SHOW OPENS AT GEVIK GALLERY ON SATURDAY (tomorrow)
Two galleries is Just not enough for the genuis of the late Claire Wilks
TWO seperate Yorkville exhibitions of the work of the late Claire Wilks opening in nine days in two different galleries on the same street must be a record of some sort for a Toronto artist!
Wilks was a figurative artist and once called women’s bodies her 'chosen landscape,' but she did not consider this a political statement: "The female form is my line, the form lives in the brain of my finger." Yet, during the 1970s her erotic
Wilk’s devotion to the naked female form kept her largely out of most Toronto galleries in the70s and 80’s. The novelist Timothy Findley wrote: “Looking at these drawings, women are going to know what it is to be a man; men are going to know what it is to be a woman. Nothing greater can be achieved but that we enter one another’s flesh through one another’s eyes. This is the ultimate compassion.”
Author Barry Callaghan (pictured) the partner of the late held a private Salon opening for the late artist at the Heliconian Club. Friends, club members, and art lovers, and poets and attended this retrospective The Genius of Claire Wilks.
Well-known critic and curator of the McMichael Gallery, Sarah Milroy gave a talk on her work.
Two days later a public opening was held. Musicans and poets who were friends with the aritst attended and performed. Pictures from that event are shown below. Show is jazz composer pianist Joe Sealy and Juno Award winning guitarist Dominic Mancuso perform the late artist's favourite compositions.
An Opening Reception will occur on Saturday June 11, 2022 with a Discussion with Sarah Milroy at 3pm.
Gallery Gevik is a 12 Hazelton Ave, the Heliconian Club is located across the street at 35 Hazelton Avenue in Toronto's Yorkville district
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