Tak Pham

Space on Screen

Please check BUMP Television’s schedule for screening time.

Artists: Callum Cooper, Patrick Bernatchez, Benny Hunter, Abedar Kamgari, Anna Minervina, David Rokeby, Kim Taewan, and Xavier Veilhan.

Space on Screen programme tracks ways that the format of video has preserved and presented the abstract experience of spatiality. More than just a technical consideration of composition, the format of video (both analogue and digital) has allowed viewers to dream, feel, imagine, and temporarily transport themselves outside of their spatio-temporal constraints. From travel shows to war-zones reports, videographers and directors are tasked with capturing and distilling not only the action but also the spatiality of the environment that it takes place in through advanced technology (i.e: drones, VR, etc.) and techniques (i.e: one shot, first-person perspective, etc.). All efforts share the same objective to implant in the viewers the effects mentioned above. “Space on Screen” programme will highlight innovative approaches to presenting space, as well as, timely topics that needs more attention through the BUMPTV’s platform.

A BUMP Television programme.

March 1 - March 15, 2018

187 Augusta Avenue, Toronto

Artists: Heidi Cho, Meera Sethi, Manny Trinh, Michael Veneracion, Xiaojing Yan, and Shellie Zhang.

Treating the mom-and-pop shop as a point of departure,CONVENIENCE is an exhibition that questions the notions of efficiency, passivity, & proximity stereotypically associated with Asian immigrant life.

Co-curated by Belinda Kwan.

Presented by Myseum: Intersections.

Documentation by Morris Lum.

February 15 - April 14, 2018

Pari Nadimi Gallery, Toronto

Artists: Ivan Alifan, Matilda Aslizadeh, Adrienne Crossman, John Holland, and Anna Kovler.

Decadence brings together works by artists with diverse practices to investigate consumerism through the act of over-consuming. Using the aesthetic of excess as an inspiration, the exhibition captures moments of desire that exist in the fine line separating satisfaction and depreciation. Desire prolongs satisfaction; it discounts the individual's state of comfort and well-being into incremental steps of exploitation to one's self-control. The exhibition's curatorial premise describes these instances as indulgences, but not gratifications of desire. It acknowledges the struggle to be content with having "just-enough" in contemporary society. The world market always demands more from us as its consumers. In Decadence, the politics of the world are distilled into flavourful displays of desire as the subjects have gone past satisfaction and head towards depreciation.

Artists Alifan, Aslizadeh, Crossman, Holland, and Kovler provide an interdisciplinary and wide reference for the illustration of this immanent decline caused by the act of over indulging. Through the works, the exhibition seeks to speak to a multitude of issues including exploitation of resources, environmental responsibility, ethical consumerism, and ethics in the age of technology. In an excessive display of flavourful visuals, Decadence entices viewers to look closer at the display and presentation of glamour in various subjects. The glorification of excess creates a jaunty environment , where the viewers can enjoy the presentation while catching glimpses of their own decay, and of their societies.

Documentation by Laura Findlay

September 30 - November 1, 2017

OCAD University, Toronto 

Artists: Aylan Couchie, Carrie Gates, Jean-Sébastien Gauthier, Basia Goszczynska, Feather Metsch, Farrah-Marie Miranda, Caroline Monnet and Skawennati

Indigenous survivance, urbanization and so much more are on the menu at OCAD University’s 2017 Nuit Blanche program titled, Tonight’s Special: Bannock, Mille-Feuille and Berries. Curated by Cree Métis artist and curator Jason Baerg and historian, curator and OCAD U alumnus Tak Pham.

Tonight’s Special draws inspiration from a range of cultural culinary pleasures – from the complex richness of a French mille-feuille pastry, to a hearty Indigenous buffalo stew. The program conjures complex discussions of Toronto’s varied cultures and histories reflected in our multicultural community.

Through new media experimentation and interactive engagements, the exhibiting artists aestheticize excessive synthetic materials to question our relationship to the surrounding environment. While the artworks are socio/enviro/political in nature, they are also colourful, pulsing and engaging.

This year’s Nuit Blanche program at OCAD University sprawls across the university’s expanded campus. Discover projects down the McCaul Street corridor, starting at Butterfield Park by the main building at 100 McCaul, and then head south towards the south campus on Richmond Street West alongside the university’s newly launched professional gallery.

Presented by Onsite Gallery

September 30 - October 31, 2017

Riverdale Gallery, Toronto

Artists: Tia Cavanagh, Novka Cosovic, Lina Faroussi, Layne Hinton, Jieun-June Kim, Shantel Miller, Emma K. Moore, Komi Olaf, Michelle Peraza, Monique Resnick, Karalyn Reuben, Faryal Shehzad, Maryam Zaraimajin

Living Mosaic is a two-day celebratory event and month long exhibition that offers a fresh and unusual take on Canadian identity. The exhibition aims to pay tribute to the varying stories of origin that lend vibrancy into our collective society, specifically highlighting Indigenous and immigrant histories in Canada. Featuring the work of thirteen local artists, Living Mosaic represents a broad spectrum of experience and historical perspectives that together acknowledge the past, celebrate the present, and look toward building a bright future. 

