Partners in Art Online


	2011 • 2010 • 2009 • 2008 • 2007 • 2006 • 2004 • 2003

	May 2013 PIA + AGO Partners in Art sponsored Ai Weiwei’s Snake Ceiling 2009 at the AGO. The installation is comprised of hundreds of children’s backpacks and commemorates the children killed in the Sichuan earthquake of 2008. This monumental piece is part of the exhibition of Ai Weiwei’s work, Ai Weiwei: According to What?, opening in August.



	Ryerson Image Centre May 2013 PIA + Ryerson Image Centre Partners in Art is excited to be supporting the new Ryerson Image Centre and its annual international photography symposium. The symposium will attract leading curators and scholars from around the globe and offer them access to the Centre’s cutting edge research centre and famous Black Star Collection to enrich current scholarship in photography.

	AGYU March 2013 PIA+Art Gallery of York University Partners in Art will collaborate with the Art Gallery of York University (AGYU) by sponsoring a bold exhibition by Toronto-based artist Deanna Bowen. Deanna Bowen: Invisible Empires presents a view on the Ku Klux Klan both during the American civil rights movement era and its century-long history in Canada. The long-standing research stems from Bowen’s inquiry into her own ancestry of black pioneers who emigrated from Oklahoma to northern Alberta in the early twentieth century; research that previously has formed the basis of her autobiographical approach.

	2011 - back to top December 2011 PIA + Images Festival PIA sponsored three commissions for the Festival’s 25th anniversary celebrations in 2011 and 2012. The largest event of its kind in North America, the Images Festival mandate is to present and promote excellence in artist-driven film, video, and other time-based media. Lindsay Seers, an award-winning young British artist, and Keren Cytter, a Berlin-based artist interested in video and dance performance, presented their works at the festival, along with a comprehensive program of accompanying talks, tours and other critical discourse. The final commission will occur in April 2013. London-based French artist, Laure Prouvost, will be the featured artist; her mixed media installation will incorporate the moving image along with other objects both found and made.



	September 2011 PIA +AGO PIA collaborated with the AGO to launch their first Artist-in-Residence Program, an initiative that will occupy the purpose-built Weston Family Learning centre. The residency is jointly designed by the curatorial and education departments at the AGO. Four local and international artists will be invited each year to work in residence. Partners in Art provided funding for the first year of the program, which includes artists Paul Butler, Margaux Williamson, Heather Goodchild and Hiraki Sawa.



	June 2011 PIA + OCAD PIA collaborated with OCAD for a multicultural project called Twinning Artists - Twinning Cities --- for its goal of matching artists, cities and cultural groups. This project featured the Avalon (Bangalore and Toronto) exhibition which was curated by Shai Heredia and Charles Reeve and featured three artists from Bangalore with a collaboration by Toronto artist Oliver Husain.

	June 2011 PIA + UTAC PIA supported the publication of a catalogue for a Suzy Lake’s Political Poetics show at UTAC. Lake was one of a pioneering group of artists in the early 70s to adopt performance, video and photography in order to explore the politics of gender, the body and identity.



	2010 - back to top October 2010 PIA + Mercer Union PIA contributed funds to Mercer Union to support its recent exhibit, Sol Lewitt: A Mercer Union Legacy Project. Originally installed by Sol LeWitt in the founding exhibition space on Mercer Street in 1981, Wall Drawing #349 was re-installed to mark the culmination Mercer Union's 30th anniversary celebrations. The 2010 exhibition of the work paid tribute to the importance of the artist’s legacy within Mercer Union’s innovative history of exhibitions, while also tapping into the currency of conceptual art practices for an emergent generation of artists.


