About the show
Ines Halvorsen paints the weather that happens indoors: the pressure change before an argument, the bright stillness of a room after someone has left it, the particular grey of a Sunday you never left the house.
Quiet Weather brings together fourteen new paintings made over the past eighteen months, most of them shown here for the first time. They are large, slow, and mostly about light. I've been visiting the studio since the first canvases went up, and watching them arrive has been one of the real pleasures of my year.
The show is hung as a single walk, from the coolest painting to the warmest, so the room itself changes temperature as you move through it. Come at the start of the afternoon if you can. The west windows do something to the last three canvases around four o'clock that I have not managed to photograph.
The opening
Thursday 8 October, 6–9 pm, at Sable Street Projects. Ines will be there, and so will I. There will be wine, a short toast at around seven, and no speeches after that. Everyone is welcome and you don't need to RSVP, though a quick note helps me guess the wine.
If you'd like to see the work quietly before the crowd, write to me and I'll arrange a preview on the afternoon of the eighth.
About Ines
Ines Halvorsen (b. 1987, Bergen) lives and works in Toronto. She studied painting at school and has shown in cities. Her work is held in private collections in Canada, Norway and the United Kingdom. Quiet Weather is her first solo exhibition in three years, and the first time the full series has been shown together.
How I approached it
My job on a show like this is mostly to protect it. Ines already knew what the paintings were. What she needed was someone to decide what to leave out, to argue for the hang, and to write the words on the wall in a way that opened the work up rather than sealed it. We cut the show from twenty-two paintings to fourteen. It's better for it, and I'll happily tell you which eight we lost and why.
I also handled the loans, the insurance, the photography schedule and the small print. That's the unglamorous half of curating, and it's the half that lets the glamorous half happen.
Visiting
Sable Street Projects, 214 Sable Street, Toronto. Open Wednesday to Saturday, 12–6 pm, and by appointment. Admission is free. The gallery is at street level with a step-free entrance and an accessible washroom. Nearest transit: stop or station.
Press images and the artist's CV are available on request.