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Queeries into History: The Love of Loring and Wyle

Emily Norry

September 8, 2017 - October 14, 2017

Essay by Sam Roberts

September 8 – October 14, 2017

Opening Reception: Friday, September 8, 7-11pm

Emily Norry

Download Essay by Sam Roberts

This series by Emily Norry explores the lives of Toronto artists Frances Loring and Florence Wyle and their lifetime spent together. Through this show, Norry looks to expand upon her series Queeries into History with a more in depth exploration of these two artists. Where Queeries into History was meant to outline an entire ancestry of queer women through time, The Love of Loring and Wyle is a biography of two beloved but often forgotten artists that helped shape Toronto’s art world, while never wavering in their commitment to one another.

Using watercolour printmaking, Norry takes historical photos of Loring and Wyle’s careers and personal lives, paints them in colour and transfers them onto fabric. These leave images cracked, faded, and sometimes warped from the originals; this is reflective of the way history is often forgotten and overwritten in modern view. These images are then embellished, with embroidery, patterning and dried flowers as a way to describe intimacy, relationships and the way the past is reframed and added to in the present. The works will explore their sculptures, time as students, associations with arts societies, and their more then 50 year relationship.

This exhibition and its accompanying essay were created during Xpace’s summer residency program for OCAD U graduates.

Documentation by Yuula Benivolski