The Power Plant

In conjunction with Beat Nation, artists included in the exhibition will participate in a series of conversations with key curators based in Toronto. They will discuss aspects of the artist’s practice as well as transformations to institutional and curatorial models that explore Aboriginal artistic practices.

Beat Nation exhibiting artist Jordan Bennett speaks in conversation with Toronto-based curator Philip Monk. Together Bennett and Monk will discuss the artist’s multi-disciplinary practice which aims to push boundaries and play with ideas of re-appropriation, reclamation, participation, and the artifact within traditional aboriginal craft, ceremony and contemporary culture.

Monk is Director of the Art Gallery of York University in Toronto. Previously he was Curator at The Power Plant (1994 – 2003) and the Art Gallery of Ontario (1985 – 1993). Between 1977-1984, he was a writer and freelance curator. As well as many catalogues, articles, essays, and reviews, he has published the books: Glamour is Theft: A User’s Guide to General Idea (2012), while I have lying here perfectly still : The Saskia Olde Wolbers Files (2009), Disassembling the Archive: Fiona Tan (2007), Stan Douglas: Discordant Absences (2006), Spirit Hunter: The Haunting of American Culture by Myths of Violence (2005), Double-Cross: The Hollywood Films of Douglas Gordon (2003), and Struggles with the Image: Essays in Art Criticism (1988). In 2009, Monk was the inaugural recipient of the Ontario Association of Art Galleries Lifetime Achievement Award and in 2011 he received the Hnatyshyn Award for Curatorial Excellence. As a recipient of the award, Monk selected three artists to receive the Hnatyshyn Foundation Prize for Emerging Canadian Visual Artists.

In 2012, Bennett was among the first to receive the award. Bennett is a multi-disciplinary visual artist of Mi’kmaq decent from the west coast of Newfoundland. He currently resides in Edmonton, AB where he is the first Indigenous Artist in Residence at the University of Alberta. Bennett has shown extensively over the past few years across Canada and abroad, in venues including The Museum of Art and Design, New York (2012), Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver (2012), the Alternator Artist Run Centre, Kelowna, BC (2012), Ottawa Art Gallery, Ottawa (2011), Modern Fuel Artist Run Centre, Kingston, ON (2011), and The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery, St. Johns NL (2011).

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