MERCER

PAST EVENT

fORUM: Jonas Staal

Main Hall 1 Spadina Crescent John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design University of Toronto Propaganda Art in the 21st Century | Lecture and Canadian Book Launch Fake news, alternative facts and the post-truth era: these terms are presented to us as part of a rise of elected authoritarian and alt-right regimes the world over. […]

PAST EXHIBITION

SPACE: Erdem Taşdelen | Vicissitudes: Act Two

7 December 2019 - 22 February 2020
Opening Reception 6 December 2019 7pm

Two Women I know it’s late afternoon when—as if realizing within a dream that I’ve been dreaming—I notice the moody murmurs of a saxophone at my window. The player is known to appear now and then in front of the Italian restaurant just down and across the street, well-loved for its homemade burrata, richly liquored […]

PAST EXHIBITION

Laure Prouvost & Jonas Staal: Obscure Union

7 December 2019 - 22 February 2020
Opening Reception 6 December 2019 7pm

Be Realistic, Demand the Obscure! We invite you to attend the inauguration of the Obscure Union by the Aube’s cure Parle Ment: a gathering of octopus, plants, signs and breasts as well as support structures of different materiality. Once founded by artists in 1979, Mercer Union will now welcome a gathering of other-than-human comme comrades on a ride that seek new modes at odd of unionization against radical call precarity In no rarity, neoliberal libre of extractivism […]

PAST EXHIBITION

Native Art Department International: Bureau of Aesthetics at KADIST San Francisco

12 October 2019 - 25 January 2020
Opening Reception 12 October 2019 4pm

Mercer Union is the inaugural guest of the Art-Space Residency and Exhibition at KADIST San Francisco. Mercer Union has conceived the residency as an incubator to consider the approach to institutions working small-scale. Together, both organizations take up a series of questions around collaboration with Native Art Department International (NADI), a collaborative project by Toronto-based artists […]

PAST EVENT

SESSION: Sameer Farooq

1st Meeting for Nondualistic Thinking Artist Sameer Farooq invites participants to turn inward to evoke the personal atlas of images, objects and texts held by our internal reservoirs. Drawing from somatic body inquiry and contemplative practice, a series of exercises will centre the meeting around the question: What does my body want to make? More a silent town […]

PAST EVENT

In Studio: Michèle Pearson Clarke

We regret to inform our Members that In Studio with Michèle Pearson Clarke has been postponed. Rescheduled event information will be shared via our website and social media in due time. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank all those who expressed interest in the event. Join Mercer Union for a studio visit with Michèle Pearson Clarke. […]

PAST EVENT

fORUM: Bambitchell in conversation with Richy Carey

Bambitchell join composer Richy Carey (Glasgow) for a conversation engaging their most recent collaboration in Bugs and Beasts Before the Law (2019) to discuss questions of subjectivity and multiplicity, the site of the gallery and that of the cinema, and the complex process of collectively addressing pertinent histories and geographies through sound and moving image practices. […]

PAST EVENT

40 Forward: Stellar Living 2019

AUCTION NIGHT | Doors at 6PM | Auction at 7PM LOCATION | Mercer Union | 1286 Bloor St. West Tickets $100 | join the waitlist at https://stellarliving.eventbrite.ca/ Mercer Union’s signature fundraising auction returns in celebration of our 40th Anniversary. Proceeds from the event contribute essential funds to support exhibitions and programs at Mercer Union, and help maintain our […]

PAST EXHIBITION

SPACE: Erdem Taşdelen | Vicissitudes

14 September 2019 - 2 November 2019
Opening Reception 13 September 2019 7pm

Vicissitudes: Act One Mercer Union will present a series of commissioned images by Toronto-based artist Erdem Taşdelen. The project is presented within the context of SPACE, Mercer Union’s public-facing billboard platform that invites one artist to produce a yearlong series of images. SPACE prioritizes projects that consider site-specificity and takes up questions of visibility as […]

PAST EXHIBITION

Bambitchell: Bugs and Beasts Before the Law

14 September 2019 - 2 November 2019
Opening Reception 13 September 2019 7pm

Working under the moniker Bambitchell since 2009, the research-based practice of artists Sharlene Bamboat and Alexis Kyle Mitchell re-imagines nationalist histories through the clever recycling of official state documents and institutional archives to produce moving image, installation and performance works. The centerpiece and eponymous work of this exhibition, is a newly commissioned experimental film installation […]

PAST EVENT

ONE HOUR MIXER: Nadia Belerique

  Please join us on Friday 9 August for a one-hour mix by Nadia Belerique and a drink on the house with good company. This is your last chance to experience our current exhibition, Jennifer Rose Sciarrino: from root to lip, before it closes on 10 August, and an opportunity to order our 2018-2019 Member Edition by Lorna […]

PAST EVENT

CANCELLED – SESSION: Natasha Myers

Due to unforeseen circumstances, our upcoming Session with Natasha Myers is cancelled. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank all those who expressed interest in the event. Jennifer Rose Sciarrino: from root to lip continues until 10 August 2019. We hope to see you at the gallery soon. For more information about exhibitions and upcoming […]

