This fall's visual arts exhibitions promise to expand your horizons and awaken your soul

September 12, 2005—This fall, Harbourfront Centre in collaboration with the 26^th Annual International Festival of Authors, presents nine impressive, diverse visual arts exhibitions. Exhibitions range from an elaborate forest of totems constructed of plastic found objects, works by more than 100 graphic novelists, authors and illustrators, and the telling of a story through the use of imagery, iconography and codes. The public opening reception for the exhibitions takes place on Friday, September 16, from 6 to 9 p.m. in York Quay Centre. Admission to the reception and the exhibitions is free. Exhibitions run from September 17 to November 6, unless otherwise noted, at Harbourfront Centre, 235 Queens Quay West. For information on these exhibitions, the public can call 416-973-4000 or visit www.harbourfrontcentre.com.

Exhibition hours for Imaged Text: Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday, noon to 6 p.m.; Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, noon till 8 p.m.; closed Monday except holiday Mondays, noon to 6 p.m. Regular hours for Cohabitate: Monday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Sundays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Regular hours for all other exhibitions: Monday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Imaged Text features works by more than one hundred graphic novelists, authors and illustrators including Nick Bantock, Charles Burns, Dan Clowes, Julie Ducet, Umberto Eco, Will Eisener, Åsa Grennvall, Barbara Hodgson, Seth, Dave Sim, Art Spiegelman, Jay Stephens, Osamu Tezuka, Adrian Tomine and Chris Ware. The exhibition includes models, figures and video to illustrate the influence of the graphic novel within its own genre and other media. Imaged Text, along with featured readings and special events at the International Festival of Authors, seeks to illuminate the rapidly developing relationship between text and image in contemporary literary publishing.

RE: Forestation is an exhibition of new sculpture by Toronto artist Michael Davey. With his elaborate forest of totems constructed of plastic found objects, Davey supplants the lumber industry’s singular reliance on reforestation as the antidote to modern-day clear cutting methods.

draws similar conclusions is the first formal installation by Team Macho, a collection of five old young men who prefer to appreciate each other from afar.

The Needle and the Damage Done is an exhibition of record works by artists including carved, etched, scratched, stepped on, drilled and otherwise altered vinyl records. The exhibition features Milan Knizak, Christian Marclay, Roger Miller (Mission of Burma), Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth), Boyd Rice and others. Curated by Dave Dyment.

To accompany The Needle and the Damage Done, curator Dave Dyment presents Noise, Silence, Etc., a slide show presentation documenting the history of the vinyl record as a medium for artists. Using the exhibition artists as a starting point, the lecture includes work by visual artists, audio artists, DJs and rock stars i.e. The Beatles and Sonic Youth. The presentation takes place on Wednesday, October 19, from 6 to 8 p.m., in York Quay Gallery.

Naglaa Walker: On Physics is an exhibition by English photographer Naglaa Walker, using diptychs that juxtapose blackboard images of chalked equations with carefully staged photographic images. For example, human emotional behaviour such as kissing or arguing is paired with a graphic physical law—the viewer is invited to make connections between the two. A third element—the title—draws the two images together in way that reflects on art, human experience and scientific theory.

TELL is an exploration of narrative craft that reflects the changes and conditions of our time. The themes comment on social status and record and mediate environmental, cultural and political undercurrents within society. These craft artists tell a story through the use of imagery, iconography and codes real and imagined. Artists include Pattie Chalmers, Marina Dempster, Heather Goodchild, Sandra Noble Goss, Chung-lm Kim, Gordana Olujic, Amir Sheikhvand and Robert Windrum.

 Cohabitate is a collaborative exhibition of new works by Craft Studio residents, glass artist Julie Gibb and textile artist Arounna Khounnoraj. In this exhibit, the work of one artist cohabitates with that of the other. By combining glass and fiber, the work becomes transformative creating a dialogue of new shapes and forms.

RECAP is a continuing exhibition that remaps Canada, creating a mosaic tapestry of close to 5,000 beer caps. In this work Janet Morton attempts to establish a language of beer crowns. She has chosen specific caps for their graphics, their colours, and their symbolic meanings to correspond with various aspects of Canadian geography, topography or cultural identity stereotypes. In the playful poetics of beer, it is logical that dry and wheat beers belong in the Prairies, that ice beer speaks of the Arctic, and that above the 49th parallel one can find seven different beer versions of "50".

Continuing exhibition at the Premiere Dance Theatre through October 2 is Tara Cooper: Speaking of Lulu M. Elliot. From October 7 to December 31, the featured exhibition is Katy McCormick: Le Désert de Retz: The Choreography of Ruin, an exhibition of photographs examining the relationship between French formal gardens and dance plotting. Access to exhibitions with paid ticketed performance to the Premiere Dance Theatre.

The 26^th Annual International Festival of Authors, October 19 to 29, features readings, interviews, lectures and roundtable discussions by more than 70 of the world’s best writers including Candace Bushnell, Jonathan Safran Foer, John Irving, Elizabeth Kostova, Zadie Smith, Minette Walters and Chris Ware. Please visit www.readings.org for full festival details.

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