Out now: Review of Natural History @ Barnicke

This week's a big one for art grad shows in Toronto. OCAD has its massive, college-wide grad show May 6 to 9, while students in its newish grad program are showing at 205 Richmond. Ryerson U image arts students are taking advantage of Contact by doing a related multi venue show that started yesterday. The Sheridan open house is this Saturday, May 1, and York University grads have been doing ongoing shows in a variety of locations. The University of Toronto has been doing ongoing shows too, including shows curated by students in its newish masters of visual studies program.

This this week's NOW, I review one of the latter shows, Natural History at the Barnicke.

Though I didn't get to talk about it much in the article, I enjoyed the Barnicke's spiffy new reno. Looks good! Also enjoyed the works that master's student Jennifer Rudder brought together for this show, though I felt a little more work was needed to bring in the human-treated-as-animal themes. For some reason I was just (naively, maybe?) struck by the beauty of the animals—Trevor Gould's giraffe, and Mircea Cantor's wolf and deer.

To read the review, click here. And if you know of any other grad shows that need noting, please advise me in the comments.

Image of Trevor Gould's Model of Nubian Giraffe with Landscape (After Jacques-Laurent Agasse, 1827), 1997-98 from NOW, courtesy of the MBNAQ