News at the IMC

Summer exhibitions and events at the Ryerson Image Centre

The Ryerson Image Centre’s (RIC) first summer exhibitions since opening in September 2012 address themes of the city and immigration.

Gabor Szilasi: The Eloquence of the Everyday
June 19 – August 25, 2013
Public Opening: June 19, 2013, 7:00 p.m.
Organized by the Muse?e d’art de Joliette and the National Gallery of Canada
Guest Curator: David Harris
Main Gallery, Ryerson Image Centre

Gabor Szilasi said, “I am not interested in the past or the future: I am interested in the present. Through the photographic image, I can directly record the signs of the past and the future as they appear in this moment.” Gabor Szilasi: The Eloquence of the Everyday presents the photography of Gabor Szilasi over five decades, through his work in Hungary, rural Quebec, and Montreal. Within each section, architectural, town and city views mingle with portraits to reveal Szilasi’s belief in the centrality of community. The exhibition includes early images of Hungary in the 1950s, as well as those made since 1980. The photographs of rural Quebec date principally from the 1970s, while those of Montreal span the years from the late 1950s to the present.

A Curator Walk-Through of Gabor Szilasi: The Eloquence of the Everyday, with exhibition curator David Harris, will take place on Wednesday July 17, 2013 at 6:00p.m.

Arthur S. Goss: Works and Days
May 1 – June 2 and June 19 – August 25, 2013
Organized by the Ryerson Image Centre
Presented in collaboration with the City of Toronto Archives
In partnership with the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival
Guest Curators: Blake Fitzpatrick and John Bentley Mays University Gallery, Ryerson Image Centre

Arthur S. Goss: Works and Days presents several multi-image depictions of buildings and sites in the burgeoning city of Toronto. During his long tenure as Toronto’s official photographer (1911-1940), Arthur S. Goss created thousands of images that illustrate in fine detail the Victorian city’s ambitious, but often difficult, re-invention of itself as a modern Canadian metropolis. He has been best known for his eloquent pictures of slums, destitute immigrants, and other dark elements of this historical passage. This exhibition reveals a less widely heralded aspect of Goss’s professional work, but one that occupied his time and creative energy more fully than any other: the routinized production of visual documents for the use of various city departments and agencies.

Curator Walk-Throughs of Arthur S. Goss: Works and Days, with exhibition curators Blake Fitzpatrick and John Bentley Mays, will take place on Wednesday, May 15, 2013, 6:00p.m. and Wednesday August 14, 2013 at 6:00 p.m.

Here and There: Photography and Video Works on Immigration
May 1 – June 2 and June 19 – August 25, 2013
Curator: Dr. Gaelle Morel, Exhibitions Curator, Ryerson Image Centre
Salah J. Bachir New Media Wall, Ryerson Image Centre

Here and There: Photography and Video Works on Immigration spans from the 1950s to today with photographs from the Black Star Collection and photographic, new media and video works by contemporary Canadian artists. This exhibition on the theme of immigration will be the first group show featured on the Salah J. Bachir New Media Wall. The different works deal with issues such as voluntary and hopeful immigration to Canada in the 1950s, refugee shelters in the United States and Canada today, and first generation of immigrants now settled in Canada. Artists include Sara Angelucci, Ruth Kaplan, Shelagh Keeley, Meera Margaret Singh and Andrew Suri.

Ken Woroner: Hardscrabble
June 19 – July 14, 2013
Student Gallery, Ryerson Image Centre

Now known as Golden Valley, Hardscrabble was the name European settlers first gave to the small northern Ontario community upon their arrival in the 1870s. These two names neatly bracket the combination of struggle and promise present in this rural location and its starkly beautiful, economically challenging terrain. Straddling a divide between subjective concerns and empathetic engagement, the series of photographs taken by Ken Woroner in Hardscrabble blends the personal with the documentary. While disparate elements arc from introspection to wider perspectives, veiled references to intergenerational trauma imbue the work with a somber subtext. Woroner’s images of Golden Valley focus on the struggle to survive – the hardscrabble.

Kieran Dick: Bleigießen [lead casting]
July 24 – August 25, 2013
Student Gallery, Ryerson Image Centre

Kieran Dick: Bleigießen [lead casting] presents an exaggerated moment from a German New Year's Eve tradition of pouring a spoonful of molten lead into cold water. Upon contact, the lead solidifies to form an abstract shape that is used, along with symbolism and imagination, to tell one's fortune for the new year. Containing elements of family tradition, science, technology, minimalism and documentary, the video presents a moment to contemplate the future.

These exhibitions have been financially assisted by the Ontario Cultural Attractions Fund, a program of the Government of Ontario through the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport, administered by the Ontario Cultural Attractions Fund Corporation.