MARCH 4-28, 2004
By the way, Vivenza’s new exhibition in the Project Room of the Lonsdale Gallery, presents a selection of book works, dating from 1988 to 2004.
In the early eighties Francesca Vivenza, best known for her installations, has started producing book works, small three-dimensional works (objects poètiques) and collages, which are part of her research on themes of travel, migration, conquest, and cultural dislocation.
Since 1995 Vivenza has been invited to participate in international group exhibitions of visual poetry at Il Gabbiano, a gallery in La Spezia, Italy. Il Gabbiano is very well known in international circles for its association with Fluxus, and with international artists close to the FluxusÌ modus operandi, including major Italian contemporary artists, such as Rotella, Fioroni, Bentivoglio. The exhibitions tour Italy, and are shown in Finland, Holland, Cyprus, Egypt, Australia. In January 2003, EXERCISES IN STYLE, 99 variations on Mademoiselle RiviËre by J.A.D. Ingres, an exhibition based on the 1947 book by Queneau (translated in Italian by Umberto. Eco), was presented at the Italian Cultural Institute in Toronto. In 1993, Vivenza co-curated with W. Mark Sutherland The Order of Things (An International FAX Project). With W. Mark Sutherland, Vivenza is organizing – and participates in – Metalogos, an exhibition of visual poetry and sound works to be shown in La Spezia and Bari, Italy, May-November 2004. The exhibition has received the support of The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, and it will tour Ontario in 2005.
Vivenza graduated at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera in Milan, Italy, and her works have been exhibited in Canada and internationally since 1970. From 1992 to 1998 she was also the Canadian editor for Next Arte e Cultura, an international art magazine published in Rome, Italy.
In 2003, Vivenza was invited by The Tree Museum, Muskoka, Ontario, and produced Outpost, an outdoors installation for the exhibition Shelter Inside Out. In February 2004, Vivenza has hosted Home Invasion, videos by artists. Vivenza works in Toronto and Italy, and is represented by the Lonsdale Gallery, Toronto.
Vivenza would like to thank WARC and the Ontario Arts Council for the Exhibition Assistance Grant, Don Taylor, who book-binds the quasi-impossible, and John Dickson, who understands and straightens my meandering instructions, for building the tables..