Babara Cole, Darlene Cole, Virginia Mak & Vicki Smith: Her

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Babara Cole, Darlene Cole, Virginia Mak & Vicki Smith: HER

Darlene Cole, "Lake (melt into this lake)," 2019, oil on canvas, 62" x 62"; Barbara Cole, "Falling Through Time, from Falling Through Time," 2016, chromogenic print, 48 " x 48"; Vicki Smith, "Right Now It's Like This," 2019, oil on canvas, 36" x 60"; Virginia Mak, "Composed 14," 2018, chromogenic print, 48" x 48"

Babara Cole, Darlene Cole, Virginia Mak & Vicki Smith: HER

Opening Reception: Saturday August 10, 2-4 pm

Her brings together and celebrates the works of four women artists, comprised of two painters and two photographers, who have each become recognized for their respective representations of the female form.

Painter Darlene Cole’s lyrical and poetic renditions of solitary figures or small gathering of females in various stages of childhood, adolescence, and adulthood evoke a sense of memory or loss, and sometimes a yearning for a real or imagined past.

In her Falling Through Time series, photographer Barbara Cole emphasizes dynamism and power of the female form in movement and a seamless catapulting back and forth between future and past self in time and technique.

In Barbara Cole’s Meditation series, a restrained atmosphere of stillness and contemplation pervades.

Like Barbara Cole, painter Vicki Smith also concentrates on the female form as it moves through water. Her swimmers evoke a feeling of freedom and expansiveness and a possibility for transformation as they calmly float or swim in lakes and swimming pools.

Photographer Virginia Mak’s soft-focus images from her Composed Series in this exhibition pay homage to the creative women in her life while her Stillness series turns a more inward gaze towards self-reflection and growth.

The exhibition seeks to provide ‘a room of one’s own’ to highlight the multiplicity of views on the female form by four strong female artists.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

BARBARA COLE is an award-winning Canadian photographer who has exhibited internationally and is extensively collected by both public and private institutions. Her series Underworld was exhibited at the Canadian Embassies in Tokyo and Washington, D.C. Cole has won prestigious awards such as the Grand Prize at the Festival International de la Photographie de Mode in Cannes, and third prize at the International Photography Awards in New York. 

DARLENE COLE's work is extensively collected across Canada and internationally. Notable public collections include The Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Tom Thomson Art Gallery, the K.F. Preueter Collection of Canadian Art, Royal Bank of Canada, CIBC, OCAD University, Fairmont Hotels (Toronto, Montreal, Banff), and Manulife Financial. 

VIRGINIA MAK is a prominent Hong-Kong born, Toronto-based photographer who has exhibited her work internationally and is a recipient of project, exhibition and travel grants from the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. Mak's photographs can be found in the Canada Council Art Bank and the Toronto Archives, among other public and private collections. 

VICKI SMITH is a Canadian painter known for her paintings of female figures that explore the possibilities and limitations of gravity. Vicki Smith studied fine art at the Ontario College of Art. She lives and works in Toronto.