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Allyson Mitchell: A girl's journey to the well of forbidden knowledge

While living in New York City earlier this year, Allyson Mitchell spent time at the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn. Her experiences there prompted mixed responses. The extent of the Archives’ holdings was inspiring and overwhelming, yet she found it troubling to see how hard women have had to work to collect and preserve their “herstory.”

A girl’s journey to the well of forbidden knowledge transforms the gallery space into a lesbian feminist library. One wall is lined with reproductions of drawings that Mitchell made to document and honour the books in the Archives’ holdings, the same books that have inspired her own visual arts practice. Her laborious renderings pay homage not only to the Lesbian Herstory Archives, but to all feminist presses, bookstores and libraries that have worked valiantly to advocate for the significance of women’s stories, histories and acts of resistance, often in the face of sexism, homophobia and financial constraints. Mitchell’s drawings also function as a memorial to the disappearing history of material texts that connect queer communities: as the printed page is increasingly threatened by the progression of digital publishing, more women’s publishers and book retailers are becoming extinct. Essential meeting places for lesbians, and for all women, are lost.

The sculptural figures – imposing in size, humorous in disposition, and completely exposed in their nudity – are made from papier mâché worked over store-bought mannequins. These figures are the archivists, the librarians, the students, the readers. They are arresting in their stature and state of undress, yet they are also whimsical and more than a little vulnerable. They join their countless naked sisters who already inhabit the AGO, their exaggerated genitalia serving to make the private public and questioning idealized depictions of nude and near naked women that have become the norm. They stand tall on a mirror as a new way to reflect femininity while they burn copies of Janson’s History of Art in defiance of the canon that would render them invisible.

Mitchell’s nudes are real bodied women, and the connection from their labia to the giant brain that hovers above them rearranges assumptions that men are governed by the brain and driven by rational thought and that women are governed by the body and driven by emotion.
About the artist:

Toronto-based Allyson Mitchell is a self-described “maximalist” artist who has gained international acclaim for her humorous yet uncompromising work, which explores feminist issues through a range of media including installation, film and sculpture. Using reclaimed textiles and cast-off crafts as her primary materials, she combines feminism and pop culture to play with contemporary ideas about sexuality, autobiography and the body. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and festivals across Canada, the US, Europe and Asia. She has also performed extensively with Pretty Porky and Pissed Off, a fat performance troupe, and has published both writing and music. She is an assistant professor in the School of Women’s Studies at York University in Toronto. Mitchell is represented by Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects.


For the fourth installment of the AGO’s Toronto Now series, Toronto-based artist Allyson Mitchell is transforming the Young Gallery into a lesbian feminist library with her installation A girl’s journey to the well of forbidden knowledge.

One Girl's Journey to the Well of Forbidden Knowledge will be installed as a solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario from October 2 to November 30, 201

opening details:
Time
Saturday, October 2 · 7:00pm - 10:00pm
Location
Art Gallery of Ontario - the Young Gallery (beside Frank Restaurant)
317 Dundas Street West
Toronto, ON

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Toronto Women's Bookstore needs new owners to step forward asap!

Update: February 26, 2010

Dear TWB community,

We want to thank you for all of the support you have given to the bookstore since we asked for your help in December. Without your donations and all of the shopping you have done we would have had no choice but to close down at the end of 2009, but because of you we are still standing!

We have almost met the fundraising goal we needed to reach in order to keep TWB open until May and we believed that things were looking up, but sadly in the last few months we have been faced with a new challenge which limits what kind of future is possible for the bookstore. The media attention which has resulted in so much support from all of you also brought our financial situation to the attention of our book suppliers, and with so many bookstores closing down in the past year still owing them money they are unwilling to take a risk on any business that is having trouble.

Since early January, the credit departments at a number of major Canadian book distributors have cancelled our accounts, put us on prepaid terms or cut our credit, and even cancelled all of our orders without ever talking to us to let us know that anything was wrong or give us a chance. We have worked at repairing those relationships but have been unable to convince our suppliers to reinstate our previous credit terms under the current circumstances. Without that credit, it will not be possible to continue the bulk of the university textbook sales that have made up about three quarters of our income for the past decade.

We have let our textbook suppliers know that the line they are taking is essentially working to close us down when we were actually getting back on our feet, and the response has been that this is a position they are taking with a number of stores as a result of the recent closures and the current economic situation, and they are not able or willing to make exceptions for TWB at this time. With this obstacle in place, as well as the steady overall decrease in textbook sales over the past several years, it is clear that a new direction is necessary in order to make the bookstore sustainable in the future.

Over the last five years TWB has also faced a number of internal challenges which have contributed to the current financial situation, including an unsustainably high turnover in managers and board members and an overall lack of clear governing structures. It has become apparent that what is needed in order for the bookstore to survive and be sustainable is to take the route many other feminist bookstores have taken before us and restructure to an ownership model which can provide continuity in oversight, financial credibility, and a focus on TWB's success as a business.

We have spent the past nine months working on getting TWB's finances re-organized, with sustainable staffing and operating budgets. Thanks to all of the hard work of the staff and board members and the support of the community, the bookstore is no longer facing bankruptcy, and we believe that with the consistency, structure, new direction and capital that an owner(s) would bring to the business, it has a very good chance of success.

In short, we are looking for one or more fabulous TWB-loving individuals who would like to buy the bookstore for pennies and run it as owners! We are open to the possibility of a single owner or multiple owners and would also gladly connect any individuals who would be interested in going in as part of a group. If you think you, or someone you know, might just be who we are looking for then please contact us. We will be more than happy to give more detailed financial and organizational information to anyone who is seriously interested.

Our deadline for reaching an agreement on the sale of the bookstore is April 15th, 2010. Sadly, if we are not able to find anyone who agrees to become the proud new owner of the Toronto Women's Bookstore by then, we will have no choice but to voluntarily wind the business down for the end of May.

We realize that this is not the update many of you were expecting and it is certainly not as uplifting as we would have wished, but we do want you all to know that your support and donations have given TWB a good chance at a future, and even if we don't survive we hope that you will feel that we have honoured your support by trying our best to keep this wonderful feminist institution alive.

TWB