Art Now! Presents: Deirdre Logue & Allyson Mitchell
NOTE LOCATIONOpening Reception at McIntosh Gallery for “If You’ve got It Flaunt It” with Allyson Mitchell January 25, 2018 - March 24, 2018
Allyson Mitchell
‘Deep Lez’, Allyson Mitchell’s ongoing aesthetic/political project advocating a strategic return to the herstories of radical and lesbian feminisms, has been the subject of dialogue within queer and trans communities in recent years. This ethic has caused a stir with activists and artists alike in a range of venues from living room potlucks and academic conferences to public galleries and museums.
Mitchell is a maximalist artist working in sculpture, performance, installation and film. Her practice investigates contemporary sexuality and queer feminist identity, largely through the use of abandoned craft. These articulations have resulted in a coven of lesbian feminist Sasquatch monsters, a room-sized Vagina Dentata, most recently, Killjoy’s Kastle: A Lesbian Feminist Haunted House. Mitchell also performed actively with the fat performance troupe ‘Pretty Porky and Pissed Off’, which she co-founded in 1997.
Her works have been utilized to animate protests like Take Back the Dyke (an alternate Dyke March in Toronto protesting censorship and assimilation), The Women’s March, Occupy Toronto and many others. Her work has also exhibited in galleries and festivals across Canada, the US and Europe.
She is based in Toronto, where she is an Associate Professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at York University and she runs F.A.G. Feminist Art Gallery with Deirdre Logue.
Deirdre Logue
Film and video artist Deirdre Logue has been making intimate performances for the camera since 1995. Suspended in a queer temporality, these private tests made public, resist syntactic language and strive to communicate what it means to be a body; symptomatic, non-linear and hyper corporeal. Her recent video art installations experiment with vibration to engage questions of access, privilege and ability.
Her work is informed by DIY feminist aesthetics, her work on large-scale performance art projects, her commitment to working in the rape crisis and women’s shelter system, and her 25 years dedicated to artist run culture, social justice and artists rights. Deirdre directs the F.A.G Feminist Art Gallery with her partner Allyson Mitchell.
Recently Logue and Mitchell presented Killjoy's Kastle: A Lesbian Feminist Haunted House (Toronto, London, Los Angeles) this largescale installation/performance is a nightmarish vision of feminist terror where visitors are encouraged to engage in dialogue about contemporary queer politics. Logue and Mitchell also collaborate on video installations that put radical feminist texts in productive conversation with contemporary queer theory using puppets, cats and paper mache tactics. Their most recent collaborative video work Hers is Still a Dank Cave: Crawling Towards a Queer Horizon has recently shown at the International Film Festival Oberhausen, Goldsmiths College, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires.
