Ossington Community Association Local Goods and Services Auction

You can only get there from here  - 'hoodie portrait 02'

oil, acrylic and pastel on canvas

16 x 16 inches

2012                          

value: $1000 

This haunting, gorgeous piece is from Gillian Ile's 'You can only get there from here' series.  From her site: The series "highlights the potential of adolescents as the future agents of change. It is this potential, not the actualization that is portrayed. In this case, the protagonists are outside looking in at the idealizations that simultaneously repel and attract. Each piece's content combines undeniable allure and simultaneous visceral threat or repulsion. It is this conflict that is captured as a suspended moment of indecision: the primal urge to rebel colliding with the vague notion of desire for that very same thing. The inevitability of change as an innate inclination of all systems is imagined through the selective content as well as with "interruptions", where discordant media effects ooze through and out of the pieces."

More info on the series is available here.

Gillian Iles is a Toronto-based artist who exhibits locally and internationally in commercial and artist-run galleries. She has exhibited in cities such as New York, Brooklyn, Chicago, Miami, Montreal and Toronto. She has exhibited with Katharine Mulherin Gallery, curator Mia Nielsen and Torres-Porcelli Gallery. Gillian, as a founding member, participated in the creation of two co-operative artist-run galleries in Toronto - Propeller and Loop Galleries. Her work has been highlighted in Mix Magazine, Toronto Life Magazine, Now Magazine as well as the National Post, The Globe and Mail and Now Magazine. She is featured in the book Carte Blanche Volume 2: Painting that surveys the current state of painting in Canada. Gillian is part of Blunt Collective, which is a group of artists investigating the role of representation and narrative in painting. Gillian is currently teaching at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Sheridan College and the Toronto School of Art. Her work compares and contrasts individuals' public and private persona and the notion of a social normal in this age of instantaneous global dissemination of personal information and public ideology. She has been interested specifically in media's manufacturing of and presentation of "events" and the creation of public interpretation compared to personal experience. Recently, her series Part Of challenges the choice of Subject. The role of the unseen, the unrelated, the banal, and the spaces in between are used to create images, which specifically contrast with and deconstruct the popularly accepted notion of the Subject.