Tapestries 48” x 48”. These images of water are rendered as a woven tapestries by a computer controlled Jacquard loom. Can you really ‘see’ waves on water? Their constant motion means you can’t take it all in.
A still image is a paradoxical illusion, you can see both more AND less than in the live experience.
"Geographies," said the geographer, "are the books which, of all books, are most concerned with matters of consequence. They never become old-fashioned. It is very rarely that a mountain changes its position. It is very rarely that an ocean empties itself of its waters. We write of eternal things." - from ‘Le Petit Prince’ by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
12w
This wall was built to keep people in. A window opening has been bricked up to prevent escape. Today only fragments of the barrier remain; you can walk around the ends.
It’s the wall that surrounds CAMH here in Toronto. Centre for Addiction and Mental Health is the current name for what once was the Toronto Lunatic Asylum. The wall once completely surrounded the property, but now only a few fragmentary sections remain.
‘Bricks in the Wall’ digital composite
Remember ‘Snakes and Ladders’? A board game where a snake tail could undo much of your progress and a ladder might give you a big boost? You never know what will happen until you roll the dice. I think we’re in this game now! The second wave is upon us, when we thought we had done so well.
‘Snakes and Ladders’ - digital composite
‘Up and Over’ This place is full of ghosts. The patients (inmates?) were forced to build the walls that would enclose them. Brick by brick, they stood on ladders working to block out the sky.
‘Up and Over’ - digital composite
This mural took a long time to design, plan build and install. Here are some images of the process.
I sarted with a photo of water. This was actually taken in Toronto Harbour in an area known as the Eastern Gap which is one of the two enterances to Toronto’s inner harbour. I then abstracte this image into a set of curves based on the light and dark patterns in the water. These shapes were then cut in plywood and laminated together to creat a low relief effect. The piece was made in a series of panels. I created a hanging system so that we cut firs mount a grid of wooden rails on the wall and then hand the work similar to installing kitchen cabinets!
Dark Walls: broken up by streetlights and passing cars,
a thinning canopy of trees chase shadows that slip into darkness.
‘Dark Walls’ - digital composite Edition of 5. Dimenisons can be customized.
‘Dark Walls’ - detail
‘Dark Walls’ - detail
‘Dark Walls’ - detail
Twister Story. We’re looking out over the lake. Dark storm clouds have moved in. Under the heaviest clouds a couple of twisters are reaching down. They hit the water and pull up massive waterspouts. I suddenly realize they are headed our way. We turn to run, but all the buildings are inaccessible . Doors and windows are bricked up. Everywhere we turn there are only blind alleys and dead ends. Brick walls everywhere and the terrible roar behind us.
‘Twister’ Digital Composite - Editon of 5
‘Twister’ Detail
‘Twister’ Detail
Originally published in ARTORONTO.CA
Waking up, there’s a fleeting moment when the dream world is receding but still vivid: the moment just before logic is re-asserted and the internal monologue of wakefulness fully engages. Graham Gillmore’s recent paintings remind me of that peculiar half-conscious state of mind. A state of confusion but also of unlimited potential. As in an evanescing dream, the shapes and text fragments in Gillmore’s paintings invite interpretation and rebuff it at the same time. They remain enigmatic; evocative and elusive.
On first impression, the show is hedonistically colourful. As good as the catalogue photos are, they cannot capture the layered translucence and gloss of these surfaces. The colour, composition and paint handling alone would make for a beautiful show. But Gillmore is not content to leave us with pleasant, anodyne pictures. He makes things much more complicated.
Installation view of Graham Gillmore, The End of Eloquence
Gilmore’s use of text is the confounding ingredient here. Or rather it’s the text in combination with the painterly surfaces. The work won’t slot easily into any particular category. We know how to respond to conceptual, text-based work. We also know how to look at abstract art. But Gilmore does not fit neatly into either of these boxes. This is what makes the show perplexing – and engaging.
The painting Babe recounts the history of its making; how the image was built from diaphanous membranes of colour. Gillmore uses oil paint in combination with commercial varnishes to create translucent glazes which he brushes and pours across the surface. The bright blue and green areas are windows in the red glaze that expose these initial, brighter layers behind. We can read the action that resulted in the artwork.
Another trace of action is the incised word ‘Babe,’ in the lower right corner. This word is more prominent than it appears in the photo as it’s been carved into the surface with a power tool. The text is in a half cursive, half printed handwriting. The little comma after the word tells us that it’s the beginning of a message – but one we won’t get to see.
Graham Gillmore, Babe (A Love Letter), 2020, oil on panel, 54” x 48” x 2”
Absurdistan is a painting where the text is more prominent. It’s comprised of two attached panels with bright stripes of colour. On the left panel, the stripes are vertical and on right they tilt away at a slight angle. While wet, the paint has been disturbed to create ghostly organic shapes. Into the bright, slick surfaces, letters have been carved. It’s a rag-tag collection, a mixture of upper and lower cases in various sizes. It could be read as ABSURdISTAn but also A SU I B Rd STANn. To me the painting suggests that in the face of absurdity, you can still find beauty, and humour.
