Tag: Game City

Canada
http://craigleonard.xyz/

Craig Leonard is an artist and teacher at NSCAD University. He was Canada Council artist-in-residence at Acme studios in London UK in 2012-13 and at MASS MoCA in 2018. His solo exhibitions include Central Art Garage (Ottawa), Double Happiness Projects (Toronto), Anna Leonowens Gallery (Halifax), Mercer Union and A Space (Toronto), WWTWO (Montreal), Eyelevel Gallery (Halifax) AXE NÉO7 (Hull), Raid Projects (Los Angeles), Acme Project Space (London), Artcite (Windsor), Modern Fuel (Kingston), Artspace (Peterborough) and Eyelevel (Halifax). and Anarch (London, UK). He has participated in numerous group exhibitions nationally and internationally.

Publications include: Ironwork for Dirac House, Canadian Art; The Halifax Conference (New Documents, Los Angeles); Non-Trivial Characters (Double Happiness Projects); Stretching Exercises (with Michael Fernandes) as well audio projects.

GAME CITY consists of a series of urban experiments across Yorkville, Kensington Market and Queen Street by Jessica Thompson, Paige Gratland, Charlene Lau, SR Palm, and the Grey Sweatsuit Revolution, culminating with performances by Charlie Black, 640 480 Video Collective, and the Pauls and the Band of Outsiders.

These artists disrupt conventions by disorienting visual, spatial and auditory perceptions. Expect a range of approaches, from the subtle (Thompson, Gratland, Grey Sweatsuit Revolution), to the theatrical (Lau, SR Palm Black, 640 480 and the Pauls). The audience is encouraged to be as nomadic as the projects themselves as they move through the city. Various times and locations are indicated on the schedule, allowing audience members to take in individual projects, or spend their whole day with the works as they link up with each other.

SCHEDULE

Jessica Thompson
11:00am | Village of Yorkville Park, Cumberland Street
1:00pm | outside Bedford Academy, 36 Prince Arthur Avenue
3:00pm | outside Kensington Tavern, 40 Kensington Avenue (Kensington Market)

Paige Gratland
en route

Charlene Lau
12:00pm | outside Bedford Academy, 36 Prince Arthur Avenue
3:00pm | outside Kensington Tavern, 40 Kensington Avenue (in Kensington Market)
5:00pm | outside Cameron House, 408 Queen Street West

SR Palm
2:00pm | corner of Augusta Avenue and Niagara Avenue (start of procession)
3:00pm | corner of Augusta Avenue and Baldwin Avenue

Charlie Black
7:00pm | CineCycle, 129 Spadina Avenue

The Grey Sweatsuit Revolution
daytime (general sightings)
8:00pm | CineCycle, 129 Spadina Avenue

Pauls and the Band of Outsiders & 640 480 (VSL projections)
9:00pm  | CineCycle, 129 Spadina Avenue

Initiated in 2003 by Tanya Mars, FADO’s Emerging Artists series was created to provide a professional platform for emerging artists to develop and present a performance piece, working within a curatorial framework. FADO’s intention with this series was to nurture new work and ideas, provide direction and mentorship, and showcase the work of the city’s newest perspectives in performance art.

FADO’s Emerging Artists series was initiated in 2003 by Canada’s own performance art matriarch and educator Tanya Mars, who recognized that the best way to encourage young artists was by offering them a professional presentation opportunity. Her vision was one of mentorship, targeting an interesting mix of new and emerging artists, many of them former students, whom she commissioned to develop new works responding to a thematic context. The first event, curated by Mars, included ambient, conceptual and cabaret-style performance art gestures. This event later developed into FADO’s on-going Emerging Artists series which was designed to highlighting the work of Toronto-based emerging performance artists.

As the series developed, it became clear that this was an opportunity to nurture not only emerging performance artists, but also emerging curators, allowing FADO to encourage new curatorial voices in performance art, and introducing FADO to new communities of artists (and new artists to FADO). The series has continued to develop and change, later including the work of artists not just from Toronto, but regionally as well. This way, the series exposes local audiences to the range of performance work happening in the emerging performance scene across Canada.

The Emerging Artists series was a staple of FADO’s programming year from 2003 to 2014, and was always one of the most popular events in FADO’s performance art calendar.

2014: 11:45 P.M. | curated by Kate Barry
2013: .sight specific. | curated by Francisco-Fernando Granados
2011: Extra-Rational | curated by Gale Allen
2009: Misinformed Informants | curated by Lisa Visser
2008: Vivência Poética | curated by Erika DeFreitas
2007: Enter-gration | curated by Nahed Mansour
2005: Open Airway | curated by Elle McLaughlin
2005: Feats, might | curated by Alissa Firth-Eagland
2004: Home Repair by One Night Only
2004: Game City | curated by Craig Leonard
2003: Gestures | curated by Tanya Mars

In 2024 and 2025, the Emerging Artist series returns! Stay tuned for details.