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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;color:black">José Luis Torres | Sharl G. Smith | Natalie Hunter</span><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="color:black"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="font-size:14.0pt;color:black">University of Waterloo Art Gallery<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;color:black">September 14 - December 9, 2023</span><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="font-size:14.0pt;color:black">Opening Reception: Thursday, September 14, 5-8 pm<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black"><img width="800" height="500" style="width:8.3333in;height:5.2083in" id="Picture_x0020_3" src="cid:image001.jpg@01D9E49E.5D4C56B0" alt="A pile of colorful plastic chairs
Description automatically generated"></span><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;word-spacing:0px">
<b>José Luis Torres<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Material Culture<i><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">José Luis Torres’ sculptural work focuses on materiality and the ways in which readymade items can be manipulated to create visually dense immersive environments.
<i>Material Culture</i> is a site-specific installation featuring an accumulation of over 300 colourful items alternately sourced on campus, thrifted, donated, purchased on Kijiji, and from retailers such as Princess Auto and Dollarama. Suspended in the gallery,
the disparate rainbow of objects functions as a kaleidoscopic canopy that celebrates and critiques consumerism in equal measure. Torres’ work uses our familiarity with these domestic, institutional, and recreational items as a way of elevating our appreciation
of the everyday, while also inviting us to consider the problematic status of consumer culture: our knack for accumulating stuff, and the growing complexities surrounding the storage, recycling, and disposal of the surplus goods we accumulate.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Born in Argentina, José Luis Torres has lived and worked in Quebec since 2003. He has exhibited site-specific installations and sculpture across Quebec, Canada, the United States, Europe, and Asia. His
work has recently been featured in major festivals including the Festival international de jardins of the Jardins de Métis, the Biennale nationale de sculpture contemporaine in Trois-Rivières, CAFKA.14–Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener + Area, the Symposium
d’art contemporain in Baie-Saint-Paul, Art in the Open Festival in Charlottetown, and Festival des Architectures Vives in Montpellier, France. In 2021, he was awarded the title of Personnalité Arts et Culture by the organization Culture Capitale-Nationale
et Chaudière-Appalaches. <a href="http://www.joseluistorres.ca/">Artist website</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black"><img border="0" width="800" height="500" style="width:8.3333in;height:5.2083in" id="_x0000_i1028" src="cid:image002.jpg@01D9E49E.5D4C56B0" alt="A group of shiny black balls
Description automatically generated"></span><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;word-spacing:0px">
<b><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Sharl G. Smith<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><b><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Shelter II</span></b><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#393939">Shelter II</span></i><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#393939"> is a large-scale beaded sculpture that ambitiously expands on the artist’s beadwork practice. Over the last two years,
Smith has radically up-scaled her process applying weaving techniques employed in glass bead-stitching to create a sculpture incorporating hundreds of grapefruit-sized mirror polished stainless steel beads tensioned together using steel cable. The end result
is a gargantuan beadwork that has immense physical presence and a surface that slyly reflects and distorts its surroundings.
</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#393939">While building on the artist’s training in architecture,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Shelter II</i><span class="apple-converted-space">
</span>is also a rebuke to the dismissal of beading as “women’s work” within the context of a patriarchal Western art history rather than as a viable and transgressive art form in its own right.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#393939"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span class="wixui-rich-texttext"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Sharl G. Smith</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"> was
</span></span><span style="font-size:11.0pt">b<span class="wixui-rich-texttext">orn and raised in Jamaica</span> and is based in Waterloo, Ontario.<span class="wixui-rich-texttext"> She obtained her Bachelor of Architecture in 2003 and spent over a decade working
as a designer and architectural professional in the United States. Moving to Canada in 2015, she became a full-time artist and</span> proprietor of Sun Drops Studio.
<i>Shelter II</i> debuted at the Grimsby Public Art Gallery earlier this year, and the artist is also exhibiting as part of a two-person exhibition with Barry Ace titled
<i>Beyond the Bead</i> at the Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery. <i>Shelter II</i> was made possible by the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Waterloo Region Arts Fund.<span class="wixguard"> </span><a href="https://www.sundropsstudio.com/">Artist
website</a> </span><span class="wixguard"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span class="wixguard"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span class="wixguard"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-ligatures:none"><img border="0" width="800" height="500" style="width:8.3333in;height:5.2083in" id="Picture_x0020_5" src="cid:image003.jpg@01D9E49E.5D4C56B0" alt="A colorful tree branches
Description automatically generated with medium confidence"></span><span class="wixguard"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><b><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Natalie Hunter<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><b><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Crystal Image, a memory of leaves and light<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">UWAG entrance, East Campus Hall<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Crystal Image, a memory of leaves and light</span></i><span style="font-size:11.0pt"> was commissioned for the window space above the East Campus Hall (ECH) entrance to UWAG. Photographing the architecture
and landscaping around ECH using 120mm film, Hunter processed a series of three photographic transparencies that she describes as “slow cinema”. Over the course of the day the passage of light further activates the saturated colours of these transparencies,
casting ephemeral coloured shadows onto the walls and floor of the long corridor adjacent to the gallery. This effect subtly animates the institutional space that students, staff, and visitors routinely walk through but otherwise take for granted.
