John Marriott: Sympathy for the Institution

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Artist Talk: Friday, September 18, 6:00 pm, reception to follow

John Marriott's collages, paintings, photographs and sculptural works create sharp and dryly funny observations that probe and provoke as they consider our relationship to how meaning is made in the wake of modernism. This interest in how meaning is crafted is evident in the selected works in this exhibition, including Light Show, a non-functional neon text piece that reads "SILENCE," Synthesis, a photo triptych presenting a sequence in which a pair of hands rip out a printed image of Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome from a book and crumple it into a ball, and Place Holder, an Eames Eiffel Chair with an industrial backhoe bucket for a seat. The tensions in these and other works are derived from a blend of critical intervention and conceptual pleasure that results as the artist responds to a varied range of subjects embodied in various forms, including the exhibition's colour-coded, dialogically-derived design.

John Marriott is a multidisciplinary artist and writer based in Toronto, Canada. His performances, interventions, videos, installations, sculptures and images have been featured in exhibitions and festivals nationally and internationally. He is represented by MKG127 in Toronto.

John Marriott, Selfie (Male), 2015, patinated bronze. Photo by Don Hall.