Shelagh Keeley @ The Power Plant, Toronto - "Film Notebooks 1985-2017" Exhibition

Shelagh Keeley 

Film Notebooks 1985-2017

The Power Plant, Toronto

Through September 14, 2025

Shelagh Keeley 

Still from Jardim do Ultramar / The Colonial Garden, 

Lisbon, Portugal, 2016

Film, 180 min 

Thanks to the Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon, Portugal 

and ifa-Galerie Stuttgart, Germany

© Shelagh Keeley, Courtesy the artist

At the core of Shelagh Keeley’s work is a drawing practice based on an intuitive and embodied response to readings and research in poetry, politics, cinema, and architecture. The artist applies the same approach to her work with film, where the moving image becomes a drawing notebook, a travel journal, an opportunity to bring the viewer into the spaces experienced by the artist and mediated through the lens of the hand-held camera. Since 1985, Shelagh Keeley has documented on film her encounters with gardens and uniquely built environments around the world. The resulting film notebooks quietly, yet poignantly, reveal the layered histories and contexts that created them at different moments in time. From the flamboyant artificiality of a desert oasis in Las Vegas to the discipline of a Zen Garden in Kyoto, and from a colonial garden in Lisbon to the largest European zoological-botanical garden in Stuttgart, the films invite us to contemplate the complexity and intangible essence–genius loci or spirit of the place–Shelagh Keeley felt in these places. Filmed while walking for hours at a time as a flâneuse, the moving image notebooks present an invitation for the viewer to become the artist as she draws with the camera, investigating and uncovering the visceral, hidden layers of these locations.

Curator: Adelina Vlas, Head of Curatorial Affairs

THE POWER PLANT Contemporary Art Gallery

231 Queens Quay West, Toronto, Ontario M5J2G8

www.thepowerplant.org

Shelagh Keeley: Film Notebooks 1985-2017

The Power Plant, Toronto, April 11 - September 14, 2025

Emmanuel Osahor @ The Power Plant, Toronto - "To dream of other places" Exhibition Curated by Adelina Vlas

Emmanuel Osahor 

To dream of other places

The Power Plant, Toronto

Through September 14, 2025

Emmanuel Osahor 

Room for two, 2023 

Oil on canvas 

Photo: Joseph Hartman  

© Emmanuel Osahor, courtesy The Power Plant

Emmanuel Osahor’s practice focuses on beauty as a necessity for survival, respite, and sanctuary. Known primarily for his paintings of lush, verdant gardenscapes—inspired by real and imagined locations—these works meditate upon the complicated histories of these sites that entail the domestication of lands, plants, and individuals alike. To dream of other places is the artist’s first major solo presentation in his home city of Toronto and includes paintings, drawings, prints, ceramic sculptures, and a new, site-specific photographic wallpaper. Conceived as a night garden, the exhibition presents Osahor’s work in a unique environment intended to immerse the viewer in a contemplative space where feelings of delight and sorrow coexist as reflections of human experience. The artist’s poetic yet critical approach to a subject that has been well represented throughout art history reflects a practice that is profoundly engaged with beauty, painting, and the everyday at a time when meaningful encounters with art are needed more than ever.

Curator: Adelina Vlas, Head of Curatorial Affairs

THE POWER PLANT Contemporary Art Gallery

231 Queens Quay West, Toronto, Ontario M5J2G8

www.thepowerplant.org

Emmanuel Osahor: To dream of other places

The Power Plant, Toronto, April 11 - September 14, 2025

Sandra Brewster @ The Power Plant, Toronto - Dense

Sandra Brewster: Dense 

The Power Plant, Toronto 

29 January - 1 May 2022

Sandra Brewster 

Roots 1 (detail), 2021

Photo-based transfer on pressure treated wood, 36x48 in.

Sandra Brewster 

Roots 2 (detail), 2021

Photo-based transfer on pressure treated wood, 36x48 in.

Sandra Brewster 

Roots 2 (detail), 2021

Photo-based transfer on pressure treated wood, 36x48 in.

 

Toronto-based Canadian artist Sandra Brewster has been invited to create a new site-specific installation at The Power Plant. Brewster will transform the light-flooded Clerestory into an arboreal landscape soaring across both sides of the space. Sandra Brewster’s photo-based gel transfers, installed directly onto the gallery’s walls, will envelop visitors in a lush atmosphere. The scratches and ridges in her weathered images reference profound identity shifts that Caribbean immigrants experience when arriving in Canada, the complex and layered experiences of whom Brewster has been consistently exploring throughout her practice. Outside the gallery, Sandra Brewster presents a new interactive sculpture commissioned by ArtworxTO A Place To Put Your Things, a swing set with a seat in the form of a couple’s kiss.

Sandra Brewster is a Canadian artist, born in Toronto where she is presently based.  Sandra Brewster has shown her work in solo exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2019); Or Gallery, Vancouver (2019); and Never Apart Gallery, Montreal (2017). She has participated in group exhibitions at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (2019); Mercer Union, Toronto (2018); Eastern Edge Gallery, St. John’s, (2016); and Allegheny Art Galleries, Meadville (2015). Her exhibition It’s all a blur… received the Gattuso Prize for outstanding featured exhibition of CONTACT Photography Festival 2017. In 2018, Sandra Brewster was the recipient of the Artist Prize from Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts, and she was an Artist-in-Residence at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Sandra Brewster holds a Masters of Visual Studies from the University of Toronto, and a BFA from York University, Toronto. 

