Life Drawing

Lauchie Reid, Melinda Josie, Marc Bell, Ginette Lapalme & More

Opening Reception:
Thursday, March 26th
From 7 – 10pm

Runs March 6 – May 3, 2009

Narwhal Projects is pleased to announce Life Drawing, a group exhibition of works on paper featuring Ginette Lapalme, Howie Tsui, Lauchie Reid, Lee Hutzulak, Marc Bell, Melinda Josie, Michael Comeau, Selena Wong, and Tara Azzopardi. Life Drawing marks the opening of Magic Pony’s newly expanded gallery space, Narwhal Art Projects. Located at 680 Queen St West, Narwhal will host an internationally geared ambitious program of art exhibitions, publishing projects, lectures, screenings, workshops and special events. Life Drawing and Narwhal premiere Thursday, March 26th from 7-10pm. Selected artists will be in attendance. The exhibition runs until May 3.

Life Drawing comprises a range of aesthetic styles and strategies within highly personal investigations into the vernacular, the diaristic, and the quotidian. Expressive and chimerical visual rhetoric is rendered through the intimate practice of drawing. Lauchie Reid’s semi-autobiographical narrative vignettes capture passing fancies with sharp wit, reflecting upon the world around him to varying degrees of truth. Melinda Josie documents beauty and whimsy in her imaginative, meticulously crafted domestic still life series. Others extract from the unconscious, revealing internal worlds. Selena Wong and Howie Tsui’s lyrical neo-Surrealism melds dreams and nightmares, myth and memory. Psychedelic, stream of consciousness doodling characterizes the interplay of anecdotes, observation and the absurd evident in the work of Ginette Lapalme, Lee Hutzulak, Marc Bell and Michael Comeau; while Tara Azzopardi’s illustrations of local classified ads attempt to familiarize otherwise anonymous lives.

Coinciding with the coming of spring after a long Canadian winter, Life Drawing displays the results of many months of concerted hibernation. Our cold climate becomes an incubator for creativity, and insular environments come to be sources of inspiration and motivation. As the artworks in Life Drawing make evident, the intimate practice of drawing in one’s home offers a glimpse into individual perceptions of both physical and psychic reality.