 Hi, art lovers! | | |  | Installation view of June Clark's exhibition, Witness, at the Power Plant gallery in Toronto. (LF Documentation) | | | Way back in January, Q aired this charming interview with June Clark, an artist whose work is now appearing at three major institutions in Toronto: the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, MOCA and the AGO. Known for her work in photography, sculpture and collage, June was born in Harlem, N.Y., in 1941 and came to Canada in the late 1960s, settling in Toronto with her husband so he could avoid the Vietnam draft. She wasn’t an artist when she arrived here, she told Tom Power on Q, but to make sense of being so far from home, she picked up a camera. “Art chose me — I didn’t choose art,” she said on the program. And after decades of embracing the “unpredictability” of life and creative work, June marked a career first last week when she was named a finalist for the prestigious Sobey Art Award.
Joining her on the 2024 shortlist are five artists from distinct areas across Canada. (A new regional category, Circumpolar, was added this year.) The nominees are Taqralik Partridge (whom you might remember from the CBC Arts series How to Lose Everything); Mathieu Léger; Judy Chartrand; Rhayne Vermette; and Nico Williams, whose work is on view at the National Gallery of Canada right now as part of the travelling group exhibition Radical Stitch.
Come October, the NGC will open a show that highlights work from all of this year’s Sobey nominees. The winner of the $100,000 prize will be announced Nov. 9. | | | | | And because we promised you eye candy ... | | | | |  | Sierra Barber | | This delicious beaded painting is the work of Sierra Barber, an MFA candidate at Concordia University in Montreal. | | | | |  | Laïla Mestari | | Choufi by Laïla Mestari. (Laïla has a solo exhibition opening at Patel Brown Toronto June 20.) | | | | |  | Andrea Chartrand | | Would you believe this is a photograph? A photograph about photography, no less? It’s by Andrea Chartrand, whose work is on view in Vancouver as part of the Capture Photography Festival (info here). | | | | |  | Graham Wiebe | | Snowflake #32 by Winnipeg-born artist Graham Wiebe. | | | | |  | Larry Madrigal | | And finally, some Father’s Day vibes courtesy of Larry Madrigal. (This painting from 2022 is titled Descendants.) | | | | |  | The National/CBC Archives | | | | | St. Anne’s Anglican Church featured murals by the Group of Seven as well as sculptures by Florence Wyle and Frances Loring. | | | | |  | Toni Hafkenscheid | | | | | The Big Hat, a whimsical solo exhibition from Tony Romano, is on now at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa, Ont. | | | | |  | Red Eye Media | | | | | | | This new play by a Degrassi star doubles as a dance party, and it’s happening inside a vacant office building. | | |  | Vridhhi Chaudhry | | Never mind Instagram, maybe you saw this piece while taking the subway. Vridhhi’s one of the artists featured in Spaced, an exhibition that’s appearing in select Toronto transit stations. We got the story behind the show. | | | | | Share this newsletter | | or subscribe if this was
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I’m Leah Collins, senior writer at CBC Arts. Until next time! | | | | | |
