Alexis O'Hara's SQUEEEQUE! The Improbable Igloo (2009) was part of “Volume: Hear Here,” one of the winners for Exhibitions of the Year at the OAAG Awards / photo courtesy the Blackwood Gallery and Justina M. Barnicke Gallery
The Blackwood Gallery in Mississauga and the Art Gallery of Windsor split one of the top honours this evening at the 36th Ontario Association of Art Galleries Awards at the University of Toronto Art Centre.
Both galleries won in the Exhibitions of the Year category.
The AGW was recognized for its “Border Cultures: Part One (homes, land)” show curated by Srimoyee Mitra, which dealt with national boundaries through the work of local and international artists including Broken City Lab, Willie Doherty and Sanaz Mazinani.
The Blackwood was honoured for “Volume: Hear Here,” which focused on sound works by mainly Canadian artists and was curated by Christof Migone. The show took place at two venues—the Blackwood and the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery—and featured works by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Juliana Pivato and John Oswald, among others.
“Volume: Hear Here” also received an honourable mention for Exhibition Design and Installation.
Overall, 21 awards and one honourable mention recognized 14 galleries from nine cities across Ontario.
Among other notable awards of the evening, Macdonald Stewart Art Centre founding director Judith Nasby won the Colleague Award for Lifetime Achievement.
The OAAG Awards are annual, province-wide, juried art gallery awards.
Jurors this year were artist, writer and curator Carol Barbour; filmmaker Daniel Cockburn; past Ottawa Art Gallery director Mela Constantinidi; Art Gallery of Mississauga director/curator Stuart Keeler; Station Gallery CEO Donna Raetsen-Kemp; TwentyNothings creative director Yana Tzanov; artist Tim Whiten and Donderdag designer Leonard Wyma.
