Homage

Homage gathers a suite of Sasaki’s recent photographs depicting bacterial cultures grown from swabs of artist tools once used by the Group of Seven and Tom Thomson, historical artifacts long held in the McMichael’s collection. These large-scale works reveal enlarged details of those cultures, reflecting the artist’s wry obsession with Canada’s canonical painters and his revisiting of the tradition-bound genre of landscape painting through the lens of contemporary photography. Sasaki’s works will be on view alongside the historical artists’ tools. A short video documenting the process of swabbing these archival items, under the direction of McMichael conservator Alison Douglas, will also be presented.

In the century since the Group of Seven’s first exhibition in 1920, the legacy of these extraordinary artists has loomed large over the Canadian art landscape, and that of Canadians more generally. The McMichael, as both the spiritual home of the Group of Seven and one of the leading repositories of their work, has a special responsibility not only to share and preserve their legacies, but also to continually challenge, re-examine, and articulate their relevance for future generations. Homage is an opportunity for a contemporary Canadian artist to pay tribute to the “founding fathers” of Canadian art, and to explore the challenge of coming after, of finding a fresh relationship to the traditions of the past.

Jon Sasaki is a Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist with a keen interest in the Canadian landscape genre, its history, and its role in contemporary art practice. While formally training as a landscape painter (BFA Mount Allison University, 1996) he began his investigation into the mythologization of the Group of Seven, and the trope of the Romantic individual confronting nature. Today he continues this inquiry in video, photography, sculpture, performance, and installation, exploring ways the landscape genre dovetails with broader questions around our national identity. Sasaki’s work has been exhibited at the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (Toronto, ON) and numerous permanent public art commissions. Jon is represented by Clint Roenisch Gallery in Toronto.

“We’re blessed to be working with Jon Sasaki on this project, as he places our collection of the Group of Seven’s artist tools under examination,” says McMichael Chief Curator Sarah Milroy. “Before Sasaki was anything else, he was a painter, and the Group of Seven his inspiration. His photographs can be read as near-comic in their reverence, yet they also express a devotion to those who have come before. This exhibition demonstrates the McMichael’s role not only as a site of Canadian artistic pilgrimage and reverence, but also as an experimental space for contemporary artists.”