Maryse Larivière
Where Wild Flowers Grow
exhibition
11.04–09.05.2015



OPENING RECEPTION
18.04.15, 12–5pm

LOCATION
1468 King Street West
Toronto (in the backyard)



Kunstverein Toronto presents Where Wild Flowers Grow, a new exhibition and publication by artist Maryse Larivière. The book compiles for the first time a selection of Larivière’s stories, poems and dialogues; these texts extend into the exhibition, translated as sculpture, collage, sound and performance. Three of these dialogues and monologues have been recorded on the occasion of the exhibition—Be Your Tears Wet?, read by Vera Frenkel and Liz Peterson, The Sun by Deragh Campbell, and Character Paintings by Dexter Storey. These recordings are played from sculptures placed within a cottage at King and Jameson, alongside other new works.

As an artist and author Larivière channels voices, finding moments of surprising honesty and strangeness between unlikely people, materials and histories. She revises past and future conversations with the world and the art world, pushing the emotional centre of each encounter. Her new work in Where Wild Flowers Grow speaks to being in relation, to the agency of artists, to poets and women, and to the capacities of language where it meets power, vulnerability and passion. As always, passion comes before reason.

Maryse Larivière’s practice crosses art, literature, politics and theory; it takes the form of text, performance, sculpture, collage and video. Her work has been presented at Susan Hobbs, Toronto; Galerie Maguire, Montreal; Battat Contemporary, Montreal; CCA, Glasgow; and Parker Branch, London. Originally from Montreal, Larivière received her MFA from Guelph University. She is currently a PhD candidate in Art & Visual Culture at the University of Western Ontario, specializing in art writing and artist’s novels.

This exhibition is possible thanks to Kei Ng, Susan Storey, Dexter Storey, Deragh Campbell, Vera Frenkel, Liz Peterson, Mitchell Akiyama, Neil Klassen, Danielle St-Amour, Lotte Schröder and Laura Pappa, the Ontario Arts Council, and the support of all Kunstverein members.


View exhibition documentation