SNAP! Preview. Edward Day Gallery is hosting the SNAP! Preview for the live auction of photo-based works that will take place Sun 21 Mar 2010 at the National Ballet School of Canada, 400 Jarvis Street, Toronto. The SNAP! event is the AIDS Committee of Toronto's (ACT) annual photographic fundraiser featuring a live auction of curated art, a silent auction, and photo competition. Live auction artists include Jesse Boles, Sonja Scharf, Balint Zsako and Sarah Anne Johnson. See also SNAP! listing and visit www.snap-toronto.com.

"how good are your dwelling places" – Rita Bakacs, Susan Lakin, Ross Racine, Allan Topolski. Guest curator: Cyril Reade.

"how good are your dwelling places" brings together four artists from diverse backgrounds, who often examine architectural and domestic environments, attempting to decode cultural specificity within a homogenizing context. Although they themselves are not Jewish, Rita Bakacs, Susan Lakin, Ross Racine and Allen Topolski were invited to reflect on the fluidity of Jewish identity in North America. Taking as departure points shared experiences of community, individuality, displacement, continuity and assimilation, they examine connections and differences.

The title of the exhibition is derived from an exclamation of the non-Jewish prophet Balaam: "How good are your tents, Jacob, and your dwelling places, Israel! (Numbers 24:5). Balaam had been sent to curse the Israelites camped on the east side of the river Jordan after their forty years of wandering in the desert, but upon seeing their encampment, the prophet could not but utter his wonderment. This declaration was incorporated into the Mah Tovu morning prayer, recited upon entering the synagogue. Decoupled from the Biblical source, the statement becomes equivocal, shifting from a pronouncement of praise to a question about the moral, ethical and ecological environment provided by the home.

Berlin-based Hungarian filmmaker Rita Bakacs takes us to the European origins of many North American Jews with a new video piece about the Schloss Börnicke, a former residence of the Mendelssohn-Bartholdy family situated in a Berlin suburb. New York-based artist Ross Racine digitally renders bird's-eye views of suburbia, orderly and prosperous at first glance but revealing limited choice upon closer observation. Rochester photographer Susan Lakin leads us inside the home where she takes portraits of the inhabitants as reflections in one of North America's ubiquitous appliances, the television screen. Sculptor Allen Topolski transforms found domestic items, marrying the familiar and the uncanny while using humour to remind of religious ritual embedded in the everyday.

The building hosting the exhibition is a former residence, later transformed into a commercial space and now planned for redevelopment. A few doors down is the childhood home of architect Frank Gehry, born Ephraim Owen Goldberg, who recently renovated the Art Gallery of Ontario just up the street. The row of houses is slated for demolition to make room for new constructions; the inhabitants of the early 20th century have long gone, soon to be replaced by yet other residents. The art works gathered here offer a snapshot of one of the trajectories of North American city dwellers – where we have come from, how we have lived, and how we live now. This space and the images and objects created by these artists can lead us to ponder on how good we make our dwelling places.

Noelle Hamlyn: Uncovering – The Blanket Form. The blanket form is one of the most basic of all human creations; it covers, it comforts, it warms and it celebrates. We are swaddled in it at birth and shrouded in it at death. When crisis or trauma strikes, the blanket is one of the first objects to be offered – considered essential to human survival. Yet today the blanket is mundane and unrecognized. The intent will be to offer the opportunity to pause and consider the simplest of textile forms under which we conduct a great deal of our lives.

Oliver Husain: Hovering Proxies.
You are surrounded by the late summer in Tandun's garden in downtown Jakarta where two dogs, Ziggy and Uma, scuffle on the dry grass. Ziggy, the husky, is a bit crazy from the heat. Elegant wrought iron furniture balancing on thin legs, withered vines, broken flowerpots: this is the set for a tropical drama. You are part of the action: invited to step behind the flapping curtain where you might find yourself in the position of an understudy, waiting for the star's fatal slip... As always, the really exciting part happens backstage. Or rather, the really exciting part is that one step through the curtain, that thin in-between space, that slice of a moment.
Make the familiar trip out there stranger on the one and only Performance Bus with Toronto performer Mantler (a.k.a. Chris Cummings). Mantler's tour bus is your free ticket to Oliver Husain's and Brendan Fernandes' opening night and your serious comic relief for the evening! Part tour guide and part musician, this "childman" is all entertainer! You don't want to miss this performance! The free AGYU Performance Bus departs OCAD (100 McCaul Street, Toronto) on Thur 21 Jan at 6pm sharp and returns downtown at 9pm.

Alex Wolfson and Bojana Stancic: And so, the animal looked back...
Shuttle out there on the Performance Bus to the Jan 28th and Mar 11th presentations of And so, the animal looked back... departing OCAD (100 McCaul Street, Toronto) at 6pm sharp and returning downtown at 9pm. Seating is limited; please call 416 736 5169 to reserve free tickets. Jan 28th & Mar 11th tickets are reserved for individuals on the free Performance Bus. (There is no bus for Jan 29th & Mar 12th performances).

Writer / Director: Alex Wolfson. Set Designer and Visual Concept: Bojana Stancic. Costume Designer: Vanessa Fischer. Sound Designer: Matt Smith. Actors: Amy Bowles, Lindsey Clark, Vanessa Dunn, Nika Mistruzzi, Liz Peterson, Evan Webber.

