Workshop for Emerging Arts Professionals

Ontario Association of Art Galleries
in collaboration with Blackwood Gallery

--Workshop for Emerging Arts Professionals--

Troublemaking and Troubleshooting:
Exhibition Organization for Emerging Curators
March 20th, 2007, 12:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Multimedia Studio Theatre (MiST), Ground Floor, CCIT Building
University of Toronto at Mississauga
3359 Mississauga Road
Mississauga ON L5L 1C6

Registration fee - University of Toronto students: $40, General: $45
Register at: www.oaag.org/programs/index.html by Friday, March 16, 2007
Email: programs@oaag.org for more information.

Through case studies and presentations by established professionals, the series creates professional development and network opportunities for recently graduated and underemployed emerging arts professionals. Troublemaking and Troubleshooting is a half-day workshop that will introduce the main components of exhibition organization, by identifying the resources, tools and methods of contemporary curatorial practice. Professional visual art curators Rhonda Corvese and Alissa Firth-Eagland will share expertise and provide insight into how to make curatorial projects happen from the ground up.

Rhonda Corvese will address:
- The Artist Curator relationship
- Negotiation and communication
- Production as a curatorial model
- Research strategies
- Networking: local, national, and international

Alissa Firth-Eagland will address:
- Pitching proposals and Calls For Submissions
- The Artist/Curator model
- Funding opportunities, partnerships and grants
- Making contact with galleries, artist-run centres and alternative venues
- Cultivating impact: promotion, publication, documentation

Getting There:
Participants are responsible for their own travel to and from Mississauga. Tickets for the intercampus shuttle bus can be purchased by non-students at Hart House, University of Toronto, 7 Hart House Circle. Shuttle schedule available at www.utm.utoronto.ca/shuttle.

The program has been generously supported by the Ontario Trillium Foundation and Canadian Heritage.

Rhonda Corvese is a Toronto-based independent curator and an Assistant Curator at the Art Gallery of York University (AGYU). Her curatorial projects often evolve in response to situations, where she strives to challenge the role of the curator, artist and audience in the presentation and engagement of contemporary art. She is fundamentally interested in exploring the dialogue between curator and artist in the creation of new work that exists beyond the gallery space and in the examination of contemporary Canadian art within an international framework. Recent projects include: The Idea of North, a sound art group exhibition in Norway, Iceland and Halifax (2005/2006); Iris Haeussler’s site-specific installation The Legacy of Joseph Wagenbach (2006); a special project Berlin booth Berlin Constructions: Emergent Practices Today at the Toronto International Art Fair (2004); and the Berlin/Toronto Gallery Exchange (2004/2005). Three upcoming Toronto projects include: British artist Shona Illingworth’s The Watch Man, a video and sound installation at InterAccess (April 6-May 12, 2007) as part of Images Festival 2007; 25sec.-Toronto a video portrait of cultural mediators by Berlin-based German artists Angelika Middendorf and Andreas Schimanski at Prefix ICA (June/July 2007); and an AGYU project “in there”, a one-night performance event on April 4/2007 in the Accolade East Building (AGYU), a series of process-based collaborative projects between Diane Borsato, Daniel Cockburn, Kristan Horton and the dance, music and theatre students at York University.

Toronto-based curator Alissa Firth-Eagland publishes, produces events, curates exhibitions and programs time-based works. Her multi-faceted approach sparks projects across a range of communities, institutions, and disciplines: single-evening performances, video screenings, multiple location shows; interventions in public spaces; and gallery exhibitions. She has coordinated projects for organizations like the TRANZ ßà TECH 2003 Toronto International Media Biennial, Cultural Human Resources Canada, the Banff Centre, the Toronto Alternative Arts Fair International 2004, YYZ Artists Outlet and MUU Gallery (Helsinki, Finland). Through her practice, she champions creative experimentation with media. In 2005 she commissioned video artists who use their own presence in their works to perform live for the first time with her project, Feats, might. In 2006 she was awarded an Ontario Arts Council Chalmers Fellowship for independent research into print as a distinct forum for contemporary art. The inaugural issue of her curatorial publication project ALMANAC exhibited in Halifax, Nova Scotia; Melbourne, Australia; Stockholm, Sweden; Amsterdam, the Netherlands; and in Cambridge, UK. In summer 2006 she was curator-in-residence at the Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art where she researched Nordic artists creating works that defy traditional artistic categories. In 2008 she will be presenting the first solo exhibition of Canadian video artist Gareth Long’s work at Oakville Galleries. Currently she’s commissioning new works for Sleepwalker Projects, her experimental window gallery on Queen St West in Toronto.