The Blackwood Gallery UTM’s Own
A special place where art, community, and expression meet at UTM
How do you sense and comprehend the complexity of forces that shape our world?
The words jump out from one of the light boxes scattered around the campus. Numerous thought-provoking messages can be found on these, but where do they come from? The source lies in the Kaneff Center, where we find the Blackwood Gallery. The gallery has operated since 1969, but changed its name in 1992 from the Erindale College Art Gallery to honor the Canadian artist David Blackwood for his contributions to the arts at UTM. The gallery aims to lower barriers and increase access to the arts by putting on several exhibitions throughout the year.
Currently, the STIM CINEMA exhibition can be found at both locations on campus: at Kaneff and at the e-Gallery in the CC building. Compiled by Christine Shaw, the exhibit compiles personal profiles of its creators, the Neurocultures Collective, and their research, mixing cinema and stimming. The e-Gallery contains various papers to read, as well as a wall display and stim toys. The main gallery displays short clips with eye-tracking technology to demonstrate different levels of stimulation, and it also combines the repetitive nature of stimming with the history of cinema through three zoetropes.
Marissa Maennling, a fourth-year student in the Art and Art History specialist program, was willing to provide more insight into the gallery.
The Medium: What is your role at the Blackwood?
Marissa Meannling: I work as a work-study position, so I do gallery attendant shifts, I help with public outreach, and kind of act as an ambassador for the gallery. I help with facilitating the gallery operations, and kind of, you know, putting together the final bits of things to do with the exhibitions and events.
TM: What is the purpose of the Blackwood Gallery?
MM: I would say that the Blackwood Gallery is dedicated to presenting contemporary art and interdisciplinary research practices, and particularly platforming art that has to do with various social justice concerns and issues.
TM: Are the boards around campus also part of the Blackwood Gallery?
MM: Those are our light boxes. So they kind of act as a separate sort of cycle. We switch them out every now and again, but they’re like these vinyl graphics of either film stills or photography, all sorts of things. Sometimes they’re related to the exhibitions, and then sometimes they’re separate.
TM: Are the exhibitions student-led?
MM: A lot of our exhibitions center around artists, both international and specific to the GTA-J region. So, kind of a wide variety, but occasionally, we do student exhibitions. Our spring-summer exhibitions are typically focused around the graduating class for art and art history. So students in their graduating year will present their studio work in our exhibitions. Then, the exhibitions are partly put together by the curating classes in the art history stream.
TM: Thank you for sharing your perspective with The Medium.
Detailed explanations of the gallery’s ideas can be found on their website, where the information is easily obtainable for students, no matter where they are. The Blackwood receives numerous visitors every day, drawn in by outreach programs, the gallery’s SDUK publications, or other interactive elements around the campus, such as the light boxes. This brings us back to the question: How do you sense and comprehend the complexity of forces that shape our world? The answer appears to be the Blackwood Gallery itself, with its accessible, inclusive, and curious approach to the forces that run our world.
