Reading and Toronto Launch of It’s like hammering into nothing when I speak it
Thursday, January 19, 7pm
A reading by k.g. Guttman from It’s like hammering into nothing when I speak it followed by a conversation with curator Alison Cooley. It’s like hammering into nothing when I speak it is an artist publication that documents conversations between Guttman and art historian, professor, and writer Nancy Ring. Guttman and Ring discussed the same questions during seven separate lunches shortly before Ring’s death in 2010. Cooley and Guttman will discuss intimacy, conversation, time, hospitality, and embodied criticality—issues that permeate both Guttman’s book and the exhibition.
Book design by Laura Pappa. Presented in partnership with Art Metropole and featuring a selection of books for sale from its shop.
Biographies
k.g. Guttman is an artist, educator, and research candidate in the PhDArts program of Leiden University and the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague, the Netherlands. Her work, funded through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), explores the intersection of choreography, site-specific art practice and territoriality. Her work has been screened, performed and exhibited nationally and internationally through institutions such as Mediamatic, Amsterdam, Palais de Tokyo and Galerie Khiasma, Paris, Ottawa Art Gallery, Galerie LaCentrale and VIVA! Art action, Montreal, and her choreographic works have been commissioned through the Canada Dance Festival, Dancemakers, LeGroupe Dance Lab, Ottawa, and the University of Sonora, Mexico. Her performance publication Elapse I & II, was launched at Art Metropole, Toronto and Galerie LaCentrale, Montreal, and is in the collection of the Library and Archives of the National Gallery of Canada.
Alison Cooley is a critic, curator, and educator based in Toronto. Her research deals with the intersection of natural history and visual culture, socially engaged artistic practice, and experiential and interpretative dimensions of art criticism. She is the 2014 recipient of the Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators, and her writing has been published in Canadian Art, C Magazine, FUSE, Blackflash and Magenta, among others. She is currently the Blackwood Gallery's Curatorial Assistant and Collections Archivist.
