A Toronto art critics review of the Royal Ontario Museum exhibition:
Three years ago, Joan Butterfield curated the first-ever Caribana Art Exhibit in a cavernous rental space in the Distillery District. Putting together a show of 60 artists is work enough, but for Butterfield and a crew of game volunteers, the sweating started again in earnest once the show ended.
The owner of the space wanted it back for the next event — and fast. “We had to take the whole thing down the next day,” Butterfield laughed. “It was terrible.”
“Paradise,” Garett Campbell-Wilson: Vancouver’s Campbell-Wilson trained as a painter at the Art Institute of Boston, and his impressionistic paintings have a dream-like quality that sites them as neither strictly representational nor abstract. Campbell-Wilson showed in Toronto for the first time last year during the Jazz Festival at the Cultural Expressions art gallery.
How times change! The next year, Caribana struck a deal with the Royal Ontario Museum for a modest-sized gallery to house the show. And this year, for the first time, Butterfield’s labours are on display in the museum’s vast Bronfman Hall.
Consisting of more than 7,000 sq. ft. and 160 artists, this year’s installment, titled “From the Soul,” is not only the biggest juried show of African Canadian artists she’s been able to mount so far, it’s most likely the biggest this country has ever seen.
Artists here range from those Butterfield has known and worked with for a decade or more to those fresh out of school. “We wanted to play with that mix,” she said. What’s more, the field is culled from submissions from coast to coast, as well as a guest artist from Bermuda, Wayne De Silva.
“We have artists from Ottawa, from Vancouver,” said Butterfield. “You have to appreciate that it’s very difficult for black art to make it to the mainstream. Being somewhere like this not only elevates the work but the whole community.”
The show at the ROM is a sprawling array of vibrant colours. The artworks are grouped together beneath the soaring ceilings of Bronfman Hall. Higher up the walls, wildly gaudy Caribana costumes are splayed as festive cultural signifiers. They are all part, Butterfield says, of a greater whole.
For the first time, it’s not just paintings, but sculptures and ceramics.
“It’s the first time I’ve really had the space to show these things,” she says.
Last week, Butterfield got to see her show fully installed for the first time. The moment will stay with her for a long while. “I’ve been promising them for years: ‘I’m going to get you there.’ And we’re finally here,” she says. “It’s big in every sense of the word.”
Learn More About Garett Campbell-Wilson
Garett Campbell-Wilson is a creative strategist and digital marketer, sharing his expertise and experience in art and technology to help businesses thrive. As an artist at @gcamwilstudio and marketing consultant at @cerebrummg, he explores the powerful connection between creativity and business success.
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