For immediate release: April 8, 2011

Carol Wainio: “Self – forgetful”

New Paintings
April 9 -30, 2011

Opening Reception: April 9, Artist Present 2-5pm


Le Maitre chat (harvest) #3 2010 acrylic on canvas 44” x 66”

The Wynick/Tuck Gallery is pleased to present Carol Wainio “Self-forgetful”, an exhibition of new paintings, running from April 8 to April 30, 2011. The opening reception will be held on Saturday, April 8 from 2 to 5pm, with the artist in attendance.

Wainio says of her work: “Illustration has always been viewed as a poor second cousin to “high art”, a copy of sorts. The idea of illustration as nodal point or interstice between image and text, between high art and low, between original and copy, as well as broad notions of “representation” are some of the themes in this new body of work.

Focusing on the kind of transformation expressed historically through fairy tale, and more recently through “development”, acquisition, and mediation, the work explores the role that painting may still play in opening up a discursive space around history, material culture, narrative and storytelling, the idea of the copy, globalization, and historical forms of representation, both “high art” and vernacular.

Drawing in part on archival research in historical illustration, including Walter Benjamin ’ s Children ’ s Book Collection, the work also considers mechanical reproduction through the phenomenon of early hand-copied illustrations, and explores how these, in the context of Benjamin ’ s views on storytelling, broaden our notions of the copy.

Characters from archival collections of early tales pass through farmers ’ fields in the Asian subcontinent and other settings, where contemporary conditions may still resemble the time of Charles Perrault, or they appear with their doubles or copies in woven grounds reminiscent of crumpled decorative pages from early books.”

The show coincides with the public gallery exhibition, Carol Wainio:The Book, organized and circulated by Carleton University Art Gallery in Ottawa, curated by Carleton’s Director, Diana Nemiroff and currently on view at the Varley Art Gallery in Markham

Nemiroff states in her forward for the catalogue: “Carol Wainio belongs to the generation of Canadian painters whose artistic practice was influenced by the conceptual and political currents permeating the world in the 1970’s and engendered an approach to painting that was, on the one hand, marked by abstract and expressionist formal concerns and, on the other, by a desire to use painting as a means to think about representation itself as well as real-world issues. Her paintings are visually and conceptually full: layers with references to the past and present; to different regimes of knowledge; to popular and high art and their attendant modes of representation. And as paintings, they are emphatically constructed, drawing attention to the shaping and delineating character of painting and line, and shifting with ease between one spatial register and another, as well as between representational styles, each with its social, historical, and artistic connotations”.

Born in Sarnia Ontario, Carol Wainio now lives and works in Ottawa, where she is Adjunct Professor in the Visual Arts department at the University of Ottawa. She has exhibited widely in Canada and internationally, including at the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Venice Biennale, and the Galleria Communale d’Arte Moderna in Bologna. In Canada her paintings are found in major corporate, private, and public collections.

Special Event:

Visit the Varley:
Sunday, April 10

Meet at the Wynick/Tuck Gallery at 11am to visit Carol Wainio “Self-forgetful”, and then hop on the art bus at noon to visit Carol Wainio: The Book at the Varley. Fee includes admission, tour and panel discussion.

Date: Sunday, April 10, 2011-04-08
Time: 11:00am – 5:00pm
Admission: $20 (members $15)

Panel Discussion: Painting Today
Artists Carol Wainio, Monica Tap and Shirley Wiitasalo discuss their personal practices and issues in contemporary painting. Moderated by art critic Sarah Milroy.
Date: Sunday, April 10, 2011
Time: 2:00pm – 4:00pm
Admission: $15 (members $10)