FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 18, 2015
401 Richmond St. West
Free event
Disability Art Fills 401 Richmond with Strange Beauty
The 2015 Tangled Arts Festival engages Toronto’s legendary arts hub with new works
by disability-identified artists featuring exhibits at YYZ, Gallery 44, Urbanspace Gallery
and more.
Toronto, ON – Tangled Art + Disability is infusing Toronto’s arts and cultural landscape
with a variety of disability perspectives by hosting their 2015 Tangled Arts Festival –
entitled Strange Beauty - in an iconic nucleus for the creation and presentation of art:
401 Richmond.
Over the month of April, Strange Beauty will fill the building with a collection of new
exhibits and performances, carefully selected and commissioned by Canada’s leading
disability arts organization. Tangled invites audiences to reimagine and rediscover
conventional notions of beauty while wandering through the galleries, cafes and public
spaces of the converted warehouse at Richmond and Spadina.
“The arrival of 401 Richmond changed the downtown Toronto landscape,” says Tangled
Executive Director Rina Fraticelli. “It's a visionary re-thinking of art, commerce, and
culture. And it works beautifully. All these unique, varied individuals and organizations
creating a new model of community. That kind of dynamic, engaged creativity is what
Tangled – and especially Strange Beauty – is all about."
Strange Beauty will feature new works by 11 Canadian artists in media, photography,
sculpture, performance art and music, including a “krip-hop” performance by Toronto’s
own Noah Goodbaum a.k.a. “The Mighty Rhino” – a hip hop artist with a disability.
Toronto-based photographer Steve Kean will unveil a monumental project, Spina
Bifida: Front to Back, a series of double portraits that will be on exhibit at the Abbozzo
Gallery. “I have Spina Bifida,” says Kean. “I’m a disabled artist. Yet this is the first time in
my artistic practice that I am examining how people like me, who live with this condition,
view themselves and seek to claim their power.”
Additional Strange Beauty highlights include Carrie Perreault’s Impossible
Conversations, a sound installation and performance work compiled from her own
writing, and submissions from anonymous contributors addressing those things that
always remain unsaid.
“Impossible Conversations comes from the idea that sometimes you want to have a
conversation with someone but you’re so scared the words won’t come out right, or
they’ll misinterpret the intent, or they won’t hear you the way you want to be heard,”
explains Perreault.
Strange Beauty will open on April 9th, 2015 with a special guest presentation from
Peter Caldwell, Director of the Ontario Arts Council. Caldwell will speak about the
new Deaf and Disability grants program at the OAC, a first in Canada and a
revolutionary contribution to the development of disability arts in Ontario.
The exhibits will run until April 25th .
Tangled Art + Disability is a charitable organization dedicated to developing and
showcasing the work of artists with disabilities. For over ten years, Tangled has been a
leader and catalyst bringing together artists with disabilities and a diverse public through
a wide range of performance, media and visual arts events. Tangled uses the power of
art as a transforming medium to enhance the understanding and acceptance that people
with disabilities can and do make significant contributions to all aspects of society, in
particular the arts and an evolving cultural sector.
Strange Beauty runs from April 9-25 at 401 Richmond St. W. in the following spaces:
Abbozzo Gallery, Musideum, Roastery Café, Urbanspace Gallery, V-Tape, and YYZ and
includes work by Mark Brose, Janna Brown, Noah Goodbaum, Steve Kean, Barbara
Mann, Geoffrey McMurchy, jes sachse, and the Scratched Lens Collective.
401 Richmond Hours:
Monday - Friday 9:00 am - 7:00 pm
Saturday 9:00 am - 6:00 pm
Sunday CLOSED
Website: http://tangledarts.org/strange-beauty/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/402169026629164/
Twitter: @TangledArtsTO
For more information or interview requests, please contact:
Jeremiah Bach
Email: jeremiah@tangledarts.org
Phone: (647) 725-5064