	Photo Credit: Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing #349 (1981; remounted 2010) Mercer Union

	October 2010 PIA + Gardiner Museum Partners in Art was the lead sponsor for the Gardiner Museum’s Breaking Boundaries exhibit, which launched the re-branding of the museum in October 2010. Breaking Boundaries featured experimental conceptual work that resonates on both personal and universal levels by exploring how memories, experiences and assumptions condition our perception of ourselves and our world. It showcased four Canadian artists under the age of 40: Shary Boyle, Marc Courtemarche, Carmela Laganse and Brendan Tang whose works illustrates a variety of cross-disciplinary approaches to contemporary ceramic art. Each of these artists approaches ceramics from a unique perspective and integrates clay with other materials in different ways. Their work collectively makes a strong case that ceramics remain a vital and relevant part of contemporary art practice in the 21st century.



	May 2010 PIA + MOCCA The Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA) collaborated with PIA in presenting their biennial group exhibition of work by contemporary artists living in Toronto. Titled Empire of Dreams, Phenomenology of the built environment, this survey exhibition reflected the beat and pulse of contemporary art produced in the GTA. Empire of Dreams, Phenomenology of the built environment included work by prominent artists whose practices may be well-known and others who may be up-and-coming. There is a very strong case to be made for showcasing Toronto artists, who are every bit as strong as those in Montreal and Vancouver but who do not have the same collective or individual strength of profile.


	David Han, Margaret Learns to Drive from There to Here, 2009, Dorian FitzGerald, Casa de Musica (VIP Room) 2010.

	2009 - back to top September 2009 PIA + The Power Plant Factum, the fifth instalment of The Power Plant's Commissioning Program and the second work supported by Partners in Art under this program, was unveiled in September 2009 as part of the first North American survey of works by internationally -acclaimed video artist Candice Breitz. Shot in Toronto, Factum (its title referencing Robert Rauschenberg's 1957 set of near-identical paintings) explores the myriad ways that twins differentiate themselves in a world that values nothing more than the individual. Woven together, the recollections and opinions of the twins both collide and harmonize, thereby conveying the simultaneous sense of sameness and difference experienced not only by twins but by 'singletons' (as twins call non-twins) too. By interviewing several sets of twins --- and one set of triplets --- each separated from their sibling but asked the same questions, Candice Breitz has created a series of dynamically edited video portraits.



	June 2009 PIA + Justina M Barnicke Gallery Partners in Art supported the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery at Hart House to represent Canada at the 53rd International Art Exhibition at the 2009 Venice Biennale (June 7 - November 22 2009), with a new project by Mark Lewis, curated by Barbara Fischer. The donation from Partners in Art also provided support for a public lecture by Mark Lewis in conjunction with an exhibition opening for "Mark Lewis: In a City".



	February 2009 PIA + Justina M Barnicke Gallery Partners in Art supported the launch of an International Curator in Residence program at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, University of Toronto. The first curator invited was Anselm Franke, Director of the Extra City Centre for Contemporary Art in Antwerp, Belgium. During his three week visit to Toronto, Franke engaged with students, artists, curators, professors and the public in Toronto. He gave a public lecture at University College to a packed audience, shared his knowledge with master students from UofT, OCAD, York and Ryerson, extended his research studies and connected with numerous galleries and institutions with in the artistic community.



	2008 - back to top November 2008 PIA + The Power Plant With a donation of $120,000, Partners in Art supported The Power Plant's Commissioning Program for 2008 and 2009. For The Power Plant, as Canada's leading, non-collecting contemporary art gallery, the commissioning of major new projects is a distinctive and important role. It is committed to realizing at least one major new artwork of international significance per year. Partners in Art was proud to be its commissioning partner for the fourth and fifth commissions under the program.

	The 2008 commission was a work by Toronto-based, Canadian artist Scott Lyall. Entitled The Color Ball, the piece is named after a fictitious gala party reminiscent of The Power Plant's annual Power Ball. Inhabiting 3655 square feet of gallery space, The Colour Ball references works from a range of Lyall's previous exhibitions. Exposing the dichotomies that arise from our notions of the contemporary gallery space as a site for presentation, the project investigates how artworks can be finite and infinite, and how an 'art exhibition' can possess both symbolic and imaginary functions.


