INTRODUCTION

Dear Gallery 1265 community,

I am very pleasantly delighted to be writing the introduction for the fourth edition of our magazine. As part of Gallery’s many initiatives throughout the past year, I am very happy to see our initiatives continue to grow. As always, for those unfamiliar, the magazines by Gallery 1265 are part semesterly reporting of what we did and part another artistic outlet, where we inform you about all the spectacles happening with Gallery 1265 and keep your soul fed.

This semester we have welcomed Kristy Zhang and Dan Pham to our team as Curator and Public Engagement Coordinator respectively; while Arthur Hamdani and Vy Le carried on their positions as Exhibitions Coordinator and Communications Director.

Our opening exhibition for the semester and the year was a brilliant duo show by Shenwei Hu and Thea Vu-Nguyen. Shen & Thea’s duo show was an expansion on their previous exhibition, Seasons, which won U of T COVID-19 Student Engagement Award. Part nostalgic reminiscing part optimistic dreaming, the duo show was an emotional exhibition full of life and colour by great skill.

Our second exhibition for the year was the third iteration of Gallery 1265’s Annual Themed Exhibition, titled Home. In this multi-medium exhibition, 11 artists explored the concept of home from many perspectives, unpacking the trauma, intimacy, growth and the perpetuity of the loaded theme. We were very happy to welcome many new faces in the Gallery as well as some familiar faces. Once again, this iteration of the exhibition was made possible thanks to the I.D.E.A.S grant by the Department of Arts, Culture and Media at UTSC.

Another very exciting project we have undertaken was to schedule Ujwal Mantha’s award winning The Patchwork House of Night to tour different locations at UTSC before it goes internationally. Ujwal is a recent graduate of UTSC, and has created a very unique body of work throughout his undergraduate studies. He has illustrated a sociology dictionary for UofT Library, socio-historical maps of UTSC and more recently, his inner world. On a very similar tone, The Patchwork House of Night–which is my favorite work by Ujwal to date–is a very intimate peek into aging and living, will be on view on the AA building’s 3rd floor and will move into UTSC Library.

On a more different note, while we were not hanging up artworks on the walls, our team worked very hard and worked with many students, departmental staff and different bodies at UofT to bring you great programming and much needed renovation to the gallery for next semester. Please continue to visit and support us next semester for three exciting solo shows, three public artwork projects, and an art festival unlike any other to finish the year.

Hope to see you at the Gallery, Polen

UJWAL MANTHAL’S