<i>Crystal Image, a memory of leaves and light</i> softens this otherwise hard architectural interior, inviting us to pause and reflect on the built environment that we inhabit.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Natalie Hunter is from Hamilton, Ontario and completed her MFA at the University of Waterloo. Working between photography, installation, and moving image, she is known for her multilayered photo-based installations
featuring colour imagery on transparent film. She has shown her work across Canada and has had recent exhibitions at The Reach Gallery Museum, Hamilton Winterfest, University of Manitoba School of Arts Gallery, Latcham Art Centre, Centre[3] for Artistic and
Social Practice, and Rodman Hall Arts Centre. She is the recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and is a sessional instructor in Fine Arts at the University of Waterloo.
<a href="https://natalie-hunter.com/home.html">Artist website</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:black"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;word-spacing:0px">
<b>ADMIT EVERYONE</b><br>
University of Waterloo Art Gallery<br>
East Campus Hall, Room 1239<br>
519.888.4567 ext. 33575<br>
<a href="uwag.uwaterloo.ca" title="https://akimbo.us14.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7dce056c3a021a085b762c0da&id=3b53542f0a&e=f49260924a">Website</a><br>
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/uwag.waterloo" title="https://akimbo.us14.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7dce056c3a021a085b762c0da&id=d589596107&e=f49260924a">Facebook</a><br>
<a href="https://www.instagram.com/uwartgallery" title="https://akimbo.us14.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7dce056c3a021a085b762c0da&id=db46ccb92d&e=f49260924a">Instagram</a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>CONTACT</b><br>
Ivan Jurakic, Director/Curator<br>
519.888.4567 ext. 46741<br>
<a href="mailto:ijurakic@uwaterloo.ca" title="mailto:ijurakic@uwaterloo.ca">ijurakic@uwaterloo.ca</a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>HOURS</b><br>
Wednesday to Saturday 12-5 pm<br>
Or by appointment</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>MOBILITY</b><br>
Ground floor entry<br>
Automated doors available at Fine Arts entrance<br>
Wide pathways<br>
Accessible washrooms on ground level</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>DRIVING</b><br>
263 Phillip Street, Waterloo<br>
East Campus Hall (ECH) is located adjacent to Engineering 6 (E6)<br>
Campus <a href="https://uwaterloo.ca/map/" title="https://akimbo.us14.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7dce056c3a021a085b762c0da&id=eb40db523a&e=f49260924a">map</a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>PARKING</b><br>
Visitor Parking is available in Lot B beside Engineering 6 (E6) for a flat rate of $5<br>
Campus <a href="https://uwaterloo.ca/map/" title="https://akimbo.us14.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7dce056c3a021a085b762c0da&id=d10ebd40c8&e=f49260924a">map</a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>MAILING</b><br>
University of Waterloo Art Gallery<br>
200 University Avenue West<br>
Waterloo, ON, Canada N2L 3G1</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:black"><img border="0" width="190" height="60" style="width:1.9791in;height:.625in" id="Picture_x0020_4" src="cid:image004.jpg@01D9E49E.5D4C56B0" alt="University of Waterloo Art Gallery logo"></span><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:black"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<b><span style="color:#7F7F7F">Image Credits</span></b><span style="color:#7F7F7F"> (top to bottom):
<b>José Luis Torres</b>, <strong><i><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;font-weight:normal">Kaleidoscope I
</span></i></strong><strong><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;font-weight:normal">(detail)</span></strong>, Strawberry Art Festival, Shanghai and Chengdu, China<i>,
</i>2019, readymade plastic chairs composed on a scaffold. Photo courtesy the artist.
<b>Image description:</b> A close-cropped image of a mass of brightly coloured plastic chairs heaped together.
<b>Sharl G. Smith</b>, <i>Shelter II</i> (detail)<i>, </i>2023<i>, </i>metal beads, steel cable. Photo courtesy of UWAG.
<b>Image description:</b> A close-up of the surface of a tightly beaded sculpture made of silver metallic beads.<b> Natalie Hunter</b>,
<i>Crystal Image, a memory of leaves and light </i>(detail),<i> </i>2023<i>, </i>
colour photographs on transparent vinyl from 120mm negatives. Photo courtesy the artist.
<b>Image description:</b> Abstracted image of architecture and a tree canopy in a gradient of warm colours.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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