Mange Ta Ville

Monastiraki was paid a visit by Mange Ta Ville, a local French-language web based program.
Here are some screen caps.
http://www.mangetaville.tv/

Impromptu Altar

Altars just seem to happen in this place. here's one done by my friend Pamela last year.

Freezer paper stencil workshop

My friend Elly conducted a workshop here and taught us to make EZ stencils with freezerpaper & fabric paint.

Some Views

Photos by JR Carpenter

10 Years ! A Card Is Born !

Fiona Smyth

We are proud to present the amazing work of legendary canadian artist Fiona Smyth !


This exhibit (The Wilding) is a continuation of ideas that artist Fiona Smyth has been exploring in her paintings and comics over the last 22 years. The exhibit is a distillation of her expression of femaleness. It reveals a futuristic world populated by female beings and hermaphrodites who are divided into warring factions as their post apocalyptic world is bombarded by jewel-like meteors. In addition to these outer attacks and dangers, the characters are under invasion from within, as their bodies face the after-effects of genetic modification, viral invasions and new unknown traumas. This forms the central concept of the show - survival of the female form and psyche while under constant barrage from outside and within.

This work is largely influenced by manga, which are Japanese comics. In 2004 Ms. Smyth received an OAC grant to travel to Japan and create a new body of ink drawings inspired by the overall experience, traditional ink drawing and manga. In manga, the exploitation and manipulation of girls and women's bodies is limitless and generally filtered through the male gaze. Depictions of all manner of fantastic abuse and transgression are juxtaposed with those of equally unrealistic deification and idealization in these comics. Fiona's work has also dealt graphically with the transformative and complex nature of women's bodies. The Wilding reveals a manifesto of feminine chaos and anarchic survival with its violent and beautiful beings expressing brutality and empathy.

Other inspiration for these works came from outsider artist Henry Darger's surreal drawings and paintings of gender-bending children, Japanese horror films such as Ringu, and the collaborative ink murals of Iri and Toshi Maruki depicting the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Wilding is further explanation of Fiona Smyth's artistic thesis: how trauma lives in the tissue of the body and is revealed emotionally and physically outside of traditional language.

Fiona Smyth is an artist exploring popular and alternative cultural icons and imagery. Her work always probes these timely societal, sometime intense and always relevant topics with a sense of humour, wonder and catastrophic consequence. She also employs surrealist, abstractionist, spiritual, feminist and pro-sexual strategies to achieve her unique aesthetic. Her use of media also reflects this range of interest by using different formats from which to engage her audience including comics, illustration, painting, animation, music covers, web-based art and her fabulous murals.
Smyth has exhibited in Taichung/Taiwan, Venice/Lido, Jelollabuk-Do/South Korea, New York City, Winnipeg and most recently at the Spin Gallery in Toronto.

TYPHON Launch Party

Legendary New York cartoonist, illustrator and man about town Danny Hellman will be launching & signing his new TYPHON comix anthology at Monastiraki Gallery Friday the 3rd of October from 7 pm to 10 pm, in conjunction with POP Montreal Festival's Art Pop series.

Gracing the walls will be kick ass pervo comic art from 12 of the anthologies contributors including Danny Hellman, Fiona Smyth, R. Sikoryak, Victor Cayro, Rupert Bottenberg, Bruno Nadelin, Rick Trembles, Dalton Web, Nicolas Gazin, Tobias Tak, Lorenz Peter and Eric Theriault.

Man Drawing Salon : The Exhibition

Join us August 5 through August 31st as our drawing collective covers the walls of Monastiraki with our hideously lovely bastard children.

Adriana Riquers Work & Opening

Adriana Riquer

Mexican sculpter Adriana Riquer will be gracing the walls and floors of Monastiraki with her accumulations and patterns.

"Foresia, the name of this project, is the relationship between two animals of different species that help each other, a kind of mutually beneficial transportation system. This show is about friendship and sharing spaces and objects. I used some of the things kept in the store that are usually meant to support something (racks and table bases) and I used them to hold some designs relating to certain natural patterns made from cheap craft and decorative materials." - A.R.

Best Of Montreal 2008

Read Rick Trembles Strip outlining recent victory !

http://www.snubdom.com/billystore.htm

Rupert Bottenberg & R. Suicide

New Works by these two veteran players of the Montreal Comix scene
will be featured and limited edition silk screened prints of the artists work will also be available for purchase.

May 6 - June 30, 2008

Vernissage & print sale :
Tuesday, May 6, 17hr - 19hr.

Sangwich Board

More Right Before The Big Clean-Up

Right Before The Big Clean-Up

The Art Itself