Golem
Matthew Thomson
29 January - 29 April 2012

The Niagara Artists Centre presents Golem, a cross discipline exhibition by Matthew Thomson. Matthew creates and methodically deconstructs mutations establishing a relationship between creator and created.

Matthew uses a combination of sculpture, print and video to relate the performance of creation. His process includes creating 3D printed sculptures, which are inspired through his formation of monsters made of found ephemera of the city. He presents documentation of the process to create a performance and affirm the connection between himself and his Golems.

The Niagara Artists Centre’s Flea Market Gallery exhibits work by local and national contemporary visual artists. A variety of art works including traditional two-dimensional painting, photography, installations, performance and video are presented. The Flea Market Gallery is open every Sunday!

Matthew Thomson was born in 1982, in Aylmer, Quebec. He moved to Montreal at the age of 17, and in 2002, graduated with honours from Dawson College in Illustration in Design. He then pursued a Bachelors degree at Concordia University, which he finished in 2007. For the subsequent 3 years, Matthew worked as a restoration woodworker and continued his artistic practice until he decided to pursue his Masters degree. Matthew is currently in his second year in the Masters of Fine Arts program at Concordia University.

Cultural Debris
A Flea Market Art Exhibit

Presented by the Niagara Artists Centre
In a booth at the Factory Outlet Flea Market
(at the corner of Wall and Elm Streets)
46 Turner Crescent, St. Catharines

Opening Reception Sunday 15 May at 1pm
Open every Sunday from 9am – 4pm
through until September

St. Catharines—Exhibit of Contemporary Art Opens in Flea Market.

The Niagara Artists Centre continues a series of exhibitions in its satellite flea market gallery with a show by Pt. Colborne artist Doug Carter. Called Cultural Debris, the exhibit is a collection of new work that Carter has created by manipulating and assembling objects he has found in Niagara’s largest emporium of cast-off goods, the Factory Outlet Flea Market. As he explains, “it’s a veritable archaeological dig into the past several decades of Western pop culture”. Carter’s exhibit responds to a range of considerations including the waste generated by a throw-away society as well as the redolence and nostalgia that lost objects hold.

NAC has been presenting work in the Flea Market Gallery since October 2010. “There are all sorts of assumptions about who contemporary art is for and where it should be found,” says NAC’s Minister of Energy, Minds and Resources, Stephen Remus, “we work to make the exciting ideas being shared through visual art available to everyone in places you wouldn’t expect”.

Doug Carter
Doug Carter was born and educated in Hamilton and Dundas, Ontario. He creates constructions, drawings, prints, and paintings. Doug is a long-time participant in the Hamilton and area visual art scene participating in many group exhibitions as well as having several solo exhibitions since his art career began in 1973. A past president of the Hamilton Artists Inc. from 1994 through 2004, he is also the former administrator and curator of the non-profit Carnegie Gallery in Dundas. In 2005, Doug moved to live and work in Pt. Colborne. He is currently a member of the James North Art Collective of Hamilton.

Niagara Hermitage
A project by Swizzle Studio

The Niagara Heritage is pleased to announce some special programming in December. On Sunday 12 December, Swizzle Foundation trustees Christine Cosby and Robert Elliott will be offering two presentations about the Niagara Hermitage project.

2 pm - Value Village and the Value of Art
Robert Elliott will discuss the roles expert opinion and social position play in the valuation of art. There will be a Q&A session following the lecture.
3 pm - Rescue Art and flea market tour
Christine Cosby will talk about her reasons for collecting and the nature of "rescue art". This will be followed by a short tour through the flea market, where Cosby will point out artworks and talk to vendors.

Both events are free.

Website with exhibition preview
Audio tour/podcast here
Short video

The Niagara Hermitage is open at the Factory Outlet Flea Market in St. Catharines, every Sunday until 19 December 2010.

Every Sunday 12-4
Factory Outlet Flea Market
46 Turner Crescent (just off HWY 406)
St. Catharines, ON

Presented by the Swizzle Foundation, Niagara Artists Centre and Fisheye Corp.

HERMITAGE SETS UP SHOP IN NIAGARA, WELL SORT OF…

NAC has established the region’s newest visual art exhibition space. Located in the peninsula’s most popular flea market, this modest 8ft by 8ft gallery (the size of a market booth) will be programmed by NAC and will exhibit local and national contemporary artists. “Yogi Berra said, ‘If people don’t come out to the ballpark, no one is going to stop them,’ ” explains Stephen Remus, NAC’s Minister of Energy, Minds and Resources. “So, we’re taking the ballpark to them. We have a sizable core audience who frequent the exhibits and events at our gallery downtown, but we thought, ‘let’s get out where the people are’; 2,500 people go through that flea market every Sunday.” The project is largely made possible through the benevolence of Kelly Foote and Scott Sweitzer of the Factory Outlet Flea Market who donated a booth for the project.

The first artists to show in the space are Swizzle Studio’s Christine Cosby and Rob Elliott of Toronto. This duo has cast themselves as beneficent trustees of the fictional Swizzle Foundation www.swizzlefoundation.com. Transforming the single stall gallery into a European-style art museum, their installation features many of the physical attributes of St. Petersburg’s famous Hermitage Gallery – gilded frames, damask wall treatments, salon-style hanging – as well as such modern public museum fixtures as a recorded audio tour and security cameras. To listen to the audio tour visit this link: www.swizzlefoundation.com/audio-tour

The art work on display may not have been recognized as having much monetary value or historic significance, but it’s these notions that the artists aim to explore: who determines value and who writes history. The artwork ranges from amateur paintings to mass-produced Atomic Era crafts such as paint-by-numbers, needle-point, and liquid embroidery.  The Niagara Hermitage is a starting point for a conversation about the nature of museums, of collections, of art valuation, and of expected uses of space.

For more information or to interview the artists, contact Stephen Remus by phone or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Swizzle Studio
Swizzle Studio has worked with the Niagara Artists Centre since 2007. Rob Elliott produced the site-specific installation Hatchery in Winter 2008. Christine Cosby curated the collaborative textile project (The Return of) 3-D Exquisite Corpse in January 2008. www.swizzle.ca