Emmanuel Osahor’s practice focuses on beauty as a necessity for survival, respite, and sanctuary. Known primarily for his paintings of lush, verdant gardenscapes—inspired by real and imagined locations—these works meditate upon the complicated histories of these sites that entail the domestication of lands, plants, and individuals alike. 

Emmanuel Osahor holds an MFA at the University of Guelph (2021) and a BFA in Art and Design from the University of Alberta, Edmonton (2015). His work has been presented in numerous solo and collective exhibitions, including at the Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton; SNAP Gallery, Edmonton; The Works Art & Design Festival, Edmonton; the Art Gallery of Guelph; BAND Gallery, Toronto; and MOCA Toronto. In 2018 Osahor received an honourable mention at the 20th RBC Painting Competition and in 2021 he received the Joseph Plaskett postgraduate award in painting. Osahor is an Assistant Professor of Studio Art at the University of Toronto.

Emmanuel Osahor’s practice focuses on beauty as a necessity for survival, respite, and sanctuary. Known primarily for his paintings of lush, verdant gardenscapes—inspired by real and imagined locations—these works meditate upon the complicated histories of these sites that entail the domestication of lands, plants, and individuals alike. _To dream of other places_ is the artist’s first major solo presentation in his home city of Toronto and includes paintings, drawings, prints, ceramic sculptures, and a site-specific photographic wallpaper commissioned for the Fleck Clerestory gallery at The Power Plant.  
  
Conceived as a night garden, the exhibition presents Osahor’s work in a unique environment intended to immerse the viewer in a contemplative space where feelings of delight and sorrow coexist as reflections of the human experience. The artist’s poetic yet critical approach to a subject that has been well represented throughout art history reflects a practice that is profoundly engaged with beauty, painting, and the everyday at a time when meaningful encounters with art are needed more than ever.
The exhibition is accompanied by public programs centred on Osahor’s keen interest in nature’s regenerative power.  
  
  
**About the Artist**  
Emmanuel Osahor holds an MFA at the University of Guelph (2021) and a BFA in Art and Design from the University of Alberta, Edmonton (2015). His work has been presented in numerous solo and collective exhibitions, including at the Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton; SNAP Gallery, Edmonton; The Works Art & Design Festival, Edmonton; the Art Gallery of Guelph; BAND Gallery, Toronto; and MOCA Toronto. In 2018 Osahor received an honourable mention at the 20th RBC Painting Competition and in 2021 he received the Joseph Plaskett postgraduate award in painting. Osahor is an Assistant Professor of Studio Art at the University of Toronto.

Emmanuel Osahor: To dream of other places

Emmanuel Osahor, Room for two, 2023. Oil on canvas. Photo: Joseph Hartman.

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Adelina Vlas, Head of Curatorial Affairs, The Power Plant  

CURATOR

To dream of other places

Shelagh Keeley is a multidisciplinary artist known for her massive site-specific wall drawings. 

Shelagh Keeley is a Toronto-based artist whose multidisciplinary work explores the socio-political histories hidden in our natural and built environments. Privileging slowness, Keeley’s intuitive conceptual practice involves the body and draws on instinctive intelligence. The artist has produced two works for The Power Plant’s Fleck Clerestory commissioning program: in 2014–2015, the site-specific wall drawing _Notes on Obsolescence_ (now in the collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery) and in 2015 the photographic wall installation _1983 Kisangani Zaire_, both of which formed part of the group show _The Unfinished Conversation: Encoding/Decoding_. Keeley’s recent projects have been presented by the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts; MoMA Archives and Library, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto; Vancouver Art Gallery; Ifa Gallery Stuttgart, Germany; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Tokyo Biennale, Japan; Stedeliijk Museum Schiedam, the Netherlands; the Getty Center, Los Angeles; the Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon, Portugal; and The Museum of Modern Art, Gunma, Japan, among many others.

At the core of Shelagh Keeley’s work is a drawing practice based on an intuitive and embodied response to readings and research in poetry, politics, cinema, and architecture. The artist applies the same approach to her work with film, where the moving image becomes a drawing notebook, a travel journal, an opportunity to bring the viewer into the spaces experienced by the artist and mediated through the lens of the hand-held camera. 

Since 1985, Keeley has documented on film her encounters with gardens and uniquely built environments around the world. The resulting film notebooks quietly, yet poignantly, reveal the layered histories and contexts that created them at different moments in time. From the flamboyant artificiality of a desert oasis in Las Vegas to the discipline of a Zen Garden in Kyoto, and from a colonial garden in Lisbon to the largest European zoological-botanical garden in Stuttgart, the films invite us to contemplate the complexity and intangible essence–_genius loci_ or spirit of the place–Keeley felt in these places. Filmed while walking for hours at a time as a _flâneuse_, the moving image notebooks present an invitation for the viewer to become the artist as she draws with the camera, investigating and uncovering visceral, hidden layers of these locations. 

Presented in two programs for the duration of the exhibition, the film essays are accompanied by displays of printed materials that contextualize Keeley’s deep interest in the sites she documents while walking. Like her drawing practice, the films trace the artist’s journey and her continued effort in bringing forward the intricacies and contradictions of the world we live in. 
  
  
**About the Artist**  
Shelagh Keeley is a Toronto-based artist whose multidisciplinary work explores the socio-political histories hidden in our natural and built environments. Privileging slowness, Keeley’s intuitive conceptual practice involves the body and draws on instinctive intelligence. The artist has produced two works for The Power Plant’s Fleck Clerestory commissioning program: in 2014–2015, the site-specific wall drawing _Notes on Obsolescence_ (now in the collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery) and in 2015 the photographic wall installation _1983 Kisangani Zaire_, both of which formed part of the group show _The Unfinished Conversation: Encoding/Decoding_. Keeley’s recent projects have been presented by the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts; MoMA Archives and Library, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto; Vancouver Art Gallery; Ifa Gallery Stuttgart, Germany; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Tokyo Biennale, Japan; Stedeliijk Museum Schiedam, the Netherlands; the Getty Center, Los Angeles; the Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon, Portugal; and The Museum of Modern Art, Gunma, Japan, among many others. 

Shelagh Keeley: Film Notebooks 1985-2017

Shelagh Keeley, still from Jardim do Ultramar / The Colonial Garden, Lisbon, Portugal, 2016. Film, 180 min. Thanks to the Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon, Portugal and ifa-Galerie Stuttgart, Germany. Courtesy the artist.

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2 Film Still Colonial Garden .JPG

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Adelina Vlas, Head of Curatorial Affairs, The Power Plant

Curator

Film Notebooks 1985-2017

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The gallery is closed on Friday, April 18. We will reopen to the public on
Saturday, April 19, Sunday, April 20, and Monday, April 21 from 11 AM to 6 PM.


The Power Plant is currently open with exhibitions Emmanuel Osahor: _To dream of other places_ and Shelagh Keeley: _Film Notebooks: 1985-2017_.

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The Power Plant

Exhibitions

On View

Emmanuel Osahor: To dream of other places

Shelagh Keeley: Film Notebooks 1985-2017

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