PAST EXHIBITION

Jennifer Rose Sciarrino: from root to lip

22 June 2019 - 10 August 2019
Opening Reception 21 June 2019 7pm

Making kin is perhaps the hardest and most urgent part.[1] Mercer Union is delighted to present a solo exhibition by Toronto-based artist Jennifer Rose Sciarrino entitled from root to lip opening on Friday 21 June 2019. from root to lip presents Jennifer Rose Sciarrino’s formal inquiry into the notions of entanglement and techno-organic hybridity that have long been tended […]

PAST EVENT

SESSION: EMILIA-AMALIA invite Erica Stocking

SESSION is a project modelling itself after an incubator that invites cultural practitioners to engage with questions that emerge out of a given exhibition. EMILIA-AMALIA | in residence invites artist Erica Stocking to host a participatory reading of her play The Artist’s Studio is Her Bedroom (2019)—a choreographed statement on autobiographical art making. The work presents a singular female […]

PAST EVENT

SESSION: EMILIA-AMALIA invite Moyra Davey

SESSION is a project modelling itself after an incubator that invites cultural practitioners to engage with questions that emerge out of a given exhibition. EMILIA-AMALIA | in residence invites artist and writer Moyra Davey to offer a reading from her new monograph accompanied by a screening of notable excerpts from her film work. Moyra Davey is an artist based in […]

PAST EVENT

SESSION: EMILIA-AMALIA invite Samara Livingchimes

SESSION is a project modelling itself after an incubator that invites cultural practitioners to engage with questions that emerge out of a given exhibition. EMILIA-AMALIA | in residence invites Therapeutic Sound Practitioner Samara Livingchimes to lead a meditative sound bath for a small group of participants in the spirit of Pauline Oliveros’ principle of deep listening. Samara […]

PAST EVENT

SESSION: EMILIA-AMALIA invite Amy Wong

SESSION is a project modelling itself after an incubator that invites cultural practitioners to engage with questions that emerge out of a given exhibition. EMILIA-AMALIA | in residence invites artist Amy Wong to lead a performative lecture focusing on mother-work as interwoven with social, communal and activist work. Wong explores a range of inspirations and traditions: the popularity […]

PAST EXHIBITION

EMILIA-AMALIA | in residence

13 April 2019 - 1 June 2019
Opening Reception 25 April 2019 7pm

EMILIA-AMALIA lead a response in four parts under Mercer Union’s ongoing series SESSION for the exhibition Beatrice Gibson: Plural Dreams of Social Life. Through four public programs, EMILIA-AMALIA invite artists and practitioners to consider Gibson’s propositions for collective authorship, feminist histories, and the maternal as an essential point of collision between the self and the external world. […]

PAST EXHIBITION

SPACE: Joi T. Arcand

13 April 2019 - 10 August 2019
Opening Reception 12 April 2019 7pm

the flavour of change the land has changed no longer do the grandmothers pick from the wild breast of our mother we no longer move with the season with the herds since Treaty we have had to learn to find value in what the land gives us from this space where we have been placed […]

PAST EXHIBITION

Beatrice Gibson: Plural Dreams of Social Life

13 April 2019 - 1 June 2019
Opening Reception 12 April 2019 7pm

Mercer Union is delighted to present the first exhibition in North America by Franco-British filmmaker Beatrice Gibson. Plural Dreams of Social Life takes its title from Bernadette Mayer’s The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters (1994) written during and in response to the gestation of her third pregnancy. Mayer’s book is comprised of […]

PAST EVENT

ONE HOUR MIXER: Rajni Perera

Please join us on Friday 22 March for a one-hour mix by Rajni Perera and a drink on the house with good company. This is your last chance to experience our current exhibition Medicine for a Nightmare (they called, we responded) before it closes on 23 March, and an opportunity to order our 2018-2019 Member Edition by Lorna Mills. Not yet a member? To have […]

PAST EVENT

SESSION: Ricky Varghese

SESSION is a project modelling itself after an incubator that invites cultural practitioners to engage with questions that emerge out of a given exhibition. Philosopher Rebecca Comay has suggested that “violence likes to occult itself – the apparatus of terror requires this obfuscation – and one of the most systematic mechanisms of ‘disappearance’ is that the traces of […]

PAST EVENT

fORUM: Michael Nijhawan

Joining with centuries-old customs of care and community building, Nep Sidhu’s Medicine for a Nightmare (they called, we responded) charts Sikh resilience through memorialization practices. Michael Nijhawan’s presentation will consider how cultural identities can be fostered and amended through artistic practice, proposing a connection between the work of artists, the writing of history and self-understanding. What […]

PAST EVENT

In Studio: Erdem Taşdelen

Join Mercer Union for a studio visit with Erdem Taşdelen. Free for Sustaining Members and above; open to other members and select non-members for $15. Refreshments will be served. Meeting location will be announced to confirmed attendees closer to the date of the studio visit. RSVP to York Lethbridge by email or by calling 416.536.1519 Erdem Taşdelen is […]

PAST EXHIBITION

Nep Sidhu: Medicine for a Nightmare (they called, we responded)

Curated by cheyanne turions

9 February 2019 - 23 March 2019
Opening Reception 8 February 2019 7pm

 11 October 2019 |  On 9 February 2019, Mercer Union opened a solo exhibition of new work by Toronto-based artist Nep Sidhu, curated by cheyanne turions. We supported the exhibition and led a partnership with our colleagues at Esker Foundation, Calgary, and later a touring agreement with SFU Galleries, Vancouver. The exhibition in Toronto was among […]