event

Location
Charles Street VIdeo Gallery
76 Geary Avenue


Exhibition Schedule
Thursday October 9th to November 1st
Opening Reception - Thursday October 9th from 6pm to 9pm
Wednesday’s from 12noon to 4pm
Thursday and Friday from 6pm to 8pm
Saturdays from 12noon to 4pm
Artist Talk with Munro Freguson and Midi Onodera - Saturday, November 1st from 6pm to 8pm


June
June is a 6-minute long, hand-drawn stereoscopic animation. In two distinct sequences, vividly-coloured shapes undergo a pictoral metamorphosis, accompanied by the expressive sounds of Philip Glass’s String Quartet No. 5, as played by the Kronos Quartet. The film’s two parts have very different sensibilities, moreover. The “Alzheimer” sequence begins with a complex abstract structure, replete with curving and winding linear elements, some of them wound tightly into massed shapes. The animated action here is subtractive, as those shapes quickly disintegrate and disappear, until all that is left is a node of light that was initially hidden at the center of the structure. Within an expansive midnight-blue space, this hovering ball of light diminishes in size – suggesting not so much a point of finality but rather a star zooming off to join a new firmament. The second part, “Memory,” has a more exuberant layering of pattern, coils, networks, planes, round shapes and linear features – all moving and shifting. At times these elements overlap and collide, but each encounter seems to generate new phenomena. The erasure and loss implied by the Alzheimer section is compensated for here by a sense of unstoppable growth, invention, and connectivity.

June’s abstract schema can certainly be thought of in relation to the operations of the human mind, in line with the artwork’s dedication and linguistic cues. But abstraction is inevitably open to multiple connotations. Ferguson’s fantastical interconnected shapes might resemble a neurological system, but can equally be construed as a communications network, or a cosmological event. The stereoscopic effect of the installation seems to envelop us, but do we then find ourselves inside a brain, or perhaps astride an atom, charging around the universe?

In the hands of both Wieland and Ferguson, abstraction is wielded as a rich and complex visual language. Wieland first achieved recognition in the Toronto art scene when she was a young artist in her 20s, and it is easy to see why, since her early paintings show a masterful control of composition, colour, texture, and mark-making. The brash and irreverent Wieland soon showed, however, that unlike many fellow-artists of her generation, she wasn’t prepared to worship at the altar of abstract art. In her hands astract shapes were something to play with, even to make fun of. She began to interrupt her own abstract compositions with speech balloons, words, or erotic scrawls. This is the case with a painting such as Redgasm (1960), where the humorous title alerts the viewer that the energy activating this pictorial field is supposed to be libidinal. At times, June seems to echo the dynamism of early paintings like Redgasm and War Memories (also 1960).

If Ferguson’s June is mindful of Wieland’s trajectory as an artist, it is equally important to situate his film within a history of experimental animation at the National Film Board of Canada – going back to such remarkable films as Begone Dull Care (1949), where venerable NFB animators Norman McLaren and Evelyn Lambart choreographed painterly gestures as a visual counterpart to music by the Oscar Peterson Trio. Also, by making a film that experiments with technology and software, Ferguson carries the torch of NFB’s vanguard of technological innovators.

Munro Ferguson’s June will be playing on a continual loop, and this format seems appropriate and even necessary. The unravelling and erasure that are characteristic of the “Alzheimer” section trigger a sense of pathos, an emotional response that is shored up by the haunting quality of the Kronos string instruments. With the film looping, this sensation of loss does recur, but not traumatically so, because it is immediately followed by the pleasure and adrenaline rush of the “Memory” section. This ensures that the imaginative artistic journey begun by Joyce Wieland continues into the present day.


A Canadian Ghost Story: The Quilt for Joyce

A Canadian Ghost Story: The Quilt for Joyce Wieland is a tribute to the films and artwork of the late Joyce Wieland. A series of vignettes references the themes and motifs from her work. The hand-made analogue imagery is respectful of Wieland’s pioneering adoption of traditional “women’s work” in her practice.


Artists’ Statement

This piece is a celebration of Joyce Wieland’s remarkable body of work and its continued importance – to us and to an ever wider public. Her work was an important part of the context in which both of us began to make art and films. Although we had worked on each other’s films in the past, we had never shared artistic control of a project. Working with artist Lewis Kaye on the soundscapes deepened the sonic resonance of the images, casting an uneasy aura over the story.

