Waking Gates – Don Phillips Scholarship Exhibition

Artist Talk Time: 6:00 - 7:00 PM

Each year, Open Studio awards two, yearlong residencies to artists of merit. The Don Phillips Scholarship is awarded to a graduating student who has just completed an undergraduate art program with a printmaking major at an accredited Canadian institution and who will not be returning to full-time studies.

Recipients are provided with rent-free access to Open Studio facilities for a period of one year, materials allowance, professional development assistance, and tuition-free access to Open Studio’s education program. This exhibition is a result of this intensive work period. An artist’s talk accompanies the exhibitions.

Eli Howey, 2015-16 Don Phillips Scholar, is a printmaker, illustrator and designer currently based in Toronto. Their art practice uses the anomalies within traditional analogue printmaking techniques to create work in fine art, publication and textile-based projects.

The Waking Gates series Howey has been working on during the Don Phillips Scholarship depicts experiences relying on narrative sequences to communicate the full intent of the work. Making use of coding and panelled dissection of space, the viewer is encouraged to reference their understanding of text-and-image based work, such as comics, instructional diagrams and infographics. By distorting proportion and colour, abstraction places emphasis on the emotional context of each situation. While resembling “slice of life” scenarios, the interaction between the characters and their environments promote subjective exploration through the intentional composing. The characters in these narratives seek out alternative ways of interacting with a space that recognizes a lack of variance in a settler-colonized landscape.

You can access the exhibition brochure here.

Exhibition Brochure: Download Brochure Here