“In Your Face” was a People’s Portrait Project (2006), an exhibition of portraits collected from the general public to celebrate the individuality and diversity of Canada.
As a volunteer, Shelagh Barrington remembers spending hours working with staff and other volunteers gluing these incredibly varied 4×6 inch portraits onto 4×8 foot panels in preparation for mounting on the walls all around the AGO.
Artists from three Toronto art-based community organizations contributed 400 portraits to the Art Gallery of Ontario’s In Your Face exhibition. This collaboration allows inner-city youth and adults living in poverty to connect with the Gallery and have their art displayed in the AGO.
“Our goal is to bring these artists into the Gallery, to see their own contributions on display and feel a connection to this place. By providing these art-based organizations with AGO memberships, we hope the artists will return again and again to explore other parts of the Gallery,” says Bev Carret, the AGO’s manager of government and community relations, who also conceived the partnership.
The three community organizations – Adelaide Women’s Art Studio, Art Heart and Sketch –provided studio space, workshops and a safe environment to those interested in making art. They made it possible for various groups, such as women who have experienced homelessness, street kids and the Regent Park community, to participate in creating the portraits on display.
A very popular installation, In Your Face is a collection of personal portraits created by the public on 4×6 inch cards and mailed into the Gallery for exhibition. Nearly 20,000 submissions have been received since the exhibit opened in August 2006. Over 4,000 portraits remained on display, featuring such unusual items as tinfoil, human hair, modelling clay, fabric, wood, papier mâché, rug-hooking, crayon, magic marker, photography and collage.
In Your Face Aug 2006 to October 2007.
If you’d like to contribute a memory of exhibitions past, send along your submission (with pictures, if possible) to Anne Fleming, Volunteer Communications at [email protected]