Graham Gillmore, Absurdistan, 2020 diptych, oil on panel, 60” x 80” x 3”
I was surprised to see that the dark areas apparent in the strokes of the letters are not paint, but holes where the router tool has cut all the way through the surface of the panel. Gillmore uses a synthetic plastic material to paint on. It is impervious to his paints and solvents and because it is bright white all the way through, his router marks automatically look bright and clean.
Graham Gillmore, Absurdistan, detail
The End of Eloquence is a tall, vertical painting. A dark glaze covers much of the surface but leaves open areas to brighter layers behind. I find myself interpreting imagery in this piece: rainbows and a cloud. Or are we looking through dark curtains to a brighter space? A cup with overflowing foam? None of these visual interpretations stick for long. The visual elements of light, dark and modeling invite interpretation but never resolve into anything definite.
The text that has been inscribed appears in three different styles. The scrolled ‘The End’ looks like the closing scene of an old movie. The ‘OF’ is simple and minimal while the ‘ELOQUENCE’ word looks like printed handwriting. It’s as though three different voices are speaking.
Graham Gillmore The End of Eloquence, 2020 oil on panel, 72” x 48” x 2”
The End of Eloquence is also the title of the exhibition. Eloquence is the clear and persuasive use of language. Eloquence is the logical expression of a particular point of view. So, what would the end of this mean? Ambiguity? Confusion? Irrationality? I think the End of Eloquence provides a glimpse back into the dream world, unfettered by the limitations of waking logic, an escape from workaday pedantic thinking.
General Hardware Contemporary have extensive photographic documentation of the show at their website, but to really get the full impact of these paintings, it is well worth a visit in person.
Installation view of Graham Gillmore, The End of Eloquence
Mikael Sandblom
Photo credit: LF Documentation or @lfdocumentation
*Exhibition information: Graham Gillmore, The End of Eloquence, September 17 – November 17, 2020, General Hardware Contemporary, Front Gallery, 1520 Queen Street West, Toronto. Gallery hours: Wed – Sat, 12 – 6 pm.
Today I installed my wall relief mural ‘Eastern Gap’ over at DuEast, a new condo building. It’s 10’ x 6’ piece in twelve panels. Thank you Daniels Corporation and Glennie Cruz for the opportunity and thank you Artstall for the installation work!
‘Eastern Gap’ refers to one of the harbour entrances in Toronto that connects the inner harbour to Lake Ontario. The artwork is based on a photograph of waves taken at this location. It’s an abstracted relief sculpture. The light and dark areas in the photograph have been used to generate curved geometry. Light areas are higher and dark ones are lower.
Thin gaps cut through the structure in a regular grid which contrasts with the sinewy curves of the water geometry. The gaps could be interpreted as a map or city grid overlaying the contours of a landscape.
‘A Brave New World’ A curated exhibition both online and with some works on view at Gallery 1313, 1313 Queen Street West Toronto, ON. September 30 until OCtober 25.
‘A Brave New World’ is group show at Gallery 1313 that asks artists to think about how the pandemic has affected the society and how the future will be different. The title is based on Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ a novel about a future society that seems to have figured out how to keep everyone happy, but as we learn, at the cost of their freedom and fundamental humanity.
I’ve got two pieces in the show:
“Full Fathom Five“ 2020, Digital Composite, 18″ x 18″
‘Full Fathom Five’ is a digital composite print. There’s a passage in the Tempest that describes a body sunk deep under water. Rather than decay, it has undergone a ‘sea-change’ into something ‘rich and strange’.
All of society is going through a transformation now. We won’t know what the result will be until well after the pandemic, but we can hope that many things will change for the better.
“Superman“ 2020, Digital Composite, 18″ x 18″
Pride goes before the fall. The pandemic and climate change will teach us humility. If humans are to survive, it will be by getting along with each other, and the natural world, not by trying to dominate. Hubris is our most dangerous trait.
Pride goes before the fall. The pandemic and climate change will teach us humility. If humans are to survive, it will be by getting along with each other, and the natural world, not by trying to dominate. Hubris is our most dangerous trait.
The figure is John Graves Simcoe, a Brit who named many of the towns and counties here in southern Ontario after friends of his. You can see through him now. His power is dissolving. The colourful text is the RNA sequence of COVID-19 - maybe it’s a solvent; an agent of change?
How would you like to own a piece of art that was on the front of the Entertainment and Books section of the Toronto Star? Just sign up to my newsletter for your chance to win!
You can read the article where this work appeared here
If you are already a subscriber, you are automatically included in the draw. If not, sign up today!
I’ve made a random pick from my newsletter subscriber list and the lucky winner of the artwork below is Charlene Wilcock from Calgary, Alberta. Congratulations Charlene!
