Naoko Matsubara

• Opens July 16
• Exclusive Members’ Access: July 17-18

A career-spanning presentation of 20 exuberant woodcut prints by one of Canada’s leading printmakers, in her first solo exhibition at the AGO, Naoko Matsubara demonstrates her masterful handling of the medium, exploring personal and art historical subjects. Composed of vibrant, complementary colours animated with incisions and wood grain, anchoring the exhibition is Tagasode (2014), a monumental 2 meter single-sheet print, recalling an ikō – a piece of furniture on which a kimono hangs.  

Naoko Matsubara is a distinguished Japanese-Canadian woodcut print artist based in Oakville, Ontario. She was born in 1937 on Shikoku Island into a Shinto family, and grew up in Kyoto. She completed a BFA at the Kyoto Academy of Fine Art in 1960 and was a Fulbright Scholar at what is now Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, where she completed her MFA in 1962. Since 1960 Matsubara has had more than 75 solo exhibitions, in the USA, Canada, Japan, England, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Holland and Mexico.

*MUST WATCH: Make sure to watch the video documenting the artist, her life, work, studio and inspirations, in-gallery!

Allison Katz: Inner Momentum

• Opens July 19
• Exclusive Members’ Access: July 18

Recipient of the 2023 Gershon Iskowitz Prize at the AGO, Montreal-born, UK-based artist Allison Katz makes her AGO debut with an intimate presentation of new and recent works on canvas. Defying traditional categorization, her paintings merge realism with the fantastic, incorporating wordplay and literary, historical, and autobiographic details to upend viewers’ expectations.

Allison Katz was born in Montreal, Canada, in 1980 and currently lives and works in London, England. She studied Fine Arts at Concordia University in Montreal and received her MFA from Columbia University in New York. Katz’s work investigates the ways in which aesthetic practices link and absorb autobiography, information systems, graphic icons, and art history. Her diverse imagery, including roosters, cabbages, mouths, fairies and noses, appears as recurring signs that build a constellation of ideas and references, which transmute across the mediums of painting, posters, ceramics, and installations.