	The Color Ball, 2008 - Credit: Raphael Goldchain

	February 2008 PIA + Canadian Art For the second year in a row, Partners in Art provided sponsorship funds for The Canadian Art Foundation’s Reel Artists Film Festival. The series was held in Toronto as part of the Foundation's mandate to foster awareness of the visual arts in Canada. A curated showcase of documentaries on Canadian and international visual artists, the festival provides a forum for thoughtful public discussion on questions about the role of the artist and the shaping of contemporary art history.


	Richard Serra To See is To Think © Westdeutscher Rundfunk 2006

	2007 - back to top September 2007 PIA + ICC Partners in Art made a $10,000 grant to the Institute for Contemporary Culture at the ROM for a commissioned performance piece by Kent Monkman, as a feature event of the Shapeshifters exhibit. The piece marked the opening of the exhibition that brought together evocative objects from the ROM's collections of works by leading contemporary Aboriginal artists.
	Photo Credit: Jenny Fraser

	February 2007, 2009, 2011 PIA + Venice Biennale Canada’s association with the Venice Biennale, one of the leading contemporary art exhibitions in the world, dates back to 1952, and has launched the careers of several of Canada’s most celebrated artists. This prestigious forum remains the only international visual arts exhibition to which Canada sends official representation. PIA has supported Canadian artists at the Venice Biennale in 2007 (David Altmejd), 2009 (Mark Lewis) and 2011 (Steven Shearer).
	A detail from The Index, Montreal artist David Altmejd's bird-obsessed installation at this year's Venice Biennale. (Ellen Page Wilson/Andrea Rosen Gallery, N.Y./(c) David Altmejd)

	February 2007 PIA + Canadian Art Partners in Art donated $30,000 as lead sponsor of The Canadian Art Foundation’s Reel Artists Film Festival. The series was held in Toronto as part of the Foundation's mandate to foster awareness of the visual arts in Canada. It provides a forum for thoughtful public discussion on questions about the role of the artist and the shaping of contemporary art history.

	February 2007 PIA + OCAD Partners in Art and The Ontario College of Art and Design joined forces to present a panel discussion entitled Great Collaborations: Multi-Party Contributors to the Arts. Our panel, moderated by Gail Lord, President of Lord Cultural Resources Planning and Management, explored the essence of successful cultural collaborations with speakers and case presenters including Lu Jie, the Director of "The Long March Project" in China, Sara Diamond, President of Ontario College or Art and Design, Jessica Rose, curator of Nuit Blanche 06, and Charles Kriel, a media artist and theorist.

	2006 - back to top May 2006 PIA + OCAD In 2006, Partners in Art collaborated with OCAD to raise $110,000 to launch OCAD’s inaugural Artist-in-Residence Program. Two internationally acclaimed artists, Rirkrit Tiravanija and Ann Hamilton, presented public lectures and participated in workshops with students during their time in Toronto. Entitled Nomadic Residents, the program has brought the world's top practitioners of art to OCAD, increasing the university's international profile, and enhancing the challenging academic and studio program offered at the university.

	2004 - back to top October 2004 PIA + Mocca In 2004 Partners in Art provided funding ($81, 000) for a series of four exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art. Entitled Future Species, this series of four exhibitions (Hybrids, Cyborg Living, Exoskell and Makeover Madness) was a spirited speculation on how the human physical form may appear several steps ahead in the evolutionary process. Curated by David Liss, the exhibitions included works by Karma Clark-Davis, Edith Dakovic, Nicholas Di Genova, Istvan Kantor, Geoffrey Pugen, Flora Sigismondi, KC Adams, Mike Bilodeau, and Steven Meisel.
	Photo by Walter Willems

	2003 - back to top May 2003 PIA + AGO Partners in Art hosted its inaugural fundraiser to raise $30,000 for the purchase of Frank Thiel’s Stadt 5/23/A (Berlin), 2001 for the permanent collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario.
	Frank Thiels Stadt 5/23/A (Berlin), 2001