Artists are holding a two-day national commission on economic survival. Basic Income: An Artists’ Commission will hear from 20 artists from various disciplines and regions who are navigating poverty and precarity. Their testimony on Jan. 30 and Jan. 31 is open to public viewing over Zoom. Four commissioners – Toronto actor Rebecca Applebaum; Gardiner Museum curator Nahed Mansour; Michael Murray, executive director of the Toronto Musicians' Association; and Greig de Peuter, a communications professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont. – will release a report later this year. For information, go here.
Calgary's Untitled Art Society is no longer untitled. Moving forward, the artist-run centre will be known as the Bows. The renaming comes from a desire to acknowledge place. For information, go to thebows.org.
The Dunlop Art Gallery in Regina has acquired works by David Garneau, Liz Ikiriko and Jeffrey Veregge for its permanent collection. Garneau’s Métis in the Academy and Displacement, Indigenous Scholarship come from a series of still life paintings that explore his experience as an Indigenous academic and artist. Ikiriko, born in Regina and now based in Toronto, is the first Black artist in the gallery's collection. Anchored and Homegoing chart Ikiriko’s journey to understand her late father’s experiences as an African immigrant on the Prairies. Veregge’s Stark, Last Son, Hell’s Kitchen, She’s Got it Where it Counts, Widow and My Only Hope combine references to popular comic icons with imagery of his S’Klallum (Port Gamble/Coast Salish) ancestors. For information, visit here.
The Canada Council for the Arts wants to help craft artists and organizations through its Jean A. Chalmers Fund. The fund supports research and policy development assistance for organizations and individuals; special project assistance for organizations and pre-publication assistance for organizations. Funding of $5,000 to $7,000 is available. Applications are due by March 1. For information, go here.
The Contact Photography Festival has awarded Toronto artist Aaron Jones its $5,000 Gattuso Prize for his exhibition, Closed Fist, Open Palm, at Zalucky Contemporary in Toronto. The prize acknowledges an outstanding exhibition at the festival that was independently organized by artists, venues or organizations. This year's jury, Liz Ikiriko, assistant curator of the Art Gallery of York University in Toronto, and independent curator Sabrina Maltese, based the decision on the conceptual and technical excellence of the work.