OUTSPOKEN
February 26th- April 9th, 2005
International Women's Day Exhibition
Mara Verna (Qc)
February 26th, noon - 5pm at Eastern Edge Gallery
Artist talk to follow performance at 5pm.
 Multiple Whites tests the hypothesis that otherness may be reconceived as Whiteness, albeit prosthetically enhanced so as to problematize its status as an embodied construct. It locates thematic elements within a global field of forces that are inherently complicit to the ways in which Whiteness navigates within and around our contemporary world.
In accompaniment to a performance installation Mara Verna's live performance with the realm of selves entering a more embedded use to stage a set of multiples, that of the White woman. Eerie, confusing, and in a sense almost hyper-real, it portrays a fantasy for desire as a composite intersection of the self, both real and imagined. As Virginia Woolf once proclaimed, 'A biography is considered complete if it merely accounts for six or seven selves, whereas a person may well have a thousand'. Where the challenge lies perhaps, is to make real, however temporarily, even just a few.
Mara Verna has participated in solo exhibitions, group shows, and festivals within Canada and abroad, namely South Africa, France, Great Britain, Germany, Mexico, and Slovenia. Some notable exhibition to date include 'Sorry to Disturb' (Mara Verna, Bag Factory Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2001), invited Keynote Speaker for 'Fieldworks: Dialogues between art and anthropology' (Tate Modern, London, UK, 2003), 'Rien n'a ete perdu' (Mara Verna, La Centrale Gallery, Montreal, Qc., 2003), and 'Whites Waiting' (Mara Verna, 10th International City of Women Festival, Ljublijana, Slovenia, 2004). She has participated in various artists' collectives, residencies, and workshops, includinmg Public Eye (Cape Town), The Bag Factory (Johannesburg), Les Inclassables (Paris) and Localismos (Mexico, D.F.). Verna works within the realm of public art while simultaneously directing the live art document using digital media. Her practice offers a means to question implicit notions of representation in the struggle to challenge where art is located and for whom it is intended.
www.maraverna.com
www.hotentotvenus.com
Victoria Stanton (Qc)
 '(Being) One Thing at a Time' is an ongoing series of public live art actions with an interest in disrupting quotidian expectations and blurring the boundaries between art and life. These timebased group performances intend to be active reflections on human dynamics and individual agency within the realm of public space.
This project began with photographing her dish-rack and portraits of herself reflected in her bedroom mirror between November 2001 and November 2003. Between August 2003 and November 2003, she carried out six documented performance interventions in public places around the city of Montreal. The resulting collection of images is at once an attempt to mark passages of time through these self-contained document-capsules as well as an in-depth visual study of the captured performance action/transgression of the private/public dichotomy. And it is through repeated interpretations of the (Being) performance series that Stanton aims to develop a continuing cycle of live-art-life action and documentation.
CALL THE GALLERY TO PARTICIPATE
March 31st - Essen: Velma's Restaurant 4-6pm, St. John's, NL
April 1st- In the streets of St. John's, 6pm.
April 2nd- Welcome: In the streets of St. John's, noon.
Victoria Stanton is a Montreal-based performance artist who has been presenting solo and collaborative work since 1992.
She has performed and shown video work in festivals and arts events in Canada, the U.S., Europe, Australia and Japan. Her solo and collective spoken word pieces have been broadcast on regional and national radio as well as featured on a variety of spoken word and music CD compilations. Stanton's creative writing has been published in English- and French- language anthologies and journals. Critical texts have appeared in numerous arts magazines. Her first book, Impure, Reinventing the Word - an examination of the practice of spoken word was published by conundrum press in October, 2001 (co-authored with Vincent Tinguely).
Her one-of-a-kind and multiple artist-books are included in various distribution programs, are held in various public collections and have been exhibited in group shows in Canada and the U.S. She has also had two interdisciplinary one-person exhibitions in Montreal.
Stanton has received provincial and federal artists' grants to produce performance, video,installation, and literary works.
Margaret Dragu
March 26th, noon- 8pm at eastern Edge Gallery
April 8th, noon-8pm, at Eastern Edge Gallery
 Rising. MAKE BREAD = MAKE COMMUNITY = MAKE ART
Dragu's work (often) explores the nature of community and of the female,(sometimes) explores the schism of home versus real estate, and (usually) investigates issues of class. Her work is generally body-based but accompanied by technology.
BREAD WILL BE MADE FRESH AND SERVED.
Margaret Dragu is celebrating her third decade as a performance artist. She has presented her work in galleries, museums, theatres, nightclubs, libraries, universities and site-specific venues including parks, botanical gardens, and public parade routes across Canada, the west and east coast of the United States, and in western Europe. Margaret is also a film and video artist, writer, choreographer, actor, and radio broadcaster. She is also a fitness instructor and personal trainer at community centers and hospitals in the city of Richmond, BC, specializing in clients with heart/stroke history, osteoporosis, arthritis, diabetes, COPD, and for the visually impaired asell as clients requiring post-rehab and post-surgery programmes including cancer survivors, hip and knee replacements, etc. One of Margaret's recent performance works is a series entitled CONSCIOUS CORPUS that investigates the body by drawing upon a holistic lexicon from both her fine arts and body arts practices.
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