By popular demand, a second reception is being held Tuesday, September 13 from 6-9pm. This reception is open to the public.

Please see [...]]]> Thursday, August 18th marked the opening of Grande Italia, featuring the newest series of photographs by Neil Dankoff. This exhibition of vistas of Italy continues at Lonsdale Gallery until October 2, 2011.

By popular demand, a second reception is being held Tuesday, September 13 from 6-9pm. This reception is open to the public.

Please see below for images from the opening reception and installation shots of the exhibition.

In Grande Italia Neil Dankoff turns his lens to Italy in this new series of panoramic photographs of cities, coastal villages and their surrounding landscapes. Dankoff focuses on how cities in Italy adapt to the beauty of their natural surroundings. Capturing the unique relationship [...]]]> August 18 -October 2, 2011
Reception: Thursday, August 18 7-10pm

In Grande Italia Neil Dankoff turns his lens to Italy in this new series of panoramic photographs of cities, coastal villages and their surrounding landscapes. Dankoff focuses on how cities in Italy adapt to the beauty of their natural surroundings. Capturing the unique relationship between city and nature, Dankoff strives to reveal the sublime majesty that is Italy. The compositions are shot with a constant consciousness of how light animates the architecture and landscape. Dankoff’s obsession with light, detail and clarity gives him the ability to capture such beautiful images.

Similar to Israel, the location of Dankoff’s last series of photos, Italy is also a country known for its strong connection between landscape and populace. Dankoff subcribes to this romantic tradition of landscape photography with a keen interest in locations that have a strong relationship to their history. Dankoff’s photographs of Italy have the ability to evoke nostalgia and to once again capture that unique relationship between a land and its people.

Speaking with Osheen Harruthoonyan about his photography process is like speaking with a child excitedly explaining a detailed fascination with dinosaurs.  Eager to educate you [...]]]> Black Garden by Osheen Harruthoonyan was reviewed in the Toronto Sun blog.  See the article below or go to the Toronto Sun Website to read the original article here.

Speaking with Osheen Harruthoonyan about his photography process is like speaking with a child excitedly explaining a detailed fascination with dinosaurs.  Eager to educate you on how he hand-processes each photo negative in the dark room. Painting, scratching and dabbing the film particles using a variety of chemical solutions and water applications, a process so unique that a film maker took interest and is working on documenting it. When asked if he is scared that someone will use this unique treatment he grinned wildly, saying that ‘no one would be crazy enough to do it’, and then noted that even if anyone did it would be their own interpretation.

We examined his favourite print,Swan, thoroughly. He told me that part of what he liked about the highly-distorted flower was the circular motion created when he used a syringe to draw in hot water from the immersed negative, ultimately displacing the film particles.  Before we finished the interview a spectator complimented the piece saying that he liked how it drew his eye from the center out, making a hand-gesture that swooped from the middle toward the top corner.  At this point, the charming and modest Harruthoonyan gave me a satisfied smile and giggled slightly at how his effect was perceived.

I caught the last leg of his show ‘Black Garden’,his 3rd featured appearance  at the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography exhibit, held at Lonsdale Gallery (410 Spadina Rd). The show consists of 10 gelatin silver prints of photos taken in Armenia and Nagoro-Karabakh, a small country near Armenia.  The display of the show ends tomorrow and will be available for viewing at the gallery after the show.

The Persia born (of Armenian descent), Richmond, B.C. native has lived in Toronto for close to a decade and is nominated as one of Ontario’s 5 emerging artists in the Ontario Premier’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, an award that will be announced on June 9^th. As an artist with skills extending beyond experimental, contemporary photography, he is looking forward to projects involving cinema, photography and large scale international exhibitions.

“Black Garden” [...]]]> Bravo! program Arts & Minds is doing a feature news story on Osheen Harruthoonyan’s solo exhibition at Lonsdale Gallery, “Black Garden”. The feature will be showing on the following dates and times: Saturday, May 21st at 6:30am and 4:00pm, Sunday, May 22nd at 7:00am and 6:00pm and Wednesday, May 25th at 8:00pm.

“Black Garden” by Osheen Harruthoonyan is a feature exhibition for the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival. The exhibition is showing on the main level of Lonsdale Gallery until June 5, 2011.

To mark the final day of the workshops, a gala and presentation was held at Gallery 44: Centre for Contemporary Photography. Each student from the practical-based [...]]]> Closing Gala & Display of APPS Student Work, process discussion with Bill Schwab
at Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography
Thursday, May 12 from 6:30 – 8pm

To mark the final day of the workshops, a gala and presentation was held at Gallery 44: Centre for Contemporary Photography. Each student from the practical-based workshops was invited to present a print or negative that they have prepared during the course of their workshop. This event was a great a networking opportunity for students to meet other like-minded photographers working in alternative processes. The presentation also showed the various applications of processes being taught in this year’s APPS.
Remarks were gien by APPS artist, Bil Scwab, Chad Wolfond, director of Lonsdale Gallery and soJin Chun, representative of Gallery 44.