One day Max begins to speak. Then to write. The primatologists are unsure of what to do with this new development. Soon Max begins to compose a long essay on the subject of the separation between man and animal, chimpanzee and animal, man and chimpanzee. Word leaks out to the world at large about Max. People become frenzied. Strange things begin to occur as the world starts slowly to fall apart. Pairs of animals, both human and otherwise, begin to congregate around the laboratory. Finally it becomes clear, Max's essay is the last words to be spoken before a new flood, a new apocalypse, but unlike the deluge that occurred before the first play, this flood does not simply destroy, it also reconfigures new identities, new share subjectivities. The play ends not with a prescription of what must come but simply with an understanding that things must change, and what will come is a mystery to them all.

And so, the animal looked back... is a unique venture of the AGYU into the world of experimental theatre, a theatre that has its roots equally in the art world and queer performance. The AGYU has commissioned two new plays under the overall title of And so, the animal looked back..., the performance of which opens and concludes an installation that will retain props, performance elements, and projections from the first play.

Silent as Glue. Curated by Micah Lexier.
Silent As Glue brings together the materially rich work of Lynda Gammon (Victoria BC), Matt Harle (Beacon NY) and Elspeth Pratt (Vancouver BC). These artists' sculptures – comprised of a variety of materials including concrete, fabric, cardboard, photographs, paint, tape, plastic, foam, vinyl, and metal – forego common usage of materials to question ideas of value and permanence associated with traditional sculpture, while at the same time negotiating the line between abstraction and representation.

Betty Goodwin: From the Collection of Salah J Bachir. Curated by Marnie Fleming.
This exhibition from the collection of Salah J Bachir highlights the originality and scope of the work of celebrated Canadian artist Betty Goodwin (1923-2008). Life, death, presence, absence, love and anguish are but some of the grand themes that Goodwin tirelessly examined in her multidisciplinary practice, which includes drawing, printmaking, collage, painting and sculpture.

ARTbus. Exhibition tour to the Art Gallery of York University and Oakville Galleries. Bus pick-up and drop-off at OCAD, 100 McCaul Street, Toronto. Cost: $10. includes refreshments provided by Whole Foods Market, Oakville.

Brenda Joy Lem: Homage to the Heart. Curated by Linda Jansma, Robert McLaughlin Gallery.
Inner Landscapes: The Portraits of James MacDougall. Curated by Tara Marshall.
Varley in Unionville – Selections from the Permanent Collection.

Fausta Facciponte: Reliable.
Following on the heels of her inclusion in this year's Showcase.09 exhibition of emerging artists to keep an eye on, Reliable marks the second presentation of a body of work that focuses on images of found dolls. The artist uses digital photography as a means of reclaiming these common childhood playthings, many of which have been found or purchased second-hand on ebay. Her luminous enlargements capture the fine details of each doll's expression, revealing their individual quirks and personalities. Facciponte's images function as memento mori – a Latin phrase that translates as “remember that you are mortal”. Her images are both haunting and nostalgic.

Family Art Sundays. Free art activities!

The New American Century Project – Tobey Anderson. In The New American Century Project Anderson seeks to expose the cultural vacuum surrounding the current "War on Terror". Since the events of 9/11, he has looked to the media as inspiration for this on-going body of work, using appropriated images and colours inspired by the glow of television to cast a new light on the subject.
As commentary on the "War on Terror" Anderson started painting individual portraits of the dead and wounded from both sides; the portraits are presented in an ever expanding, wall covering grid that brings a systematic and solemn order to the chaos of war, but also reflects the death toll that continues to rise. Several of his larger scenes, again based on images appropriated from the media, are also included.

Adad Hannah: Cuba Still (Remake).
Born in New York in 1971, Adad Hannah lives and works in Montréal. Cuba Still (Remake) can be seen as a continuation of his series of video-recorded tableaux vivants, begun in the early 2000s. The artist calls these videos "Stills". Starting with a publicity photo for a banal and forgotten film purchased in Havana in 2003, Hannah re-stages the scene, filming individual sequences of each of the six characters from the original photo. The resulting six videos are then simultaneously projected so as to fabricate a single cinematic scene, a tableau vivant, from the separate and apparently motionless video images. An ingenious method of projection – six crafted wooden stands with a system of cutout masks – plus the original photograph and the images of the six characters complete this installation, which crystallizes the notions of the photographic moment and of duration, the contrasting merits of the fixed and the moving image, and the particular nature of photography and film.
This exhibition is part of the MOMENTUM series, a touring project from the Collection of the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal.

Family Sunday – St. Patrick's Day activity in Rotary Education Centre. Admission: $5 per child; free to Family Membership holders.

Special experimental musical performance by Alan Glicksman and artist friends, in conjunction with the exhibition, Alan Glicksman: What It Is.

Galerie 240 is proud to present this very important show, featuring the works of Pascal Smarth, a Haitian artist living in Montreal. Several of his works which hung at the Port-au-Prince Airport, were either destroyed or damaged. Galerie 240, with the help of local artisans, is endeavouring to recover and restore art works by Pascal and other Haitian artists. Along with this ambitious undertaking, the money raised from the sales of Pascal's work at Galerie 240 is being donated for the rebuilding of the YM / YWCA in Haiti.

Projection Series – Karl Lemieux.

The Raza Group: Full Circle – Francis Caprani, G. Scott McLeod, Gerald Pedros.

In the Project Room, PSUKHÔ – Jean-François Laporte.