princess princess at SPIN
(156-158 Bathurst ) to September 23.
416-530-7656. Rating: NNN
take five strong women artists,ask them to make work about their inner princess, and if you’re lucky you’ll get a show that’s humorous, self-deprecating and sweet.At least that’s the way it’s spinning off at SPIN. Martha Fleury portrays the artist as a young brat in erased-graphite “drawings” on canvas that are fixed with wax in which barely visible texts are scrawled. The images are based on old family photos of children taken when Fleury was a little girl, and she’s not afraid to show the squabbling kids at their worst.
Cathy Daley plays with formal abstract concepts (blocks of solid black gouache on translucent vellum) and vintage illustrations (think very early Andy Warhol) in her priceless Little Black Dress.
And Fiona Smyth’s single contribution, the two-panel Pea (as in The Princess And The), finds a perfect balance between her trademark zine illustration style and the surrealistic direction she’s taking in her fine art practice.
Bonnie Lewis’s cartoony little girls kick ass with Hello Kitty cuteness. And if California wunderkind Georganne Deen only shipped up one work, the faux-bejewelled Glorybox, it isn’t a total tragedy. Deen’s ultimate princess act was to ship her art in such a way that SPIN had to pay GST on the work’s full retail value.