Steve Sherman has photographed the landscape with large film cameras for over twenty-five years. Sherman’s most recent work introduces the human element to the urban landscape, focusing on segments of the everyday [...]]]> APPS: Solo Exhibition & Artist’s Talk
Steve Sherman www.steve-sherman.com
918 Bathurst Centre at 918 Bathurst Street
Wednesday, May 11 6:30-8pm

Steve Sherman has photographed the landscape with large film cameras for over twenty-five years. Sherman’s most recent work introduces the human element to the urban landscape, focusing on segments of the everyday banal. As part of his solo exhibition at the 918 Bathurst Centre, Steve Sherman gave an Artist’s Talk and hosted a reception open to the public.

Excerpt from article:

“• Osheen Harruthoonyan, “Black Garden,” Lonsdale Gallery, May 5:
Harruthoonyan’s images are wildly manipulated but completely hand-made. Nothing digital here: Using old-school darkroom techniques, the photographer compresses foreground and background, [...]]]> Murray Whyte mentioned Osheen Harruthoonyan’s exhibition, Black Garden, among his selection of show to see during the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival.

Excerpt from article:

“• Osheen Harruthoonyan, “Black Garden,” Lonsdale Gallery, May 5:
Harruthoonyan’s images are wildly manipulated but completely hand-made. Nothing digital here: Using old-school darkroom techniques, the photographer compresses foreground and background, creating dark, provocative dreamscapes that slip more than occasional into nightmare.”

To Read Whyte’s full list, see today’s Toronto Star newspaper, or read the article here: Contact Photography Festival Returns

Avian at Lonsdale Gallery
Until Feb. 20, 410 Spadina Rd, Toronto; www.lonsdalegallery.com

When I mentioned to a friend that I had seen Avian, a new group show about birds at the Lonsdale Gallery, he let loose with several dozen reasons why he dislikes birds. I [...]]]> From Saturday’s Globe and Mail
Published Saturday, February 5, 2011

Avian at Lonsdale Gallery
Until Feb. 20, 410 Spadina Rd, Toronto; www.lonsdalegallery.com

When I mentioned to a friend that I had seen Avian, a new group show about birds at the Lonsdale Gallery, he let loose with several dozen reasons why he dislikes birds. I was baffled. Unlike, say, horses, with their colossal, bone-crushing builds and sharp hooves, most birds are small, timid, and often come in comforting colours. Some people have weird reactions to animals.

Avian is a deceptively simple show, one devoid of peacock hues or flashy displays of pillowy plumage. Thus it requires concentration to fully appreciate, because, let’s face it, everybody knows what a bird looks like. It’s the conveyance, the ways in which the bird sculptures and images are fabricated, that soars here, not the actual depictions, which tend to favour common birds over exotic Tweetys.

To wit, Julie Oakes’s dazzling flock of Murano glass sparrows, hand-blown in Italy to her specifications, hover over the gallery like a vast pearly chandelier. Captured in various moments of flight, from full wingspan swoops to wings-to-the-side dives, the sparrows are simultaneously weightless and pendulous, fragile and crystalline hard.

Avian’s curator, Stanzie Tooth, told me that Oakes is currently having many more birds fabricated, and plans to show them at the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery, in Waterloo, Ont. During that exhibition, one bird a day will be allowed to drop and smash on the gallery floor. So see Oakes’s sun catchers now, before it’s too late.

Amanda McCavour’s “thread drawings” (her term) of birds combine the compact toughness of thick upholstery embroidery with a lace-like transparency and ballpoint-doodle freshness.

McCavour constructs her sculptures by sewing an image onto a water-soluble material, layering her threads heavily in some spots, to create strong outlines, and letting other parts remain almost vacant, connected via a single thread. When she is done, she simply immerses the thread and secret material in water until the supporting concoction dissolves, leaving only the “drawing” behind.

Like Oakes, McCavour is exploring the dual reality of birds, animals that are designed to defy gravity, and yet are tough as nails (or talons) – animals we put in dainty cages to better admire their chipper songs and pretty colours, genetic traits left over from when they were ravenous dinosaurs. What better materials to capture this marvellous conflation than brittle but heavy glass and airy but binding thread?

An added bonus: Along with her show-stopping glass works, Oakes offers a series of beautiful and creepy, bone-white ceramic sculptures of birds. Many of the birds face the viewer full-frontal with their bellies and legs contorted and arched; poses that can be read, depending on how you interpret the birds’ facial expressions, as depicting the animals in mid flight, in rigor mortis, or, pardon my anthropomorphizing, in a state of sexual arousal.
Like I said, some people have weird reactions to animals.

Avian explores the concept of bird as icon. Icon of flight, nesting, migration, fragility and independence. Every culture holds the bird in a place of mysticism. We anthropomorphize birds in an attempt to [...]]]> Avian
Featured Artists: Joan Kaufman, Amanda McCavour, Julie Oakes, Peggy Taylor Reid
Exhibition Dates: January 16 – February 20, 2011