The Power Plant announces its Summer 2024 exhibition season, focusing on the work of two established Canadian artists
Coming to The Power Plant this May are June Clark: Witness, the first survey exhibition of the Toronto-based artist, and Terence Gower: Embassy, an ambitious research-based project.
The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery is delighted to announce its upcoming Summer 2024 exhibition season with two comprehensive solo exhibitions dedicated to the work of Canadian artists June Clark and Terence Gower.
Both exhibitions present a significant insight into these artists’ careers and include works showcased here for the first time. Through a range of media, including sculpture, photography, installation, and video, Clark and Gower explore how our shared and collective histories have formed us and led to the unique conditions of our time. The exhibitions run from May 3 to August 11, 2024. Admission is free.
“It is a great privilege to present these two thought-provoking exhibitions at The Power Plant this summer. At this moment in time, the voices and visions of artists are needed more than ever to offer insights and new perspectives into recent histories, both personal and collective. We hope that Witness and Embassy will inspire new ways of looking at and engaging with the world.”
— Adelina Vlas, Head of Curatorial Affairs
An engaging lineup of free public programs will accompany the Summer 2024 exhibitions, with visitors invited to participate in activities, including tours, talks, and workshops. Extended hours on Thursday evenings throughout the summer months will allow visitors to make the most of the longer days by the waterfront. We welcome families to join Power Kids sessions, our free creative workshops for children aged 7–12 on select Sundays and explore the Power Plant Creative Hub on the second floor of the gallery. View all programming details in The Power Plant’s Event Calendar.
June Clark, Harlem Quilt, 1997 (detail). Photo transfers on fabric, light fixtures. Photo: Silvia Ros. Image courtesy of the artist and Daniel Faria Gallery
June Clark: Witness
June Clark: is the first-ever survey of the Toronto-based artist, who, since the late 1960s, has developed a unique and groundbreaking practice spanning photo-based work, text, collage, installation, and sculptural assemblages. Clark was born in Harlem, New York and immigrated to Canada in 1968, and subsequently made Toronto her home. Questions of identity formation and the connection to our points of origin fuel her practice. In this deeply personal exhibition, the artist explores how history, memory, and identity—both individual and collective—have established the familial and artistic lineages that shape her work.
June Clark: Witness brings together four significant bodies of work that stretch from the 1990s to the present, many of them seen here for the first time. These include her formative installations Family Secrets, 1992, and Harlem Quilt, 1997, a series of photo-based works from 2004 titled 44 Thursdays in Paris, Perseverance Suite (a new project the artist began in 2021), and Homage, a collection of sculptural assemblages that, in Clark’s words, “gave me permission to be the artist I am today.”
June Clark: Witness is presented in tandem with another solo exhibition of the artist’s work at the Art Gallery of Ontario, focusing on Clark’s iconic series Unrequited Love.
Baghdad CS 1: United States Embassy, Baghdad, 1960. Josep Lluis Sert Papers, Graduate School of Design Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
Terence Gower: Embassy
Terence Gower: is the largest presentation in Canada of this ambitious research-based project by Terence Gower, who has lived and worked internationally for many years. The artist employs a range of media to investigate postwar material and intellectual histories, particularly as they connect to art and architecture.
The exhibition features over a decade’s worth of work stemming from his investigation into the diplomatic architecture of the United States. Four multi-part installations form a larger study of American embassy buildings that have played important roles in recent international events in Baghdad, Havana, and Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), as well as one unbuilt project for Ottawa. These expansive artistic constellations, including archival documents, sculptures, videos, and works on paper, are the outcome of the artist’s extensive research process.
Gower considers the exhibition itself as an embassy sent from the past, from a formative period in U.S. history where much of the current geopolitical landscape was formed. Considering the urgencies and uncertainties of our current moment, Terence Gower: Embassy asks how we might work with history to better understand the present.
June Clark: Witness and Terence Gower: Embassy exhibitions will be accompanied by comprehensive full-colour publications featuring new contributions by curators, authors, and other leading voices.
