Inside. Outside. Of. is a puzzle of an exhibition conceived of and collected by co-curators Shannon Anderson and Jay Wilson. Together, over the past decade, they have collaborated as the eponymous Anderson Wilson Projects. This current curatorial collaboration is on display at The Art Gallery of Mississauga through April 13, 2025. Anderson is also the Senior Curator at The Art Gallery of Mississauga.
Long-term curatorial partnerships are somewhat unusual in the art world. Yes, in a way, it happens all the time. Curators work with teams and staff. There are one-off ventures, travelling shows, or navigating logistics. But true creative collaboration requires care and feeding. A level of trust that allows the ebb and flow of debate and ideas and finishing one another’s sentences.
The art of the studio visit is the stock-in-trade of the curator. The gold standard, so to speak. The thrill of entering the artist’s space is always exhilarating. To know of an artist’s work and to see it in the wild, is one thing. To have the opportunity to visit an artist where they work is a special gift. No two artists are the same. Inspiration, habit, and temperament are highly unique, like a fingerprint.
The in-person visit is highly prized, but Zoom is also an important tool, born of necessity during the covid times. Anderson and Wilson are constantly sharing finds with each other, because discovery is always around the corner.
One unique way that they keep the creative flow going is with their two-person Book Club. It has been running for about as long as they have collaborated, since 2015. From AndersonWilsonProjects.org, they say:
“We also read on our own and not always at the same time. We are a bit like workout partners. We keep each other going and suggest new and exciting brain exercises for each other. Our reading choices also reflect the times, how we are collectively feeling, the escapes we might need or how we might like to influence or inform each other’s experience or our collective practice.”
At this point, they are more than 100 titles in, and lucky for us, they share the list on their website.
Another tool in the Anderson Wilson Projects kit is their shared Instagram. I highly recommend giving it a look as you are lurking about the internet. This was begun in 2022. Again, from their webpage:
“And Another Thing is an open-ended, continuously expanding online image collection of artworks that focus on strategies that result in new things or things newly seen by way of excess. We’re curious about the impulse to make work that is densely complex and, like our Book Club project, may be less of a collection of strategies than an untested pathway leading the curatorial way forward. Working digitally and online allows us to post artworks made anywhere, at any point in time, in any medium.”
When the public “we” enter galleries and museums, we rarely think about how the work got there or why it was chosen, especially in the combinations presented. Of course, those among us who are in on the ways of museums and galleries and how exhibitions coalesce take such knowledge for granted. As for the rest, it doesn’t always occur to us to ask the question. At times the connections are more obvious, especially when one is viewing the work of an artist in particular. Or a collection of works from artists who are known to work together, such as The Group of Seven. This situation is quite different. It is a brew concocted by the curation as much as by the individual artists.
The selection of works for this installation includes artists diverse in their approach to their work, and as human beings. The works represented are primarily multi-disciplinary or mixed media compositions. This includes painting, drawing, photography, and sculpting. An especially interesting aspect of the collection from my perspective is that each artist is also working in what has traditionally been identified as craft media. We see carved elements. Intricately built large-scale ceramics. Draping, architectural necklaces. We see hand painted piña and jusi silks – precious Filipino textiles that are woven of pineapple leaf fibres and silk – used as the artist’s canvas. We see hand work of quilting, weaving, and beading. We see the traditional West African, Malian Bogolan fabric, also widely known as mud cloth. Here used in works, at once speaking to a rich communal heritage of creation and identity, as well as nodding to the thirst for export goods, used internationally in fine art, design, and fashion.
Each body of work is highly personal and of itself, but in the hands of Anderson and Wilson the collection flows together seamlessly as if chanting individually and in chorus. Meet the artists…
Ella Gonzales is a Filipina-Canadian artist currently based in Toronto. Her practice paces between painting and Computer-Aided Design (CAD). She is intensely interested in space making. She derives inspiration from family photos and core memories. Her abstract, layered images are wrought on textiles reflective of the Filipino diaspora.
David Merritt is an artist based in London, Ontario, and it is the place he has always returned to. He is Professor Emeritus at Western University. His meticulous work is process driven, as evidenced by the journals in his studio, drawings and ideas collected over thousands of days and many decades.
Émilie Régnier is a Canadian-Haitian artist currently based in Montreal, where she was born. Most of her childhood was spent in Gabon, and she has spent many years of her life living and working in Dakar, Bamako, and Abidjan. Her compelling work focuses on textiles and multi-media projects exploring identity and family.
Shannie Tomassini is a sculptor currently based in Montreal. A veteran of artist residencies around the world, her work reflects many influences, her place-making constructions utilizing found as well as hand-made objects, she is like a brilliant magpie telling complex tales.
Inside. Outside. Of. may be viewed at The Art Gallery of Mississauga through April 13, 2025, and then at The Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop’s University in Sherbrooke, QC, October 17 – December 13, 2025.
