Ivey Galleries
Guest Curated by Jessica Bradley
Organized and circulated by McMichael Canadian Art Collection
Margaux Williamson is a painter for our times. The global pandemic has not only reshaped our relationships with friends and family, home-life and work-life, it has also changed our feelings about familiar places. Williamson’s work, made prior to and during the pandemic, expresses curiosity and a wonder toward everyday spaces and objects.
The exhibition includes works that focus on three familiar settings: her studio, her home, and the bar. She is attuned and analytical in how she represents these spaces, but she is also disruptive. An archivist of sorts, she builds files of “text sketches”—phrases, lists, dream fragments, along with photographs, torn magazine images, and drawings—which informs her images. Residing in the real world but without allegiance to the tradition of realism, Williamson offers new ways of seeing and experiencing reality, capturing both the familiarity and strangeness of today’s world. Margaux Williamson is a Toronto-based artist and writer.
This touring exhibition will go on to the Esker Foundation (Calgary) January 21 to April 30, 2023.
Image: Margaux Williamson, Fire, 2021, oil on canvas, 177.8 x 213.4 cm. Promised gift of Christine and Andrew W. Dunn, McMichael Canadian Art Collection
Media
Artists in Conversation: Margaux Williamson & Angie Quick
On Sunday, September 18, we hosted an informal chat in front of a packed house between Toronto-based artist Margaux Williamson and London-based artist Angie Quick. Margaux was wrapping up her solo exhibition at the Museum and Angie will has own solo show here in 2023, so it was the perfect meeting of the minds. Listen to their deep discussion on visual vs written vocabulary, symbols, and how paintings can sometimes feel like their "boss."