Week 24: April 21st
Writer's Block 2, Reframing fashion as art, l'Annuel de design, and more.
Welcome to Community Service, a biweekly newsletter featuring a curated selection of art and design events in Montreal. We have another long list on our hands as we slowly inch closer to summer and the one year anniversary of the newsletter (!!). This edition covers events happening at the end of April and the beginning of May.
Vernissage: Quanta-phi by Samwell Guertin
April 22nd (5:30pm) - Maison des Cultures Claude Leveillée
Quanta+Phi is an exploration of the intersection between precision and chaos, symmetry and fluidity, captured through the medium of glass. Samwell Guertin’s work is divided into two distinct approaches. The first, crystalline, involves meticulously weaving glass beads together into symmetrical, geometric forms that evoke harmony and order. The second, fluid, sees the artist fusing glass into sculptural pieces that retain geometric shapes but are imbued with a sense of disorganization and organic flow. Each piece in Quanta+Phi invites the viewer to contemplate the delicate balance between structure and fluidity, science and art.
Vernissage: Selvedge
April 23rd (5-8pm) - Galerie POPOP
Selvedge is a group exhibition by Concordia undergraduate students in Fiber Arts that collectively explore societal discourses through the lenses of resistance. This resistance can be manifested as political resistance, resistance to consumerism and waste prevalent in textile production, and other forms through scientific or physical resistance in fibre arts. The works shown encompass a vast range of techniques from papermaking, plaiting, embroidery, felting, lace-making, dyes, tapestry and weaving.
Vernissage: In Fitzca’s Pond by Matt Shane
April 23rd (5-8pm) - McBride Contemporain
Matt Shane’s new body of work springs from close observations of amphibians seen while wading in Fitzca’s Pond on his friends’ land in the Laurentians. Frogs are the beloved subject of this series, and they take pride of place in the foreground of an abundant natural domain. The imposing format of these paintings leads to a sense of immersion in the landscape. The audience, in turn, is given an intimate encounter with the animal — a moment when eyes meet and time dissolves. What does our experience of this habitat have in common?
Event: Writer’s Block 2 by RODAISUN
April 23rd (7-11pm) - Systeme
RODAISUN's Writer's Block is back for a second season! The night will feature sonic poetry readings from RODAISUN's 44th issue of street literature, as well as musical performances by Kevin LaFleur and Raiden Louie.
Bring your notebook. Pull up a chair. This is a place to sit, listen, and write. Let the music dust off your words as you move your wrist to a rhythm. It’s a collective performance, a trance. It’s a chance to be alone, together, to be silent and inundated by live improvised sound and readings.
Vernissage: Terraformations by Antoine Racine
April 25th (5-7pm) - Produit Rien
Terraformations brings together a series of works oriented towards their own decomposition. It invites us to immerse ourselves in the presence and temporality of decomposers and perhaps, to re-imagine their place in the human-built world. It proposes a space for coexistence, calling for slowness and contemplation. The exhibition draws our attention to the unsettling vitality of dying matter and the vibrant communities unfolding within. Mycelia proliferate in the half-light; bacteria exhale sweet, pungent, earthy odors; compost worms rustle; heat intensifies; fibers dissolve. An ephemeral system, both dead and alive, open to contingencies.
Rot for the sake of rottenness, unsubdued to growth.
Vernissage: Hangry by Sacha Pérez del Solar
April 25th (6-9pm) - Galerie le 1040
Hangry is a collection of devotional paintings that play with the embodiment of the cycle of hanger and satiety into ethereal entities.
Vernissage: Reframing: The Intersection of Fashion and Art
April 29th (1-8pm) - WIP
Fashion is more than just clothing, it is identity in motion, inextricably linked to human experience - just like art. It’s a dynamic language, a reflection of selfhood that evolves with experience, transformation, and cultural shifts. Through fabric, silhouette, and style, we tell the stories of who we are and who we wish to become. Reframing by Mode Collective explores the interplay between fashion and identity, focusing on queerness, nature, sustainability, and representation.
Publication Launch: The Drain by Boris Panaccio
April 29th (7-9pm) - Garage auto Marie-Anne
Edited by Maeva Gauthier-Chartrand and William Sabourin, The Drain is Boris Panaccio’s first photography book. Every copy of the 169 edition run is manipulated to be unique. Human traces leave an opening to storytelling in various contexts and landscapes.
Vernissage: Annuel de Design
April 30th (6pm) - École de design de l’UQAM
Babe wake up it’s Montreal’s biggest design event of the year. Head over to l’École de design de l’UQAM on April 30th to check out what the design students of 2025 have cooked up (and conceptualized, and sewed, and built, and sanded…). Tickets are necessary and available through this link. Get there early and be prepared to wait in line!!
Vernissage: Au Bord de l’Oubli by Antoine Lussier
May 1st (5pm) - Atelier B
More details to come!!
Vernissage: Beneath the Surface of the Everyday
May 1st (5-8pm) - Centre SKOL
Beneath the Surface of the Everyday brings together artists Zoé Julien-Tessier, Annie-Kim Rainville, Alejandra Zamudio, Sarah Toung Ondo, and Amanda Roy through works in textile printing, micro-publishing, archival remixing, and graphic storytelling. Through their practices, the artists shed light on often overlooked stories, making visible the quiet presences that inhabit our everyday lives. The pieces were created during individual artist residencies at Centre SAGAMIE.
Publication Launch: Pastiche 2
May 1st (6-10pm) - Livart Courtyard
Pastiche is ringing in the spring with the launch of their second edition! Bring your favourite bottle of wine to the Livart Courtyard on May 1st for an evening of readings and warm weather (I hope).
Vernissage: Anger
May 2nd (6-9pm) - Galerie 2112
Anger is an exhibition by the Concordia Photo Collective that seeks to embrace photography’s cathartic and therapeutic qualities encouraging different perspectives and understandings of anger to coalesce. Found within the intersections of gender, race, culture, and class, it is somehow both a source of energy that drives us, and a hindrance on our spirits. It is both an expression of love in the political context and an expression of hate; it is something that has caused us harm and something we’ve learned to repress.
Publication Launch: The Archive Issue by Ic3y Mag
May 3rd (7pm) - Foil Gallery
Ic3y Mag launches its debut print issue, The Archive Issue - a curated journey through music, design, and technology, featuring artists such as Boy Harsher, Gus Dapperton, Oklou, Fvckrender, and more. Spanning 2023 to 2025, the issue explores the idea of Archives - tracing artistic evolution through interviews, photography, and moments worth preserving. RSVP HERE.
If you have an art or design-related event you would like to include in future editions of the newsletter, you can send us an email at communityservmag@gmail.com
See you around.