Upcoming Exhibitions
Fables, Parables, and Apologues
Anita Kunz, Daniela Astone, Eric Drummond, Yana Litus
February 5 - March 1, 2025 in the Main Gallery
Opening Reception February 7, 6PM-9PM
About the Exhibition
​Seductive scenes and sartorial primates explode on canvases by four contemporary painters. These artists explore narrative through religious ideals, human condition and fallibility, and the kinship to and personification of animals.
In exhibiting these works we challenge the traditional relationship the viewer has to morality scenes by highlighting the symbolic and stylistic play between the art of Anita Kunz, Daniela Astone, Eric Drummond, and Yana Litus.
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Additional programming in this exhibition
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UNSCRIPTED: SPEAKER EDITION: Fables, Parables, and Apologues
Saturday February 8 at 2:00 PM
Join us to explore allegory and visual narrative with artists Anita Kunz, Daniela Astone, Eric Drummond, and Yana Litus. Discover how each artist works within traditional and contemporary foundations of creative expression. This Unscripted conversation will be led by Josh Lambier, Artistic Director of Words Literary & Creative Arts Festival, who will expertly guide the dialogue and moderate a short audience Q&A.
Prior to the Unscripted conversation, you are invited into our gallery space to view the works by Kunz, Astone, Drummond and Litus in TAP’s exhibition Fables, Parables, and Apologues.
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The exhibition and related programs have been generously supported by Cambia Development Foundation.
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About the Artists
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ANITA KUNZ is an artist and illustrator living in Toronto. Her art has been published widely and shown in galleries and museums all over the world. Her socially and politically themed work has been printed in major publications such as Time, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, GQ, The New York Times, Newsweek, Random House Publishing and many others.
She has been honored with many prestigious awards and medals including the Order of Canada, Her Majesty the Queen’s Jubilee Medal of Honor, Society of Illustrators’ Museum of American Illustration Hall of Fame; and in 2018 Canada Post released a postage stamp honoring her work as a Canadian illustrator and artist. That same year The Ontario College of Art and Design gave her the “Alumni of Influence” award. Kunz is the author of “Another History of Art” (Fantagraphics Books, winner of Gerald Scarfe award), “Original Sisters: Portraits of Tenacity and Courage” (Pantheon Press), and “Striking a Pose; A Handy Guide to the Male Nude” (Fantagraphics).
For more about the artist and her work visit http://www.anitakunz.com
DANIELA ASTONE grew up in the sea-town of Porto Santo Stefano, Italy, and began studying art at the age of 14 in the High School of Arts in Grosseto. After graduating she moved to Florence to study Illustration at the International School of Comics and began independent work as an illustrator for several studios including Inklink Florenze.
She then changed direction to study drawing and painting at The Florence Academy of Art under the direction of Daniel Graves. Daniela began teaching younger students at the Academy in her second year, graduated with class honours and continued to work as a principal teacher for the Academy. In 2013 she became the Director of the intermediate program, a role she left in 2022 to dedicate more time to her studio practice. Daniela had her first solo show at the Ann Long Fine Art Gallery in Charleston and has continued to exhibit and curate internationally. Her work is part of the permanent collection at MACS (Contemporary Art Museum) in Sicily.
For more about the artist and her work visit https://www.daniela-astone.com
ERIC DRUMMOND began drawing at a very early age copying various drawings of Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci from the books he received from his Grandfather. He studied art history at the University of Guelph before beginning studies in classical academic painting and drawing at The Florence Academy of Art in 2016. After graduating from the Academy, Eric returned to Canada and is now part of TAP Centre for Creativity’s Studio Residency program in London, Ontario, where he completes his studio work and teaches.
Eric has been awarded and featured by many international establishments including The Art Renewal Center, Sotheby’s, The Luxembourg Art Prize and the MEAM in Barcelona. He has worked as an instructor in Italy and in Canada, and exhibited internationally in Italy, Spain, United States and Canada.
For more about the artist and his work visit https://ericjdrummond.com/about
YANA LITUS is an interior artist and decorator born in Ukraine and currently based in Canada (London, Ontario) who travels for art projects across North America. After graduating from art school, she finished Ukrainian National Technical University (Architectural department). She has experience in many creative industries such as: interior design, graphic design, painting, interior murals and as a main specialist in the architectural city department in Poltava city (Ukraine).
Yana uses different kinds of techniques and a wide collection of materials in her artworks on canvases and walls such as: acrylic, watercolour, oil paints, decorative plaster, gypsum and concrete materials. Not adverse to competition, she was a finalist in the 2023 Art Battle Canadian National Championship and winner in the London Art Battle 2024.
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For more about the artist and her work visit https://www.yanalitusart.com
"Almost Emily" by Wyn Gelenyse
Community Portraits 2023-2024 Emily and Ellen: Wyn Gelenyse
February 5 - March 1, 2025 in LAB 203
Opening Reception on February 13, 5PM-7PM
Originally conceived as a simple exercise in painting the portrait of a close friend and fellow artist, Geleynse saw a bigger project as more friends and acquaintances from his walk in life — from the person who prepares and serves his coffee, colleagues from the arts community, a shop keeper at his local stereo shop, co-workers at the Mission Store where Geleynse volunteers twice a week, the woman who cleans the building that houses his studio — various members of Geleynse’s community stepped forward to be caught in paint on his paper canvas. With forty-one portraits, a series was born from that simple exercise.
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This series of portraits is presented one or two at a time for a month, beginning at Milos Craft Beer Emporium last September to December and now at TAP Centre for Creativity. It’s an unusual method to display an exhibit but one that almost mimics the way we encounter our friends and cohorts and acquaintances in daily life, a pleasant reminder that our communal time together is slightly fragmented.
Excerpted from the exhibition write-up by Vince Cherniak, Dec.14, 2024.
"Marcy" by Brian Lambert
SONGS FOR THE CHAMELEON: Brian Lambert
February 5 - March 8, 2025 in LAB 203
Opening Reception on February 13, 5PM-7PM
About the Exhibition
Songs for the Chameleon is a project consisting of an illustrated novel and a series of musical compositions, each with an accompanying video. The music/video part is nearing completion, with an expected release date sometime in the fall of 2025.
The novel, however, came to an abrupt standstill when, after several years of rapt involvement in the development of the story and characters, the author awoke to the fact of an alarming neglect of other of life’s annoying necessities. Like relationships. The lawn. Extant hydro bills. On and on.
These few drawings represent some of the effort made to illustrate the characters and ideas meant to be engendered in the writing. In the story our protagonist, a dreamer, encounters a crow. The crow, at first annoyingly present in her dreams, becomes the teacher/philosopher that helps her to wake to the depth of her consciousness. To realize how dream and waking awareness are intertwined. And that by engaging our lives with this heightened awareness the quieting of our worst fears can be perceived as within our grasp…
Heavy shit.
About the Artist
Brian Lambert is an art hack who has convinced himself (and others) that he can work competently in multiple disciplines.
Still, his efforts have included a career in the business as an exhibiting artist, illustrator, photographer, writer, musician/composer, gallery administrator, curator and, not insignificantly, a big-time art handler.
For more information about the artist and his projects visit https://www.embassyculturalhouse.ca/brian-lambert.html