‘Empires Collapse’ Digital Composite Printed mounted to Plexiglas. 12” x 8”, 2020
Charlene asked me to write a bit about the inspiration for this piece - so here goes!
I don’t intend my work to have just one specific meaning. It follows more of a dream-logic approach whereby it allows for many different interpretations. So what it means to a viewer is up to them to decide.
My work is ‘open to interpretation’, but I can tell you what was going through my mind when I put this piece together. My artwork has been affected a great deal by the pandemic. It was cool and meditative before, and became dark and nightmarish early in the pandemic. Recently, the work has taken an optimistic turn - there’s hope that we’ll build a better, kinder world once this is over.
The stress of the pandemic has exposed deep fault-lines in our society; brought many problems to the surface. We have a chance to re-imagine and re-build a better society: kinder and less materialistic. There’s optimism in the crisis; light gets in through the cracks!
In the background, there is a half-demolished building. The exterior walls have been taken down so you can see the insides. The dots and pattern lines are from 18th century paintings of aristocrats – people who commissioned paintings of themselves to establish and project power. But in this case, they are dissolving – you can see them and also see through them.
I see the bright colour layers as optimistic. The fruit suggests renewal and the drawing of the hand could represent our work – hopefully building a better world.
What I enjoy in this piece is how your eye keeps moving and you can never see just a single image. You see the different parts and then have to refocus to see the other elements. It always keeps changing!
I am so thrilled to be featured in the Toronto Star today! Front page of the entertainment & books section. I am happy to see all the publicity our Gallery 1313 shows have received. We did them out of necessity - but they have turned into an innovation that has worked out better than we ever hoped!
Full Fathom Five - digital composite - 2020
This is at least the third piece titled ‘Full Fathom Five’ that I’ve made over the last couple of years. An idea I keep returning to, it’s based on this piece of text from Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’:
Full fathom five thy father lies.
Of his bones are coral made.
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell
The idea of impermanence versus continuity is what engages me. The body has sunk more than thirty feet down. In the dark depths, it has become completely transformed. The constituent parts: eyes, bones, etc. are gone and yet the form of the body remains: transmuted through a sea-change.
Full Fathom Five 2020 - detail view
The lucky winner of our July Giveaway was Cindy Smith Harr from Nashville Tennessee. Congratulations Cindy!
Clocks and Clouds 21 12” x 12” Mixed Media on Aluminum, 2016
This month I’ll be giving away a small version of a new piece. It’s called ‘Empires Collapse’ and it’s a digital composite work printed and face mounted behind Plexiglas.
‘Empires Collapse’ Digital Composite Printed mounted to Plexiglas. 12” x 8”, 2020
My work has been affected a great deal by the pandemic. It was cool and meditative before, and became dark and nightmarish early in the pandemic. Recently, the work has taken an optimistic turn - there’s hope that we’ll build a better, kinder world once this is over.
The stress of the pandemic has exposed deep fault-lines in our society; brought many problems to the surface. We have a chance to re-imagine and re-build a better society: kinder and less materialistic. There’s optimism in the crisis; light gets in through the cracks! My latest work reflects this sentiment: seeing through older systems to new possibilities. The good side of impermanence.
To be included in the draw, just make sure you are signed up for my newsletter!
I am on the board at Gallery 1313, an artist run center in Toronto. Typically, Gallery 1313 runs a fast rotation of two week shows in its main gallery and two smaller galleries. When Covid hit, we had to shut the place down. Lights-out completely. We have now carefully started to re-open. But in the meantime, while the physical space was shuttered, we put on several ‘Virtual’ group shows.
Our First Virtual Portrait Show - followed by Portraits II and Portraits III
We put a call out to artists and our director, Phil Anderson curated the submission. We got hundreds, from all around the world! We had to put on two more shows just to deal with the volume. Take a look at here:
This then led to a couple of more shows: one by IATSE, the union of movie and television workers and one on the theme of coming back home:
These shows have been very popular. We’ve had press in The Globe and Mail, ArToronto and the Toronto Star! It’s been a long time since we had so much publicity in such a short time - and our doors were never even open!
The Toronto Star, June 7, 2020
Looking back on my work over the past couple of months, I can see my state of mind changing and evolving during the pandemic. Last fall and early in the year, in the ‘before-time’, my work was cool and meditative.
And then in mid-March, the lock-down began. Kids stayed home from school, businesses shut down, and we became obsessed with the news: infection curves, the ‘r’ value, and terrible stories from Italy and elsewhere. I had strange, vivid nightmares which inspired new and darker work:
After a while the dreams and nightmares subsided, but life was different. I had the strange sensation that the world was on the verge of dissolving. That things were not really solid; that at any moment my surrounds might melt away into smoke:
The stress of the pandemic has exposed deep fault-lines in our society; brought our problems to the surface. We have a chance to re-imagine and re-build a better society: kinder and less materialistic. There’s optimism in the crisis; light gets in through the cracks! My latest work reflects this sentiment: seeing through older systems to new possibilities. The good side of impermanence:
