PVW Art

08/06/2023

07/12/2023

New installation by Jean Shin called “FLOATING MAiZE” in Toronto’s Brookfield Place Toronto , produced with PVW Art.

09/27/2020

PVW produced Free Fall for the Camera by Brendan Fernandes. Getty Museum presents an online screening of Free Fall for the Camera, a new short film by artist Brendan Fernandes. Using sculpture, drawing, and performance to investigate power dynamics embedded within the practice and history of dance, Fernandes’ work addresses issues of race, q***r culture, migration, protest and other forms of collective movement. Always looking to create new spaces and new forms of agency, his projects take on hybrid forms: part ballet, part q***r dancehall, part political protest, and always rooted in collaboration and fostering solidarity.

In Free Fall for the Camera, an ensemble of dancers create kaleidoscopic moments that serve as remembrances of the lives lost in the tragic 2016 mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, which targeted the Latinx and LGBTQ+ community. The film evolved from elements in Free Fall 49, a site-specific performance Fernandes presented at the Getty Center in June 2017. A feat of endurance across three hours, eight dancers on raised platforms scattered across the museum courtyard emulated the movements of club dancing as music lured the audience into a dance party. At random, startling intervals, the music suddenly stopped and the dancers fell to the ground, snapping the crowd out of the present into a stark state of reflection. This was repeated 49 times—each a moment of silence for the victims of the Orlando shooting. These “unmistakable moments of memorial and resurrection,” reported Frieze magazine, were actions that took on a “dual meaning, comprising both people of color living in the spectre of seemingly random physical violence but also, perhaps, q***rs of colour hitting back.”

Now in 2020, four years have passed since the tragedy in Orlando, yet national conversations surrounding intolerance and acts of violence against difference have only intensified. After the screening, Fernandes will discuss the project with Joshua Chambers-Letson, a writer and performance theorist based out of Northwestern University, who researches and teaches courses in performance studies, critical race theory, political theory, and q***r of color critique.

09/17/2019

08/26/2018

Suspended in the Allen Lambert Galleria, Bennett’s site-specific installation intersects his Mi’kmaq ancestral and contemporary traditions. In particular, he draws on the Mi’kmaq petroglyph which depicts the Milky Way.

Historical references to the land, the sky and our galaxy are illuminated by Bennett’s handling of color, both traditional and pop, his interpretation of Mi’kmaq quillwork patterns and motifs and the use of contemporary materials.

For example, Bennett reimagines reflective vinyl on aluminum typically associated with road signs – to evoke cultural markers of the past.
The title Tepkik, a Mi’kmaq word for night, reflects on when we can visually see our place in the galaxy – bringing the stars and stories of our galaxy inot viw at any time of day.
Jordan Bennett, a multi-disciplinary visual artist, is shortlisted for the 2018 Sobey Art Award. He has participated in over 75 group and solo exhibitions, both nationally and internationally. Bennett calls Nova Scotia home.
Produced by PVW Arts with Brookfield Place.

08/26/2018

PVW's recent project with artist Jordan Bennett and Brookfield Place called TEPKIK is stellar (literally)...

TEPKIK BY JORDAN BENNETT
For this work Bennett created a new suspended sculptural work that inspires a contemporary reflection of a traditional Mi’kmaq petroglyph, depicting the Milky Way, which has been found on the rocky shores of the lakes and rivers at Kejimkujik National Park in Nova Scotia. The piece is composed of visual elements rooted in Mi’kmaq visual culture of Mi’kmaki (Traditional Mi’kmaq Territory). These depictions of the land, the sky, our galaxy, and the universe as represented through legends and stories are presented through my own lens and historical understandings of traditional Mi’kmaq quillwork patterns and motifs. This new work employs the use of printed fabric as well as reflective vinyl on aluminum such as is used for common road signs. Contemporary road signs tell of a place, a marker, a law or direction. Mi’kmaq visual culture is created through porcupine quillwork, clothing, baskets, canoes and other objects that also hold official signifiers of laws, places, cultural markers and direction. The use of these contemporary materials in combination with Mi’kmaq design will call to attention that our visual designs and motifs embedded with knowledge, are also our signs and stories. They are the voices of our ancestors and elements of our laws which we try to understand and follow. This artwork will create a visual link to Mi’kmaq ways of being and understandings of our known universe and our place in it by presenting a visual conversation exploring Mi’kmaq creation stories. The work titled Tepkik, the Mi’kmaq word for Night reflects on the time of day in which we can visually see our place in the galaxy most clearly, this work brings the stars and stories of our galaxy into view at any time of day.

Jordan Bennett, a multi-disciplinary artist, is shortlisted for the 2018 Sobey Art Award. He has participated in over 75 group and solo exhibitions, both nationally and internationally. Bennett calls Nova Scotia home.

09/20/2017

RÉVÉRANCE BY BRENDAN FERNANDES
SITE-SPECIFIC PERFORMANCE
IN CELEBRATION OF CANADA 150
JULY 10 – 14 • 12:15PM – 1:15PM DAILY
Dance, ballet mime and silent cheers will animate Brookfield Place in a site-specific series of special performances celebrating Canada’s 150th. Choreographed and conceived by Brendan Fernandes, Révérence is performed without a stage, without music and the audience is invited to travel with the dancers as they move through the Allen Lambert Galleria.

Brendan Fernandes (born 1979 in Nairobi, Kenya) uses his training in classical ballet and his unique cultural background as a Kenyan-Indian-Canadian to question identity and power dynamics.

03/22/2016

http://www.citynews.ca/2016/03/20/trending-giant-illuminating-rabbits-have-arrived-in-toronto/

“They are huge, the size referencing “the elephant in the room”, the problem, like our environmental impact, big but easily ignored,” said Parer on her website.

03/15/2016

Intrude - by Amanda Parer. Activation in Toronto's Brookfield Place

06/03/2015

Beautiful light projection on Sydney Opera House… https://vimeo.com/128256623

A global animation project by Universal Everything, collaborating with over 20 different animation studios worldwide to create a living mural on one of the world’s…

04/28/2015

So proud of all of the positive feedback for Floyd Elzinga's "Colonization" installation for Brookfield Place. Both artist and property management team were so talented, a pleasure to support in realizing this work in their premier space, and provided a fresh vision of what Earth Week meant this year.

Photo credit: Ernesto Di Stefano / Brookfield Place Toronto I pass through Brookfield Place often and happy to see this gorgeous space used to showcase great