Release party and opening: Thursday, May 12, 2016, 7–10pm
Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art
401 Richmond Street West, Suite 124
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5V 3A8
Hours: Wednesday–Saturday noon–5pm
Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art is pleased to announce the release of the 33rd issue of Prefix Photo magazine. On the subject “Performing Labour,” editor Jayne Wilkinson asks “Is it possible to think of every task performed, every job undertaken, as a performance of the self? And does individual or collective labour form the presentation of one’s unique identity within the social networks that demand it? …The production of artistic work within a public forum offers a unique engagement with the politics of labour, often manifesting as performance as much as protest. Another way to address this is to question the inherent precariousness of a labour of love—a phrase often used to describe art practices—in which the process of identify formation is most clearly tied to the tasks of labour whose demands are continually performed.”
Contributors to the magazine include the following:
Erin Silver and Sarah E. K. Smith write on the work of Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge in two essays that engage with various aspects of their practice—as artists, activists and community organizers. For more than 40 years, Condé and Beveridge’s work has been a hallmark of Canadian activist art. Unique among their peers, they have developed a recognizable aesthetic that combines documentary tropes with staged performances to make visible issues of gender equity, social justice, environmental destruction and labour rights.
Scott McLeod examines the work of Canadian artist Rodney Graham, an artist who excels in a variety of media but for whom photography constitutes the core of his diverse practice. Specifically, McLeod offers an interpretive analysis of several of his recent large-scale light boxes in order to examine the representation of labour in his work. In so doing, he demonstrates the ways in which Graham, with his typical wry humour, questions our inherent assumptions about what constitutes productive or meaningful labour and consistently conveys what it means to be a working artist.
Vanessa Fleet focuses on Martha Cooper‘s photographs of hip-hop culture in New York in the 1980s, a time when B-boying and graffiti-writing presented subversive triumphs of vitality and wit, acting counter to the social and economic circumstances that predisposed its practitioners to anonymity. As a result, the circulating image economy brought subjects into relation with new spectators, expanding the field in which practitioners of hip-hop’s subcultures operated. Fleet concludes by questioning the politics and parameters of this expansion, as well as the embrace of hip-hop aesthetics in popular culture and “high” art.
In the literary feature, Michael Crummey personifies a newly recruited soldier of the Newfoundland Regiment during the commencement of World War I. He poetically illustrates the soldier’s experience taking a photograph with his platoon, in a photography studio, as he expresses the perils of the camera capturing fleeting lives.
Other contributors include Rouzbeh Akhbari and Felix Kalmenson, Danny Custodio, Oded Hirsch, Mika Rottenberg, Santiago Sierra and Jorge Galindo, with book reviews by Rosemary Donegan, Michael DiRisio, Andrea Fatona and Amanda Rataj.
On the occasion of the release of the magazine, Prefix ICA is proud to present Jack of All Trades, an exhibition featuring the work of Rodney Graham andcurated by Scott McLeod. The release party for the magazine and the opening reception for the exhibition will be held on Thursday, May 12, from 7 to 10pm at Prefix ICA, located at 401 Richmond Street West, Suite 124, Toronto. Admission is free. The exhibition continues until July 30. Presented as a primary exhibition of the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival, the exhibition is supported by the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts.
Prefix Photo is published by Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art, Inc., a registered charitable organization that fosters the appreciation and understanding of contemporary photographic, media and digital arts. Prefix Photo is available by subscription and in fine bookstores and newsstands in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Spain, Greece, Switzerland, Ireland, Singapore and Hong Kong.
Prefix Photo acknowledges its Supporting Sponsor Steam Whistle Brewing, its Official Catering Sponsor à la Carte Kitchen and its Official Hotel Sponsor Le Germain Hotel Toronto for their assistance with the release party held for Prefix Photo 33 in Toronto.
Prefix Photo gratefully acknowledges the assistance of its staff, volunteers and patrons, as well as the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. The Ontario Arts Council is an agency of the Government of Ontario.
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