Blood, Sweat, Tears
Isabelle and Sophie Lynch
The exhibition Blood, Sweat, Tears is co-curated by Isabelle and Sophie Lynch, winners of the 2016 Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators. Blood, Sweat, Tears raises urgent, enduring questions about labour and the body. How is value created and extracted from labouring bodies? How can we re-think notions of work and productivity? How can bodies move and interact with space and materials? Through the work of contemporary artists working in drawing, video, performance, and installation, this exhibition focuses on the human body’s relationship to work and the subjective dimensions of productive and unproductive labour.
A marble rolls down a ramp and nudges a toy car. The car races down a tube, crashing into a chain of dominoes. The final domino falls and turns on a fan that extinguishes a candle. This is an example of a Rube Goldberg machine, a complex contraption that executes simple tasks in an overly complicated manner.
Kids (8 and up) will build a Rube Goldberg machine at AGG. The activity will be an exercise in working together and will engage with the themes of the Blood, Sweat and Tears exhibition, including notions of productivity and alternative ways of doing and making. All materials provided. Limited space. Register by contacting info@artgalleryofguelph.ca. Parents are encouraged to participate.
Image detail: Kerry Downey and Joanna Seitz, still from To Do List, 2012-14 (Single channel video; time: 17:26, featuring Jen Rosenblit)
Presented by the Art Gallery of Guelph, the Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators is made possible through the support of the Centre Wellington Community Foundation’s Middlebrook Social Innovation Fund, The Guelph Community Foundation: Musagetes Fund, and through private donations.
Curators
Isabelle Lynch
Sophie Lynch
Artists
Kerry Downey (Ft. Lauderdale, FL)
Joanna Seitz (Brooklyn, NY)
Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens (Montreal/Durham-Sud, QC)
Virginia Lee Montgomery (New York, NY/Chester, VT)
Adrienne Spier (Guelph, ON)
View More Exhibitions
exhibition
January 18.2024 / April 21.2024
The Unsettlements is a series of projects initiated by JD Pluecker in 2018 that delve into sites of memory, silence, and ancestry, particularly in Houston and across what is now called Texas
exhibition
Tim Pitsiulak
January 18.2024 / May 12.2024
Tim Pitsiulak’s work offers profound insight into not just life in the North, but the ever-evolving impacts of colonization, particularly the effects of climate change and environmental exploitation.
exhibition
December 23.2023 / April 21.2024
Drawing from the Art Gallery of Guelph’s permanent collection, this exhibition explores the use of abstraction by artists in their depictions of the natural world.
exhibition
September 21.2023 / December 30.2023
This group exhibition that explores various rituals related to the everyday and the natural environment through art by those who hold cultural ties to the Caribbean.
exhibition
September 14.2023 / December 17.2023
The Third Scenario examines the act of art making through hyphenated conditions and what it means to create while being Asian and living in Canada.
exhibition
September 14.2023 / December 17.2023
This exhibition of works by Manitoulin Island-based artist Carl Beam probes the interstices of history, politics, science, materiality, and Indigeneity.
exhibition
September 14.2023 / April 21.2024
Seeing the Land, Feeling the Sea presents landscapes by Canadian artist Takao Tanabe from AGG’s permanent collection.
exhibition
July 14.2023 / September 3.2023
This exhibition highlights Grande’s distinct visual lexicon culled from her experiences as well as cultural sources – symbolic references that coalesce in surreal, painterly compositions.