Last Night at the Chestnut
October 20th to November 25th, 2010
Opening Reception :
Wednesday, Oct 20 at 5PM with an artist talk at 6PM – Free
Music by Slate Pacific, Play Guitar, and Ten Kens at 8PM – $6 admission
Immony Men’s installation Last Night at the Chestnut is the result of a two week residency. The artist’s goal was to create an exhibition that reflects the history of the building Gallery Connexion is housed in. Using research from the provincial archives including transcribed interviews from factory workers, books on the Chestnut Canoe Factory, and a compilation of memories and stories of local community members including David Brewer, Donnie Fraser, Brad Cross, Janice Wright Cheney, Eric Hill, and Montrealers Greg Webber and Tanya Duffy. Immony will present a social and historical perspective of the building using memories, stories, facts, images, and objects in an intriguing installation.
Immony is a Canadian visual artist currently based in Montreal. He is a recent University of Windsor MFA graduate, and completed his BFA at Concordia University majoring in interdisciplinary studies.
Immony’s focus is on working between the lines of fact and fiction. Labour intensity is a strong element in his installation art practice. “My primary goal is to touch on everyday personal issues that viewers can relate with. My interests lie in the intimate relationships that exist within different social cycles. The separation between experiment and experience in my work is paper-thin.”
Immony is currently working with Maegan Broadhurst on “Can You Hear the City Whispering?” an exploration of Winnipeg’s cityscape. “We’ve decided to include the general public into our research process, by asking them to locate their favourite and disliked place within the city. The information collected has given us the opportunity to visit common and personal geographic locations. Our primary goal was to discover and share these sites with the community.” They will be explaining how they’ve used the city as a research platform and its inhabitants as collaborators at the “My city’s still breathing” symposium.
“Taking Care of Business,” a previous body of work by Immony involving the painstaking installation of post-it notes on gallery walls, has been shown in the following artist-run centers over the last 3 years: Khyber Center of the Arts in Halifax, NS; Eastern Edge in St. John’s, NL; Warren G. Flowers and the Vav Gallery in Montreal, QC; 809 Gallery in Calgary, AB; and Artspace in Peterborough, ON.
From its inception in 1984, Gallery Connexion, a not-for-profit organization with charitable status, has supported politically and socially engaged art through a range of programming initiatives such as exhibitions, performances, special projects, and workshops. Gallery Connexion promotes contemporary Canadian and international artists, emerging and established, from diverse cultural backgrounds.
For more information, contact Immony Men at immonymen@gmail.com