Curated by Joséphine Denis, TD Curator of Education and Outreach Fellow, 2021-2023

THE POWER PLANT CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY

231 Queens Quay West, Toronto, Ontario M5J 2G8

www.thepowerplant.org

Sasha Huber @ The Power Plant, Toronto - YOU NAME IT

Sasha Huber: YOU NAME IT 

The Power Plant, Toronto

29 January - 1 May 2022 

Sasha Huber

Still of Rentyhorn, 2008

Video, 4:30 mins

Courtesy the artist and Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma 

Photo: Siro Micheroli

Sasha Huber

Shooting Back: Louis Agassiz, 2008

Metal staples shot into abandoned wood boards, 150 x 115 cm 

Courtesy the artist and Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma

 

Swiss-Haitian-Finnish artist SASHA HUBER uses performance, photography, and film, among other media, to investigate colonial residues left in the environment. YOU NAME IT, Huber’s first solo show in North America, will feature over a decade’s worth of work prompted by the cultural and political activist campaign “Demounting Louis Agassiz,” which seeks to redress the racist legacy of the Swiss-born naturalist and glaciologist Louis Agassiz (1807–1873). Huber’s artworks challenge the terms by which we remember, asking not only who and what we memorialize, but also, and more importantly, how we do so. The exhibition is initiated, organized​, and circulated by The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, Canada​, in collaboration with Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam, Netherlands; Autograph ABP, London, United Kingdom; and Turku Museum, Finland. 

Sasha Huber

Mother Throat, 2017

Video, 10:30 mins

Throat singing by Silla: Charlotte Qamaniq (Iglulik, NU) and

Cynthia Pitsiulak (Kimmirut, NU)

Supported by Arts Promotion Centre Finland, AVEK

Courtesy the artist

Sasha Huber 

Still of Louis Who? What you should know about Louis Agassiz, 2010

Video, 3:50 mins

Commissioned by the Capacete in Rio de Janeiro for the 29th São Paulo Biennale 2010

Photo: Calé. Courtesy the artist

Sasha Huber

Still of Karakia - The Resetting Ceremony, 2015

Video, 5:20 mins

Supported by AVEK, Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Te Whare Hēra Wellington International Artist Residency

Courtesy the artist

 

Sasha Huber is a Swiss-Haitian-Finnish artist who lives and works in Helsinki, Finland. Recent solo exhibitions include Artivist Lab, Prague (2020); Centro Helio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro (2019); and Forum Box, Helsinki (2016). She has participated in international exhibitions, including the 56th Venice Biennale (2015); 19th Biennale of Sydney (2014); and 29th São Paulo Biennial (2010). Sasha Huber is completing her PhD at the Department of Art and Media at the Zurich University of the Arts, and she holds an MA from the University of Art and Design Helsinki. 

Curated by Noor Alé, Associate Curator.

 

THE POWER PLANT CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY

231 Queens Quay West, Toronto, Ontario M5J 2G8

www.thepowerplant.org

Omar Ba @ The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto

Omar Ba, Same Dream 
The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto 
26 January - 12 May 2019

Omar Ba's work engages with some of the most urgent issues of our time: the growing inequality of wealth and power globally, questions around immigration, and our changing relationship with the natural world. His penchant for depicting personal narratives alongside collective ones speaks to the "in-between" condition of his work, as he splits his time between Dakar, Senegal and Geneva, Switzerland, and blends the visual texture of both places through his work. Omar Ba regularly draws from and intertwines a range of elements -the historical and contemporary, figurative and abstract imagery- from African and European cultures, as well as the techniques and tools he employs, including corrugated cardboard and canvas, paintbrushes and his hands. He prepares his surfaces-whether cardboard, canvas or wall-with a black ground, upon which he layers a vivid palette dominated by primary colours. The paintings teem with details as micro-worlds exist within larger constellations, oscillating between bold planes of colour and intricate outlines. Largely symbolic, the figures and forms portrayed refer not to specific individuals, but rather are open to universal narratives.

Same Dream brings together several of Omar Ba's paintings depicting dictators and authority figures, who lead corrupt and violent régimes across the African continent and in other parts of the world, particularly where thé legacies of colonialism persist. At times represented as hybrid beasts-part human, part animal -these despotic warlords are typically enveloped in an abundance of lush flora and fauna. Indeed, nature becomes a continuous force across Omar Ba's oeuvre. The recurring biomorphic shapes are often inspired by Senegal's dazzling coastal environment in which Omar Ba grew up. In conversation with this group of paintings, the exhibition also presents works that reveal Omar Ba's affinity for portraying the strength of the human spirit-depictions of youth who, regardless of where they are, share some of the same dreams for the future. For the exhibition at The Power Plant, Omar Ba has developed a new large-scale work directly on one of the gallery walls, exploring a recurrent motif of birth, death and reincarnation across different cultures today.

The world of Omar Ba's painting is a hybrid one, ultimately evoking a shared cosmogony between humans, plants and animals.

Same Dream is Omar Ba's first institutional solo exhibition in North America.

Curator: Nabila Abdel Nabi, Associate Curator

The Power Plant 
Contemporary Art Gallery
231 Queens Quay West, Toronto, Ontario M5J2G8
www.thepowerplant.org