Co-curated with Hayley Dawson

Photo credit: Abby Ho

Supported by Culture Days Ontario and Ontario 150 Community Celebration Program

March - April 2016

Xpace Cultural Center, Toronto 

Artists: Ronnie Clarke, Marlon Kroll, Sophia Oppel, and Tommy Truong

VPN to IRL explores how our virtual relationships mediate our perception of reality, and the role of technology in contemporary living. Through four unique media and installation projects, the exhibition transforms Xpace’s gallery into a Virtual Private Network (VPN) that will extend the Internet experience beyond the common visualization of data on computer screens. The artists will immerse the visitor’s body within a web of connections, where constant experiential feedback among them will construct a new reality. The visitor’s engagement and navigation through exhibition will question the ethics of the Internet, and examines its collateral physical consequences.

Download Curatorial Essay

Presented in partnership with Images Festival.

March 2016

Open Gallery, OCAD University, Toronto 

Artists: Lizz Aston, Layne Hinton, Marina Fathalla, and Carson Teal

Theatre of Disjunctions responds to the disappearance of historic architecture in due to socio-political turmoil, inadequate maintenance and negligence. Local artists Lizz Aston, Marina Fathalla, Layne Hinton and Carson Teal help rethink architectural preservation through curatorial practice. The exhibition re-examines the relationship between art and politics during an investigation of Toronto theatre architecture and its contribution to the city’s gentrification effort in early 1990s. The exhibition stages a comprehensive experience speaking to the conditions of people who are marginalized and rejected in the history of modernization. By juxtaposing the history of Toronto’s urban development to one of Winnipeg, each artwork allows moments of contemplation and reflection inside the gallery. Viewers will have an opportunity to position themselves among different lines of narratives that have come to shape up the place and space that they are inhabiting.

Download Curatorial Thesis

October - November, 2016 

Y+ contemporary, Scarborough 

Artists: Rouzbeh Akhbari and Ash Moniz, Benny Hunter, and Mariam Magsi

Logs explores how personal identity affects our ways of moving through space and places, and how these movements form our perceptions of reality. Examining the theme of movement, migration, trade of both humans and nonhumans that are fueled by the demands of hyper-capitalism, Logs gestures at the Canadian history of logging (a practice that fueled capitalism and supported colonialism), the use of logs and rafts as a mode of transportation across water and land, and the material logs that archive various histories of movements.

October 2015 

Art Toronto, Metro Convention Centre, Toronto

Artists:  Michael Badour, Cat Bleumke, Atleigh Homma, Maxwell Hyett, Rebecca Ladds, Sarah Letovsky, Kesang Nanglu, Kirsten Plewes, Molly Prime, Alex R. M. Thompson, Kelly Uyeda and Jennifer Wigmore.

Co-curated with Barbora Raceviciute with assistance from Janine Arellano and Hannah Zanovello. 

October 14 - November 30, 2015

Montgomery's Inn, Etobicoke, Toronto

Photos by Clement Edokpayi

A community exhibition dedicated to the vendors and farmers of the Montgomery's Inn's Market Days program. 

October 31 - November 4, 2014

Graduate Gallery, OCAD University, Toronto

Artists: Valerie Carew, Mille Isrealsen, Wensi Li, Bindu Mehra, Amy Meleca, Esmaa Mohamoud, Yasemin Oncu, Ryan Pechnick, Tamara Skubovius-Igharas, Ashley Snook, Kimberley White, Jennifer Wigmore, Richard Williams, and Garnet Willis.

thresholds is an open investigation into the contingencies of human experience and expression through various forms and formats of art, media and design. In particular, thresholds explores how the interplay between the absence and presence of the body marks the negotiation of physical, political and/or psychic spaces, and considers how we might interpret contested meanings of difference as both liminal and mediated. In order to highlight and critically engage states of emergence, absence, transformation, being and becoming, thresholds offers an assemblage of diverse artistic works that collectively challenge the mutable boundaries of space, time, emotion, identity, ideology, perception, technology and the body.   

The curators of Collective 7511 are: Archana Dalmia, Jennifer Lorraine Fraser, Suzanne Fulbrook, Erica Manetta, Tak Pham, Barbora Raceviciute, Alana Traficante, Kimberley White, and Sylvia Zhang.

November 18 - December 1 2015

Open Gallery, OCAD University, Toronto

Artists: Doug Back & Sara Bradley, Judith Doyle, Kate Hartman, Layne Hinton, Michael Page, Norman White.

Influenc(Ed.) Machines is the result of primary curatorial research by students of International Collaboration Studio, a new Criticism and Curatorial Practice course taught by Professor Jennifer Rudder. The students researched the Photo Electric Arts Department of OCAD U in the 1970s — a catalyst in the development of new media and electronic art in Toronto. The exhibition revealed a legacy at OCAD U beginning with artist and Professor Norman White teaching Doug Back, who became faculty and taught Layne Hinton (and many others.)

Curated with Robin Goldberg, Matt Kyba, Kate Murfin, Treva Pullen, 
Renee Stephens.