DANA SLIJBOOM // ONGOING : a series documenting artists and their practices

This winter I filmed Dana in her Toronto studio working on a body of paintings that Galerie Marguo exhibited at the 2023 Art Paris fair.

Dana Slijboom is a Canadian-Dutch painter working in oil on canvas. Her practice engages both digital and traditional techniques to explore the contradictions of contemporary image making toward a renegotiation of how we process visual information. Through their playful oversimplification, archetypal figures and landscapes act as proxies for the excessiveness of image culture—as familiar lures that obscure a more hollow or cynical narrative. Slijboom applies a medley of motifs such as line and repetition, colour blocking, and relief to achieve a level of graphic spatial distortion that compels the viewer into engagement, inviting them to confront, excavate, and interrogate the overly palatable imagery. Crude and meticulous, Slijboom’s paintings offer a lighthearted proposal of control over the cohabitating states of anxiety and humour alive in every symbol. Recent exhibitions include, From the Attic to the Cellar at Pumice Raft, Toronto (2023), Tattarattat at Hunt Gallery, Toronto (2022), Not Your Garden at Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto (2022), BLOOM DOOM ROOM at The Plumb, Toronto (2021), Twenty-Four at Bricks Gallery, Copenhagen DK (2020). Her work is included in several catalogues including Caniche Vol. 4 published by Revista Caniche, Mexico City, Nut Volume 2, published by BookArt, Montreal and Confetti Generation published by Polly’s Picture Show, Amsterdam. Her work is included in the collections of TD Canada Trust, Scotiabank, the Royal Bank of Canada as well as several private collections. For more : danaslijboom.com

Chris Scott works in insurance by day and makes music by night. He met Dana at Vic Park in Cambridge, Ontario.

GUNNAR // ONGOING : a series documenting artists and their practices

I followed Jaime McCuaig of GUNNAR put up and tear down hundreds of stems of Ontario asparagus at the 2022 Gardiner Museum SMASH party. 

Jaime is a Toronto-based artist whose creative practice engages with the living world of plants and flowers, processes of growth, and the ephemerality of seasons. By foraging and sourcing locally, Jaime assembles unique forms of abundance, creating unexpected encounters and inspiring curiosity, engagement, and protection of a natural world connected to its place of growth, not exported from it. Past projects include land-art installations for Pearl Morissette, material-specific botanical styling for Pharrel Williams’ Humanrace project, editorial work published in Rake’s Progress, the Wall Street Journal and ELLE, solo and collaborative exhibits at Patel Brown Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Art and the Gardiner Museum. Find more at gunnarfloral.com

Duncan Hay Jennings is a multi-instrumentalist, producer & touring musician. His playing and production have been heard on various releases, including Orville Peck's critically acclaimed albums Pony & Bronco, as well as notable releases by solo artist Bria and Toronto band FRIGS.

MEL WRIGHT // ONGOING : a series documenting artists and their practices

Mel Wright is a ceramics artist (and a musician, it turns out) based in Toronto, Canada. She started off making wooden furniture, but quickly fell in love with the malleability of clay. Here she is in her studio at the Harbourfront Centre in Toronto.