UPDATE

Monastiraki was planning a series of events and celebrations for our 20th anniversary, scheduled for autumn 2018.

Sadly we were struck with the unexpected and everything ground to a halt.

Micheal Mavreas, founder of the shop and my father, died suddenly on  September 23, 2018.

Needless to say, no one was in any mood to throw a party or to embark on new creative projects.

We hope to have a smaller, more casual celebration of this shops tenacity in the spring of 2019.

Thanks for your continued support,
Billy Mavreas

Monastiraki 20th Anniv Limited Edition Print by Raymond Biesinger

To help commemorate Monastiraki's 20th anniversary we asked award-winning illustrator, designer and all-around charming rocknroller Raymond Biesinger to design a poster for us!

This is what he came up with and we are thrilled beyond measure to make it available to our clients!

Please note all the fun details RB inserted into his interpretation of our shop of wonders!

Also, just to take the fun over the edge, this limited edition beauty is available in many assorted colours!

Look!

WE ARE TWENTY YEARS OLD

our 20th anniv sandwich board !

FESTIVITIES *** SPECIAL EVENTS *** NEW ANNOUNCEMENTS
COMING SEPTEMBER 2018 !

ASMA A KHAN & CLARA CONGDON

Asma A Khan / Clara Congdon

Vernissage Thursday May 10, 6 - 9pm
Exhibit runs May 3 - 27, 2018


Asma A Khan

I am a Pakistani Canadian artist/ sculptor. I grew up in Karachi, Pakistan and after finishing my Bachelors in Fine Arts, I moved to Europe before settling down in Montreal. Montreal has now been my home for the last two decades.

I attempt to create "thought forms" using a visual vocabulary that comes from observing plant life, bugs, crustaceans, human anatomy and the microscopic world. These thought forms are meant to express complex emotions in something other than words since we live in a time where language is overused, abused and the true, authentic meaning of a word can sometimes be lost. These thoughts forms are also meant to convey the incredible complexity of what the human mind considers simple in contrast to itself, in order to challenge the human ego with something like the complexity of form and structure found in a humble potato.


Clara Congdon - Possessions

Possessions is a series of hand-embroidered fabric collages created in response to a 19th-century medical reference book called Physician's Anatomical Aid. Each vital organ and major bone group was stitched as an exercise in valuing my body on my own terms. 

Clara Congdon works in Montreal and holds a BFA in Textiles from NSCAD University. She has recently exhibited in Halifax, Toronto, Montreal, and Iowa City.

5 Poets and a Little Bit of Wine

5 Poets and a Little Bit of Wine

Wednesday May 2 at 7pm
Monastiraki, Montreal

A night of readings and revelry a Monastiraki! 
With writers Jen Currin, Nicole Raziya Fong, Helen Guri, Kaie Kellough, and Emilie O'Brien.

Bios:

Jen Currin has published four books of poetry, including The Inquisition Yours, which won the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry in 2011; and School (2014), which was a finalist for three awards. Hider/Seeker (stories) is forthcoming from Anvil Press in the spring of 2018. She lives on the unceded territories of the Qayqayt Nation (New Westminster, BC), and teaches creative writing and English on the unceded territories of Kwantlen First Nation at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (Surrey, BC).

Helen Guri is the author of Match, published by Coach House Books in 2011 and shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry, as well as two chapbooks: Here Come the Waterworks and Microphone Lessons for Poets, both published by Book*hug. Her poems and essays exploring relation, ecology, sexuality, identity, and accountability have been published widely in Canada, as well as in the U.S., Australia, and Japan (in translation).

Nicole Raziya Fong lives in Montreal. Past work has appeared in publications including Cordite, Poetry is Dead and The Volta, enacted as a dance performance and compiled as a chapbook in the Poetry Will Be Made By All project. Her first book of poetry is forthcoming from Talonbooks in Spring 2019.

Kaie Kellough is a novelist, sound performer, and poet. His novel Accordéon, published in 2016, was shortlisted and written about. His work migrates between poetry and fiction, between Canada, South America, and the Caribbean, and between text and sound.

Emilie O’Brien is an artist, mother and art restorer living in Montreal. She currently uses sculpture, embroidery and text works to explore themes of connection and mutual dependence between ourselves and the world we live in.

Graham Hall - Secret Work / Travail Secret

GRAHAM HALL
SECRET WORK / TRAVAIL SECRET

In the course of a conversation we once had about the struggle for creative recognition, Billy Mavreas said to me “... why toil in obscurity, when you can work in secret?”. His clever reversal has stuck in my mind ever since.

This exhibition is a selection of work completed since 2016. Over the last two years or so I have squirrelled myself away in a small studio in Little Italy, and it has felt like working in secret. The building in which I have my studio is not one of those classic hives of creative endeavour, and I have often found myself the only person there. It has been isolating but in a good way. It has allowed me to retreat from the noise of the broader world, to focus on free experimentation and larger scales, and to fail from time to time.

The work on show at Monastiraki is somewhat transitional, moving between my previously exhibited paintings and those which I am currently developing. They are concerned largely with formal elements and principles like colour, shape and harmony, leavened with disruptive moves and veiled passages. There is a mystery to them and sometimes they seem to float. Their titles reflect an abiding interest in history and poetics, and through them, the canvases evoke elusive meaning in the hard reality of now.

GRAHAM HALL

SECRET WORK / TRAVAIL SECRET

Lors d’une conversation que Billy Mavreas et moi avons eu à propos de la difficulté de se faire connaitre dans le milieu des arts visuels, Billy m’a dit : « pourquoi œuvrer dans l’obscurité quand on peut travailler en secret? » Son revirement judicieux m'est depuis resté en tête.

