Multidisciplinary artist Julie Lequin’s latest piece, Top 30, presents her personal take on the ups and downs of aging. From her childhood in the small town of Sorel, Quebec to her graduate years in California, Lequin examines her past with nostalgia and a good dose of humour.

This essay was commissioned by and for This is Paradise, exhibition at MOCCA (Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art) from June 24 to August 21, 2011. This and other essays for this exhibition have been supported by YYZ Artists’ Outlet and YYZ Publishing.

This essay was commissioned by and for This is Paradise, exhibition at MOCCA (Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art) from June 24 to August 21, 2011. This and other essays for this exhibition have been supported by YYZ Artists’ Outlet and YYZ Publishing.

This essay was commissioned by and for This is Paradise, exhibition at MOCCA (Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art) from June 24 to August 21, 2011. This and other essays for this exhibition have been supported by YYZ Artists’ Outlet and YYZ Publishing.

These new works stand as part of a rich inquiry into the very elements of creating. Dil Hildebrand has not moved away from his studio as his source of inspiration; he has however mined further inside what the studio represents the space where the magic of painting occurs.

Mixed-media artist Annie Dunning has long explored the paradoxical terrain between culture and the natural world. Through a unique sense of humour and craft, her work emphasises overlooked creatures and aspects of our daily environment, infusing them with a sense of wonder and intrigue.

Greetings! Welcome! hails the over-eager head on a stick perched in the entranceway, tooth-grinned, immobile. Please come right in! Ironically, while this description might otherwise be read as a sarcastic chick lit account of the proverbial skinny shop-girl, it literally portrays Montreal-based artist Stphanie Chabot’s intervention for the YYZ vitrine.

Karen Henderson once told me that she thought her work was about the here and now. But I wonder now, if that now hasn’t become her real subject, eclipsing even the here that is still so crucial to her.

In the exhibition Sail Fast Cloud-Shadows and Sunbeams, Lauren Hall considers the industry of tourism and the experiences of the tourist as the foundational basis for her work.

For roughly a decade, Alexandre David has been conducting spatial experiments. His practice as a sculptor has led to a series of interventions in various locations, always producing slight perceptual changes minor yet potent modifications in how we relate to a given space thus raising the question of our relationship to spatiality in general and, more specifically, to the spaces of our daily lives, and to architecture.