CHRISTINA BATTLE investigates the changing natural environment

>CHRISTINA BATTLE: as storms take shape in the distance...
Opening: Friday, July 6th, 7-9pm
Exhibition runs to August 4th, 2007

Combining works on paper, film and video, as storms take shape in the distance… investigates the changing natural environment by imagining moments
when major storms strike.

Pulling from footage gathered by storm researchers and chasers, imagery is re-worked to consider the impacts of major weather patterns. The artworks re-create, collect and preserve existing ecological systems while imagining the impacts such events could have on the overall natural balance. Setting aside the effects of specific severe weather events which were an inspiration to the work, such as Hurricane Katrina (USA, 2005) and the South Asian Tsunami (Bandeh Aceh, Indonesia, Sri Lanka & others, 2004), as storms take shape in the distance…instead concentrates on the systems themselves and the precise moments when such storms hit. Reflecting on the global effects of natural disasters, the presented works seek to remind us how forceful the natural environment can be and how easily it can render us powerless.

Biography: With a B.Sc. in Environmental Biology from the University of Alberta and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, Christina currently lives and works in Toronto. Her artworks have been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT), the National Film Board of Canada and the Toronto Arts Council. She has screened her films internationally in festivals and galleries including: The Images Festival (Toronto), The London Film Festival (London, England); The International Film Festival Rotterdam (Netherlands); White Box (New York City); The Foreman Art Gallery at Bishops University (Sherbrooke, QB); The City of Toronto’s Nuit Blanche 2006 and in the 2006 Whitney Biennial: “Day for Night” (New York City).

For more info visit: www.cbattle.com

LEZLI RUBIN-KUNDA, performance documents presented at Fleishman Gallery

> LESLI RUBIN-KUNDA: Outside In

Opening Reception: Friday October 17th 7-9pm

Lezli Rubin-Kunda is a multidisciplinary artist who uses live action, as well as installation, drawing, photography and video to explore her relationship with her surroundings.

The three video pieces presented here, all deal with a place. Through simple spontaneous actions and activities, using the materials of the immediate surroundings in interaction with the artist’s body, they connect to different sites, each with its physical, as well as symbolic, cultural, or metaphysical dimensions. Two of the works are created from documentation from performance festivals. In Down to Earth, the artist digs up earth, carries it through the streets and then descends into an old wine cellar where she acts and plays with the earth and other local produce and debris.

The third and longest work, Housekeeping, is an extended meditation on the reality and concept of home. It is comprised of 11 short video ‘poems’, each one related to different aspects, both material and philosophical, of the artist ‘s relation to her home in all its complexity. Home is the place of living, working , daydreaming, a rich and fertile ground for creating.

It is the hearth, and I am like the goddesss Hestia, guarding the domestic realm; it is the meeting place between sacred and profane space; it is an arena of daily life, from the trivial and banal to the most transcendent: sometimes a trap, sometimes a shelter. Seeing the house as a performance arena blurs the boundaries of art and life, of domestic and artistic pursuits; when I set up my camera every action becomes fraught with layers of significance.

In these works, any assumptions of home as refuge, as order against the chaos, as domestic vs wordly - are reexamined. Rootedness and permanence are brought to question: human constructs cannot keep out the inevitability of flux and dissolution. The built world and the natural world continually fuse, shifting positions.

The artist holds a BA from the University of Toronto in Interdisciplinary Studies, and an MFA from the Boston School of the Museum of Fine Arts. She currently lives in Israel, teaching in the Architecture and City Planning area at the Technion, Haifa, Israel. www.lezlirubinkunda.com

LEENA RAUDVEE on her work, presented at Fleishman Gallery

>LEENA RAUDVEE: STORM (2)

Showing from May 15^th to June 7^th

^{Opening Reception – Thursday May 15th 7 – 9pm}

Water and waves constantly move stones and rocks on the beach, hiding, revealing, and sorting them. Over the course of a day, I moved stones from one area of the beach to another, mimicking the effect of a storm passing through.

For this exhibit, I am working in the space between two active interests - the use of the hand to physically mimic natural forces and the use of the hand to manipulate images. This tension creates a visual movement-as-metaphor. Pondering a recent onslaught of unwanted but valued things and their emotional weight, I began to investigate both the accumulation and release of things - objects both natural and human-made - metaphorically activated with/through handmade forces and images. This exploration takes form in large photo images and small framed collages both referencing rocks and the hand.

Leena Raudvee is a Toronto-based visual and performance artist. Her drawings, mixed media work and performances have appeared over the last 20 years in Ontario galleries. As co-director of Artifacts, a performance art company, she performed for the 7a*11d International Performance Art Festival in 2000 and at the V.MacDonnell Gallery. In 2006, she presented a performance, "the fear of pleasure", at the Collision symposium in Victoria, B.C.