Anthea Black
Anthea Black is an Albertan artist, writer, art publisher whose work has been exhibited across North America and Europe. Anthea Black has studied through the Exchange Program at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (2002), holds a BFA with Distinction in drawing (2003) from the Alberta College of Art and Design (ACAD) and an MFA (2012) from the University of Western Ontario. She has participated in residencies at Banff Centre through the Media and Visual Arts Program, Small Projects, Tromso, Norway, and Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, Netherlands. Anthea Black held curatorial positions at the Art Gallery of Alberta and ACAD's Illingworth Kerr Gallery and was the Director of Calgary's Stride Gallery. She is the co-editor of two books, HANDBOOK: Supporting Queer and Trans Students in Art and Design Education (2018) and The New Politics of the Handmade: Craft, Art and Design Education (2018), and designer and co-publisher of HIV Howler: Transmitting Art + Activism artist newspaper with Jessica Whitbread. She is based in Toronto, Canada and Oakland, USA where she teaches print media, book arts and graduate fine arts at California College of the Arts.
Artist statement for Looking for love in all the wrong places postering project:
Looking for love in all the wrong places is an independent, artist-curatorial project by Anthea Black that commissions and produces limited edition silkscreen posters and multiples by queer artists for public spaces. The project was initiated as a response to the isolation of working as a queer artist in Alberta, and since 2006, Looking for love in all the wrong places has included collaborations with artists Daryl Vocat (Toronto), Michelle Campos Castillo (Edmonton), Megan Morman and Cindy Baker (Saskatoon), Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan (Winnipeg/Toronto), Wednesday Lupypciw (Calgary), with a special postcard edition street-sign in memory of Jasmine Valentina Herron became the first multiple in the series. The project has been disseminated in Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, Toronto, Montréal, Portland, New York City, Rochester, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Dallas and Austin. The project continues as a site for collaboration, exhibition and community building that enables the production of a distinctly queer dialogue in Alberta and arts communities and public spaces and beyond. Each one of the works in the series expands dialogue around queer public safety, strategies for networking, how gentrification affects queer populations, and mass queer exodus from smaller urban centres to cities with larger queer communities. The posters are various in their meanings, but tap into broader histories of artist-initiated publishing of multiples and editioned projects and intervention of artistic practices into public spaces. Posters in the series are produced in editions of 100-150, with archival print editions of 20, and multiples are produced in variable editions.
Compiled in 2021
Artist statement for Looking for love in all the wrong places postering project:
Looking for love in all the wrong places is an independent, artist-curatorial project by Anthea Black that commissions and produces limited edition silkscreen posters and multiples by queer artists for public spaces. The project was initiated as a response to the isolation of working as a queer artist in Alberta, and since 2006, Looking for love in all the wrong places has included collaborations with artists Daryl Vocat (Toronto), Michelle Campos Castillo (Edmonton), Megan Morman and Cindy Baker (Saskatoon), Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan (Winnipeg/Toronto), Wednesday Lupypciw (Calgary), with a special postcard edition street-sign in memory of Jasmine Valentina Herron became the first multiple in the series. The project has been disseminated in Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, Toronto, Montréal, Portland, New York City, Rochester, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Dallas and Austin. The project continues as a site for collaboration, exhibition and community building that enables the production of a distinctly queer dialogue in Alberta and arts communities and public spaces and beyond. Each one of the works in the series expands dialogue around queer public safety, strategies for networking, how gentrification affects queer populations, and mass queer exodus from smaller urban centres to cities with larger queer communities. The posters are various in their meanings, but tap into broader histories of artist-initiated publishing of multiples and editioned projects and intervention of artistic practices into public spaces. Posters in the series are produced in editions of 100-150, with archival print editions of 20, and multiples are produced in variable editions.
Compiled in 2021