We agreed at the outset to use only analogue footage: shot for this project, taken from our personal archives, and from our own work – especially when either of us had appeared in the other’s film. The idea of using Wieland’s film titles and other work as an armature for our piece evolved rapidly into a kind of story, emerging from our personal memories, the connections we both made to Wieland’s art, and the remarkable relevance of her films today, some of which were made 60 years ago or longer. As Wieland had paid homage to Tom Thomson in one of her films, we wanted to acknowledge her legacy in our own work. In developing the piece over the past year, world events have made aspects of Wieland’s message increasingly pertinent. Her ability to combine serious political critique with formal rigour, a light touch, and a feminine eye continue to have the power to inspire and fortify.



Artist Bios

Munro Ferguson
Born in New York City in 1960, Munro Ferguson studied painting and drawing at Banff and Philosophy at the University of Toronto. In 1984 Munro created "Eureka!" a comic strip about science which was syndicated in over 30 newspapers internationally. In 1994, he joined the NFB English Program’s Animation Studio, where he wrote, directed and animated numerous films including “Falling in Love Again,” winner of the 2004 Genie Award for Best Animated Short. He has also created VR experiences, dome films and a stereoscopic immersive installation, “June,” an elegy for his close friend and mentor, artist Joyce June Wieland.


Anna Feldman Gronau
As a filmmaker, writer, and cultural organizer, Anna Feldman Gronau played a vital role in shaping Toronto’s independent and co-operative filmmaking community. Born in Montreal in 1951 and raised in Hamilton, she moved to Toronto, where she became a central figure in the city’s experimental film scene. From 1980 to 1982, she served as Director and Programmer of the Funnel Experimental Film Theatre, and from 1983 to 1985, she worked as Video Distribution Manager at Art Metropole. Feldman Gronau has written and lectured extensively on feminism and the avant-garde and is the founder of the Ontario Film and Video Against Censorship Society, an advocacy group dedicated to defending artistic freedom. Feldman Gronau’s rigorous films and contributions to local underground art scenes in the 1980s-2000s helped pave the way for contemporary cultures of critical, independent and DIY filmmaking across Canada.

Midi Onodera
Midi Onodera is an award-winning moving image artist who has been making films and videos for 40 years. In 2018, Midi received the Governor General’s Award for Visual and Media Arts. Her work is laced with markers of her experiences as a feminist, lesbian, Japanese Canadian woman. She has produced over 25 independent shorts, ranging from 16mm film to digital video to toy camera formats. Her film The Displaced View (1988) was nominated for Best Documentary at the Gemini Awards. Skin Deep (1995), her theatrical feature, screened internationally at festivals including the Rotterdam International Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival.

Between 2006 -2024 she has made over 600+ Vidoodles (defined as bite-sized 30 second to 2 minute video doodles). Presented as an annual video series they address themes of language, media, politics, and the everyday. These online videos can be viewed at: www.midionodera.com


Joyce Wieland and Munro Ferguson
Joyce Wieland (1930-1998) and Munro Ferguson (b. 1960) became important figures in each other’s lives, beginning in the 1960s when the young Munro and his filmmaker-parents were living in New York City, and so too was Joyce, a close family friend. The mid-sixties were a tremendously productive period for Wieland, as she transitioned from being primarily a painter to a more expansive artistic identity, ceasely experimenting with materials, media, technologies and genres. From the start of their friendship Joyce was clearly charmed by Munro’s imagination and personality, and she featured the boy in her creative projects: there is a photo of him in the plastic assemblage Space of the Lama (1966), for instance, while he is one of the tribe of children ritualistically carrying a fur hat through the forest in her expanded-cinema project Bill’s Hat (1967). She encouraged Munro when he reached adulthood, and became an artist and filmmaker in his own right. If their relationship necessarily changed over the years, they would continue to inspire and influence each other. Munro dedicated the film June to his friend and mentor, whose early-onset Alzheimer’s led to her death in 1998. In a profound sense, this film can also be regarded as an homage to their shared imaginative universe.

Texts about June by Johanne Sloan, 2021

Image Credits
June
Directed by / Réalisé par Munro Ferguson
Produced by / Produit par Marcy Page
Pictured / Sur l'image: Munro Ferguson; Joyce Wieland Photo credit / Crédit photo: Graeme Ferguson
• National Film Board of Canada / Office national