M A N D A T E
Symbiosis n. (biol.) the intimate association of two dissimilar organisms from which each organism benefits [Mod L. fr Gk symbiosis, to live together]
Symbiosis is a multi-disciplinary arts collective committed to the integration of various disciplines - performance, video, installation, new media, painting and sculpture - within the context of site-specific non-traditional exhibition spaces.
The collectives previous art interventions in compelling sites such as a nineteenth century church, a twentieth century cosmetic surgery clinic, and a turn-of-the-millennium banking institution, provided an environment which encouraged dialogue between audience, artworks, site and conceptual ideas of space.
H I S T O R Y
In the early 1990's galleries and artist-run centres in Toronto were increasingly institutionalised and inaccessible - an era which predated current trends of 'off-site' gallery programming. Michael Alstad & Steve Topping responded to this challenge by forming the Symbiosis Collective as a multi-disciplinary group of artists dedicated to mounting site-specific exhibitions that re-utilised institutional environments in order to assemble new narratives.
The core members of Symbiosis include: Michael Alstad, Steve Topping, Veronica Verkley, R.M. Vaughan, Barbara Greczny, Bartley Harnett, Janet Hethrington, Harold Alegria-Ortiz, Martha Eleen, Jaxon McDade, Brian Wagner and Maureen Raike. A number of splinter groups have also been initiated by Symbiosis Artists, including Year01, Urban Biology, The Hoarding Project, antenna collective and The Sync Festivals.
EXHIBITION CHRONOLOGY
SYMBIOSIS - 511 King Street West, December 1992
The opus exhibition took place in the crypt - a basement in an old office building which once housed Saturday Night Magazine. Narrow hallways, vaulted rooms and dark cubby holes and niches served to exhibit artwork dealing with notions of displacement, shelter, underground esthetics and animality.
SYMBIOSIS 2 - 1087 Queen Street West, November 1993
For the second exhibition the collective took over two floors of the Great Hall - a nineteenth century building that once housed the Toronto School of Art and the Music Gallery. During the three week run twenty five rooms, including hallways and washrooms, were used for installations and artworks. Musical performances, poetry readings and plays were held on the opening and closing nights. The show evolved into a political and social event with proceeds from the opening night fund raiser dedicated to the Toronto People with Aids Foundation (PWA).
SYMBIOSIS - The Clinic 215 Victoria Street, April 1995
Symbiosis took over a site that had previously been occupied by The Institute for Restorative, Cosmetic & Liposuction Surgery, whose owners saw the urgency to relocate following the negative publicity and subsequent inquest into the death of their patient Toni Sullivan.
The Clinic was the first opportunity for Symbiosis to present a unified perspective on themes such as body image, beauty-fetishism, the medical industrial complex and its ethical shortcomings. The space was turned into a virtual clinic with most of the abandoned surgical equipment incorporated into the artist's works. Limited edition hand silkscreened artist books were created and distributed by Printed Matter and ICA Bookshop and Artexte.
SYMBIOSIS - Flaring Nigeria: Artists Against Crude Repression
Partisan Gallery, December 1995
Responding to the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, the Nigerian writer and political activist, the Symbiosis Collective organised an exhibition/event to raise awareness and protest against the human rights violations perpetrated by the Nigerian government and Shell Petroleum Co. against the Ogoni citizens of the Niger Delta. Post card-formatted artworks created by Toronto artists were mailed to the Nigerian Consulate in Ottawa and Shell Corporation in Calgary for the duration of one year.
THE BANK OF SYMBIOSIS
Ontario Hydro Building, Oct.2 - 25th, 1997
The Symbiosis Collective and four guest artists; Mathieu Beasejour and Victoria Stanton from Montreal, Jerelyn Hanrahan from Switzerland, and Ken Hayes from Toronto - collaborated in a project that explored the complex economic and emotional relationship between bank and client, institution and individual. Launched at a former Royal Bank Branch, The Bank of Symbiosis became a repository of ideas about 'economy' and surplus, run-amuck capitalism and the frailty of social institutions. The twenty five pieces installed at the site, spoke of the increasing anxiety of banks to make more profits and of people whose lives - and value - become affected as fluctuations of markets shape social mores.
The corporate solidity of this modernist architectural landmark, spoke of the level of abstraction that underscores the financial paradigm and - within it, the individual's loss of both material and spiritual experiences.
The Bank of Symbiosis has been described as parodic, confessional, Marxist, capitalist, angry whimsical, ironic, loud, inscrutable, passive and infectious. A catalogue and video documenting the exhibition is available. The Symbiosis Collective gives special thanks to the generous support of our sponsors.
P R E S S C L I P S
SYMBIOSIS: The Clinic
In Spite of it all, of a total rejection of the seductive, this is a very happy show. The art is politically engaged without being accusatory, the artists at ease operating materially in a theoretical environment.
Oliver Girling, Eye Magazine: April 27, 1995
The symbiotic relationship between doctor and patient gone wrong - with themes such as the ambiguous intimacy of the act of diagnosis, the dehumanisation of the AIDS patient and the impossibility of living up to societal views of the female body - are just some of the views represented.
Donna Lypchuck, Extra Magazine: April 20, 1995
In choosing to create a body of work at this particular location, the artists in Symbiosis explored some of the ramifications of aspiring to an ideal human form. Using video, sculpture, performance and painting, they examined the whys and the wherebys of a society in which eating disorders are widespread and euphemisms such as cosmetic surgery disguise the fact that healthy bodies are disassembled in the pursuit of fashion.
Virginnia Macdonnell, Matriart: Volume 6 Number 2
The Bank of Symbiosis
The Symbiosis Collective has taken over a vacant Royal Bank outlet downtown, and it's more fun by far than your regular branch. With many of the original signs, partitions and fixtures battered but intact, it is an ideal setting for this chaotic, off-the-wall examination of the root of all evil.
Gillian MacKay, The Globe and Mail: October 11, 1997
In the back of the bank they use the vaults...they have a violinist at one point who is playing behind the metal grill in the vault...its playing with the idea that serenity has to be enclosed...the other vault contains a lovely piece which deals with the recent Swiss Banking issues which prints up the names of all of those holders of the accounts that lie dormant and has those names exquisitley written up on the wall and lit in a reverential manner...
Karen Wells, CBC Radio - This Morning: October 20, 1997
The interplay between exhibit and exhibiting space, between a woman playing a violin and the vault in which she plays, between a video monitor and the filing cabinet in which it rests, does much to explode our notions of Western museum culture, where pieces of art are displayed devoid of context, reverently lighted and irrevocably sterilised.
Eric Pietersma, Varsity Review: October 29, 1997
