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Women Artists of the London Pride Art ShowBen Benedict, Chair/Curator of London, Ontario’s Pride Festival Art Exhibit 2010 introduces the pink elephant to the women artists of this year’s festival
"The annual Pride art exhibit began in 1991, ten years after London’s first Pride events in 1982.
It’s been a long journey but through that time it has grown, to a provincial wide juried exhibit with over 1,000 invitations sent out each year. The exhibit in its history has been hosted at various locations across London including Museum London, Galleries at the Galleria, the Arts Project, and Forest City Gallery. This year we are proud to be working in partnership with community members Bill Stelpstra and Andrew Smyth, owners of Strand Fine Art Services…………The Pride Show provides an opportunity…for a more intimate discussion of their work with the artists. The Pride London Festival Art Exhibit is open to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, transsexual, and two-spirited artists, including their friends and family, living in Ontario working in any medium. The focus is diversity and professionalism, illustrating the diversity in our family. Not all artists who are gay produce art with gay themes. As a community focused event, the annual Pride London Festival Art Exhibit has two components, first, a juried exhibit open to professional artists working within Ontario. Jurors for this year’s event are Aidan Urquhart, artist; James Patten, Executive Director of the McIntosh Gallery at UWO; and Mike Baker, Curator, Elgin County Museum. There is a non-juried portion that is open to community members, students and hobbyists. This year’s professional participants include Londoners Kim Harrison, Jamie Q, Scott McEwan, Bruce Flowers and Lynette Richards; From Stratford, Glenn Elliot and from Cambridge Jane Hook and Guelph John Roberts. Student works exhibited include works from Stefan Andrejicka, Steven Kato and hobbyist Rita Pennell. " Ben Benedict, Chair of the event, and a professional artist, critic and cultural consultant continues "it has been a lot of work over the years but also a served community by bringing this level of professionalism and creativity to London’s Pride activities. During its first ten years it grew through word of mouth and personal invitations and while that still happens and is encouraged, the exhibit has gained increased visibility by working with community members, outreach to regional Gay and Lesbian orientated organizations as well as public and private galleries across Ontario. " Pride is an opportunity to grow and share ideas and values about what we as a community share. For the 2011Pride Show , (20Th Anniversary) the committee has selected a ‘Pink Triangle’ theme to recapture and deride the abusive and oppression members of GLBT Communities have suffered in the 20Th century under Nazism in Europe and McCarthyism in North America. "We enjoy great freedoms in Canada but the same cannot be seen for our brethren across the globe and tonight we add our art to the voices calling for an end of this oppression. Pride for me is like religion where a good church isn’t so much about the sermon, but the community that gathers in a common bond. The annual Pride London Festival Art Exhibit is that common bond that shares a common faith in creativity, our sexuality often plays a secondary role when it comes to art making. When our sexuality comes into the artwork it often reflects our commonality with everyone else in the world as opposed to our differences." Ben continues" Yes there are homosexuals in the world but like the many heterosexuals, we are all trying to live our lives and as artists, tell those stories with as much power and aesthetics as possible. "
Ben has sent us pictures of the work of the following artists from this year’s exhibit:
Jamie Q (Quail) of London – www.jamieq.net/cv.html
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