Getting Rid of Ourselves

July 16–October 11, 2014

Opening: Wednesday, July 16, 8–10pm

Onsite [at] OCAD U 
230 Richmond St. W.
Toronto Ont. M5V 1V6
Hours: Tuesday–Friday 11am–7pm,
Saturday noon–6pm

T 416 977 6000, Ext. 2208
[email protected]

www.ocadu.ca/onsite

Curated by Helena Reckitt.
 
Featuring Becky Beasley, Adrian Blackwell, Heath Bunting, Kajsa Dahlberg, Jesse Darling, Claire Fontaine, Goldin+Senneby, Janez Janša, Janez Janša, Janez Janša, Kernel
 
Getting Rid of Ourselves presents artists and artistic collaborations whose work in different ways obscures, delegates, withdraws or complicates the conventional signs of authorship and artistic subjectivity. Works in the exhibition question the link between art and self-expression through tactics of anonymity, shared authorship, appropriated identities, delegated production, and financial speculation. Highlighting how subjectivity is treated as a form of living currency to exploit, market and sell to, the exhibition explores the diffusion and distribution of artistic agency and intellectual property.

Opening talk with Paris-based collective Claire Fontaine
Wednesday, July 16, 6:30pm
presented in partnership with the Consulat général de France à Toronto
Room 190/Auditorium
100 McCaul St.

Claire Fontaine is a Paris-based collective artist, “founded” in 2004. After lifting her name from a popular brand of school notebooks, Claire Fontaine declared herself a “readymade artist.” Her practice interrogates the political impotence and the crisis of singularity that seem to define contemporary art today.

More events at Onsite [at] OCAD U:

Curator’s talk with Helena Reckitt 
Saturday, July 19, 1pm

Helena Reckitt is a critic and curator based in London, U.K. She was Senior Curator of Programmes at the Power Plant in Toronto from 2006 to 2010 and since 2011 has been Senior Lecturer in Curating at Goldsmiths, University of London. Currently Reckitt is co-editing a special issue of the Journal of Curatorial Studies with Jennifer Fisher on Curating and the Affective Turn, and working with art historian Catherine Grant to develop the group exhibition O Sister, O Shadow.

Artists Survival Workshop led by irational.org 
Sunday, July 20, 11am–5pm
Meet at Onsite and head over to the Toronto Islands.
Free but limited to 20 participants. Advance booking is required. To participate and to receive further details, RSVP to [email protected].

In this afternoon workshop, practical woodland and shoreline survival skills will be examined and contrasted with both urban street level and office survival strategies. Participants will explore techniques of sourcing clean water, fire, food, shelter and weapons. The workshop builds on irational’s extensive experience of surviving as an artist on the margins of social and technological surveillance and control.

Let’s Get Lost—a walking/reading group on the dismantling of subjects and spaces 
Hosted by Scapegoat: Architecture/Landscape/Political Economy
Tuesdays, 6–8pm (August 5, August 19, September 2 and 16)
Meet at Onsite Gallery, 230 Richmond St. W.
To participate and receive the readings please email [email protected].

Responding to the proposition that we “get rid of ourselves,” this biweekly walking/reading group explores the spatial construction of subjectivity. Discussions focus around selected articles that highlight the contradictory values of individual freedom and private property underpinning the principle of the autonomous modern subject, as they appear in our contemporary moment of neoliberalism.

Insite exhibition tour with Paulette Phillips, OCAD U faculty, Integrated Media
Wednesday, September 24, 6:30pm

Paulette Phillips is an artist and educator based in Toronto. Currently she is creating an archive of artist portraits using a polygraph, a camera and series of questions that frame the basis of self-representation.

Insite exhibition tour with Jim Drobnick, OCAD U faculty, Liberal Arts & Sciences 
Wednesday, October 1, 6:30pm

Jim Drobnick is a critic, curator and Associate Professor of Contemporary Art and Theory at OCAD U. He has published on the visual arts, performance, the senses and post-media practices, and is the co-editor of the Journal of Curatorial Studies.
Exhibition publication supported by Goldsmiths, University of London, Art Department Research Support Awards.