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Reflections on Transparency
Benjamin de Boer and Sophia Oppel
TPW is delighted to present a new commission by Benjamin de Boer and Sophia Oppel.
Reflections on Transparency is an examination of the transparent barriers that have become ubiquitous in sites of retail in light of COVID-19. Born of an interest in hostile architecture, public space and landscapes that elicit particular behaviours, this investigation meditates on the intersections between the politics of hygiene and disaster capitalism.
Benjamin and Sophia’s project will be posted on TPW’s Instagram from October 8 – 10, 2020.
Biographies
Benjamin de Boer (b. 1995, Attawandaron, ON) is a writer, researcher, and bookseller living in Tkaronto. They received their Honours BA in Philosophy and Archaeology from the University of Toronto in 2018. Benjamin can be found studying the melancholy poetics of our earth lyric and exploring their openness to improvisation within a practice of group enunciation. Favouring sympedagogic situations, Benjamin currently co-directs Hearth, an arts space founded alongside Rowan Lynch, Sameen Mahboubi, and Philip Leonard Ocampo.
Sophia Oppel (b. 1995) is an arts practitioner and researcher born and based in Tkaronto. Oppel’s work examines interfaces and infrastructures as sites of power, and their influences on embodied experience. Oppel received her BFA from OCAD University and is currently a co-director of Bunker 2 Gallery, and a Master of Visual Studies candidate at the University of Toronto. Oppel has exhibited locally and internationally.
Reflections on Transparency is presented in the context of MOVEMENTS. As its title suggests, this online and site-specific program presents several projects by artists whose work references diverse definitions, experiences and enactments of movements. Bringing together a range of practices, MOVEMENTS reflects on both the intimate scale of the body as it shifts through time and space, within transient gestures and encounters, and organized actions that provoke vital, unsettling change.
MOVEMENTS is made possible with support from Partners in Art
Image Credit
Photographs from Benjamin de Boer and Sophia Oppel
Reflections on Transparency
Benjamin de Boer and Sophia Oppel
TPW is delighted to present a new commission by Benjamin de Boer and Sophia Oppel.
Reflections on Transparency is an examination of the transparent barriers that have become ubiquitous in sites of retail in light of COVID-19. Born of an interest in hostile architecture, public space and landscapes that elicit particular behaviours, this investigation meditates on the intersections between the politics of hygiene and disaster capitalism.
Benjamin and Sophia’s project will be posted on TPW’s Instagram from October 8 – 10, 2020.
Biographies
Benjamin de Boer (b. 1995, Attawandaron, ON) is a writer, researcher, and bookseller living in Tkaronto. They received their Honours BA in Philosophy and Archaeology from the University of Toronto in 2018. Benjamin can be found studying the melancholy poetics of our earth lyric and exploring their openness to improvisation within a practice of group enunciation. Favouring sympedagogic situations, Benjamin currently co-directs Hearth, an arts space founded alongside Rowan Lynch, Sameen Mahboubi, and Philip Leonard Ocampo.
Sophia Oppel (b. 1995) is an arts practitioner and researcher born and based in Tkaronto. Oppel’s work examines interfaces and infrastructures as sites of power, and their influences on embodied experience. Oppel received her BFA from OCAD University and is currently a co-director of Bunker 2 Gallery, and a Master of Visual Studies candidate at the University of Toronto. Oppel has exhibited locally and internationally.
Reflections on Transparency is presented in the context of MOVEMENTS. As its title suggests, this online and site-specific program presents several projects by artists whose work references diverse definitions, experiences and enactments of movements. Bringing together a range of practices, MOVEMENTS reflects on both the intimate scale of the body as it shifts through time and space, within transient gestures and encounters, and organized actions that provoke vital, unsettling change.
MOVEMENTS is made possible with support from Partners in Art
Image Credit
Photographs from Benjamin de Boer and Sophia Oppel
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Image: Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill, Jeneen Frei Njootli, Chandra Melting Tallow, and Tania Willard, installation documentation of Coney Island Baby at Gallery TPW, 2018
Mandate
Gallery TPW is a leading artist-run centre dedicated to exhibiting underrepresented artistic and curatorial practices that push the boundaries of lens-based work.
Vision
We Champion Artist-Led Advocacy
We believe there is a real and sustained need to fight for the rights of artists, to protect creative freedoms and to draw attention to longstanding inequalities.
We Disrupt Systemic Barriers
We are committed to creating an anti-oppressive environment and working with historically underrepresented artists and curators.
We Lead On Critical Issues
The global and local issues that most urgently need our attention are conversations that will always find a home at Gallery TPW.
We Embrace Change
We are flexible by design, supporting programmatic and institutional plasticity.
We Experiment Fearlessly
We take risks, we embrace failure and we provide artists with an opportunity to test out groundbreaking ideas. The image is an open-ended starting point for the artists we collaborate with to embark on cross-disciplinary explorations.
We Are A Good Neighbour
We strive to build authentic and grassroots relationships with those who need us most to better serve the local arts community.
Staff
Noa Bronstein
Executive Director
noa @ gallerytpw.ca
Annie Wong
Curator of Programming and Public Engagement
annie @ gallerytpw.ca
Heather Rigg
Curatorial Resident
heather @ gallerytpw.ca
History
Since its formation in 1977, Gallery TPW (originally Toronto Photographers Workshop) has evolved alongside changes in the production, distribution, and perception of photography, film, and video. Our diverse roster of exhibitions, screenings, performances, commissioned writing, and public programs expands awareness of the vital role that images play in contemporary culture.
Gallery TPW began its program of continuous exhibitions in 1980. In 1990, the TPW Acquisitions Committee was formed, which today exists as the TPW Collection at the Ryerson Image Centre. Through several locations and across over forty years, Gallery TPW has launched the careers of significant Canadian artists and has developed a national reputation and international community through collaboration with fellow artist-run centres, public galleries, educational institutions, and festivals.
From 2012 - 2014, we ran TPW R&D, a flexible storefront space for artistic performance and educational experiments with spectator experience and the development of critical visual literacy. Briefly stepping away from structured exhibition models refreshed our understanding of how to support artists, reconfiguring the idea of research as a creative process to be shared with and in multiple publics.
Since opening our new home in April 2015, we have integrated the insights from TPW R&D into more structured exhibition models. Our diverse program now encompasses exhibitions; theatrical-, sound-, and movement-based performances; constructed social events; and lectures, discussions, and reading groups.
Gallery TPW has always supported new, generative, and exploratory art practices. Today, we want to help audiences understand how art accrues meaning and to better understand how an institution’s choices influence that meaning. This commitment to audience engagement, self-reflexive inquiry, and transparency unites Gallery TPW’s efforts and distinguishes us from our peers.