“DECADE — 10 Years of KM Projects” runs to Oct 18. Thu-Sun noon-5pm. 1080 Queen W. 416-537-8822. Closing reception Sat 4-7pm. Gladstone Art Bar, 1214 Queen W. http://www.katharinemulherin.com
Ten years is not a long time, a fact of which Katharine Mulherin seems well aware. To mark a decade of her “projects” — beginning with Bus Gallery back in ’98, and continuing with her West Queen West staples at 1080 and 1086 — she has pulled together a salon-style show, inviting everyone who has ever exhibited with her to contribute, which adds up to about 140 artists. It’s almost as if nothing’s changed. The small scale necessitated by the approach means that a lot of the works are defiantly scrappy; you’d hardly know by a quick glance at the stuffed walls that most of these artists have made major career strides since art school, where Mulherin picked many of them up. Mulherin’s eye and aesthetic have remained remarkably consistent, though also quite broad: if she has been a local champion of a new guard of young painters and drawers, it is apparent both that her labour and theirs has a long way to go if it is to be deemed a movement with any significance or purpose. Still, there are a plenty of joys, like offerings by Mike Bayne (impressive, as always) and amusing one-offs such as Seth Scriver’s theme-appropriate a fake roster of artists for Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects (pictured).
This is not just an occasion for mirth, however. Acknowledging the gentrification she has seen firsthand, Mulherin posts pieces of paper on her window (below which, on her sill, lies a giant pile of postcards from past shows, like a demolished building) that read “Here today, gone tomorrow.” Also posted is a quote, worth repeating, from Christopher Hitchens, which would seem self-aggrandizing if the show itself weren’t so humble: “Those who don’t live in such threatened districts nonetheless have a stake in this quarrel and some skin in this game, because on the day when everywhere looks like everywhere else we shall all be very much impoverished, and not only that but—more impoverishingly still—we will be unable to express or even understand or depict what we have lost.”