- EXHIBITION1 – 30 June 2016
Chroma Lives
Erin Alexa Freedman and Lili Huston-HerterichCamrost Felcorp Yorkville Plaza Sales Centre, 21 Avenue Road, Toronto× Install image: from front to back: Tim Jocelyn's dress and jacket, Wanze Song's Seasonless 2016 Collection Install image: Mike Goldby (artist) and helper Graeme Marrs installing Install image: couch by Mike Goldby, coffee table by Brittany MacDougall, stairs by Manden Murphy, mugs by Heather Goodchild & Naomi Yasui Install image: Heather Goodchild's in the morning and in the evening, wool and burlap rug Install image: stairs by Manden Murphy, Avocado Sprouter and Spoon for Return Baby Bird to Nest by Tammy McLennan, Book Stack andJumbo Playing Cards by Roula Partheniou, Spit Pits by Laurie Kang, Untitled Background 2 by Connor Crawford
Chroma Lives is a performative exploration of Toronto’s 1983 exhibition Chromaliving: New Designs for Living by Erin Alexa Freedman and Lili Huston-Herterich, which they are undertaking as part of If I Can’t Dance’s Performance in Residence research programme for Edition VI – Event and Duration (2015–2016).
Chromaliving, curated by the late artist Tim Jocelyn, Andy Fabo, and the figurative painting collective ChromaZone, was staged in a vacant retail space in Toronto’s Bloor Street Colonnade. Featuring 150 artists, the exhibition took the form of a hallucinogenic home décor show, with imaginative room environments parading influential artistic movements and commercial enterprises of the twentieth century. The labyrinth-like setting of domestic room displays deliberately challenged the hierarchies of fine over applied art and design, making gentle parodies of both.
Throughout the month of June, Chroma Lives will remobilize Chromaliving’s formula for theatricalizing domestic space by staging a workspace in the sales centre of the new Yorkville Plaza at 21 Avenue Road—a few blocks away from the Colonnade—filling it with furnishings by contemporary Toronto-based artists and designers. The site will function both as a public exhibition space and as the location where Freedman and Huston-Herterich will conduct recorded interviews with Chromaliving participants, spectators, and critics. Archival documentation of Chromaliving will be collected in conjunction with oral testimonies, allowing subjective histories to determine the course of the data collection. The project will culminate in an online digital archive and publication following the event.
The exhibition features works by: Joshua Brolly, Connor Crawford, Laura Dawe, Mike Goldby, Heather Goodchild, Oliver Husain, Tim Jocelyn, Laurie Kang, Jeremy Laing, Brittany MacDougall, Tammy McClennan, Pasha Moezzi, Manden Murphy, Roula Partheniou, Shakeel Rehemtulla & Dynasty, Wanze Song, Kristian Spreen, and Brad Tinmouth.
The exhibition is open Saturday to Thursday from 12–6 pm, from 1–30 June 2016, and will be punctuated by a series of public events, details of which will be updated weekly here.
- Friday, 3 June (Public Opening)6.30–7.30pm: Artists Collectives and Site-SpecificityArtists’ Talk with ChromaZone members (Andy Fabo, Rae Johnson, Oliver Girling)Friday, 17 June7–9pm: If I Can’t Dance Toronto Reading GroupWith texts by Jon Davies and Tim JocelynFurther details of the reading group can be found here.
The project is generously supported by the Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts and Camrost Felcorp.
- The programme of If I Can't Dance is supported by the Mondriaan Fund, the municipality of Amsterdam, the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, and Ammodo.
