

Please join us Friday 9 January at 7PM for a talk by UbuWeb founder Kenneth Goldsmith. His exhibition Street Poets & Visionaries: Selections from the UbuWeb Collection will be on view at Mercer Union from 9 January–14 February 2009. Kenneth Goldsmith is an American Poet who resides in New York City. He is the founding […]