Cette exposition présente une sélection d’œuvres réalisées depuis 2016. Au cours des deux dernières années, je me suis enfermé dans un petit atelier de la Petite Italie, où j’ai fréquemment eu l’impression de travailler en secret. L’immeuble dans lequel est situé mon atelier n’est pas un de ces centres bourdonnant d’activité créatrice, et je me suis souvent retrouvé à y travailler seul. Ça a eu un effet isolant, mais de façon positive. Cela m’a permis de me retirer du bruit du monde et de me concentrer sur l’expérimentation libre, les grands formats, et la possibilité d’échouer de temps à autre. 

Le travail présenté à Monastiraki est le résultat d’une période de transition entre des œuvres anciennement exposées et celles que je développe actuellement. Ces tableaux explorent principalement des idées plastiquescomme la couleur, les formes et l’harmonie, égayéesd’actions perturbatrices et de passages voilés. Ils sont mystérieux et ils semblent parfois flotter. Leurs titres reflètent un intérêt constant pour l’histoire et la poésie, et à travers eux les tableaux évoquent un sens insaisissable dans la dure réalité d'aujourd'hui.

Expo runs 4 - 27 april, 2018
Vernissage 6 april , 18 - 21hr

ROBERT DAYTON LAUNCHES THE EMPTY BED

The Empty Bed by Robert Dayton 
Montreal book launch with performance by 
The Canadian Romantic


Details
Robert Dayton will read excerpts from his brand new pen-and-ink heartbreak book The Empty Bed at the official Montreal launch party on Saturday, March 31st at 4 PM at Monastiraki. 
YEARS OF TEARS IN THE MAKING! 

Plus a special performance of The Canadian Romantic! 

Event is free with books available for your signed pleasure. PLUS LIMITED EDITION T SHIRTS PANTIES ETC!

The Empty Bed is a darkly funny pen-and-ink heartbreak book, a self-pitying lonely odyssey taking place after the end of romantic relationships. It is playful and mystical with many one page jokes of heavy truths in a loose narrative flow. As well, the book includes an interview with the author's Mother on divorce and death, an excerpt from the secret files of ghost-hunter Dr. Fourteen, and The Death Wish Guide To Loss. All of it rendered in quill and brush where words and pictures mingle freely revealing relatable yet unspoken content.

Robert Dayton is an interdisciplinary artist and writer. Comedy? Yes! His art and/or writing have appeared in the books Kid Power (Spectacular Optical), Lost in The Grooves (Routledge), Cinema Sewer (Fab) as well as The Onion, music magazine Roctober, international noise magazine Bananafish, and more. He was the host and interviewer for Hazlitt's National Magazine award winning series Pagelicker. As The Canadian Romantic, he manifests in video, performance, a book (Publication Studios), a doll and even a winking photo! His musical projects include song-and-dance duo Canned Hamm and July Fourth Toilet.

PRAISE FOR THE EMPTY BED
“Writer, artist, cartoonist, singer and performer Robert Dayton bluntly and humorously exposes the nerves and feels of a broken heart.” —Fiona Smyth, cartoonist, artist, and co-author of Sex is a Funny Word

“Robert's work on the stage and studio has always been both side-splittingly hilarious and goddamned distressing; working in the book format he offers up an additional, unexpected outcome — pure beauty!”
— Gregg Turkington, comedian

“The Empty Bed is a one-of-a-kind masterpiece! You can't stop yourself from blitzing through this wonder!”
—Guy Maddin, director of The Forbidden Room and My Winnipeg

“A blackly humorous descent into the depths of self-loathing, which emerges on the other end of ‘the wallows’ with a profound message of acceptance and hope.”—Kier-La Janisse, author, House of Psychotic Women

“I love The Empty Bed, it contains all of the best parts of what Robert does – on top of new heart-wrenching parts that I never knew he did!” —Dan Bejar, musician

“A brilliantly original, painfully hilarious, and surprisingly touching ode to love and loss.”
—Jodi Wille, director of The Source Family

THE EMPTY BED is available for order:
http://www.impulse-b.com/

Diane Moreau & Heidi Daehler - first art show of 2018 !

Diane Moreau 
Heidi Daehler

Vernissage Jeudi 8 Mars 2018
Expo 1 - 31 mars 2018

Monastiraki
5478 Saint-Laurent, Montreal, Quebec, H2T 1S1


Diane Moreau
Lignes de conduit

C’est la collecte d’objets trouvés lors de déambulations quotidiennes urbaines ou rurales, une invitation à ranimer le réel déchu. Aucune recherche de composition, aucune discrimination, c’est le hasard qui décide et les éléments, toujours déjà troués, s’enlignent au moment même de leur découverte pour devenir une chronique visuelle.
Je ramasse ce que le Petit Poucet aurait semé pour ne pas perdre sa route, je trouve la mienne enrichie de ce qui a été perdu ou jeté et ces objets découvrent une autre valeur.

Heidi Daehler

Montreal artist Heidi Daehler works in oil and acrylic paint to create representational works that situate human subjects and landscapes in emotional or existential contexts. Daehler has exhibited her works in solo and group shows in and about Montreal, and has completed dozens of commissioned paintings for commercial clients. Her works can be found in numerous private collections across Canada and the U.S., and in the U.K., France, and Mexico. Daehler holds a BFA in Studio Arts and a BA in Psychology (Concordia, 2006 and 1997).

FEBRUARY SCHEDULE

January Schedule

January 2018, We are open on Friday, Saturday and Sunday from noon until 6pm
or my appointment!