Week 27: June 16th
There's so much happening.
Welcome to Community Service, a biweekly newsletter featuring a curated selection of art and design events in Montreal. There’s a lot going on here, so don’t blame me if ever you’re bored during these next two weeks. This edition covers events happening during the end of June.
Workshop: Writer’s Block by Rodaisun
June 18th (7pm) - Casa Obscura at 4381 rue Papineau
Open something in you which is closed. The Writer’s Block series was conceived to carve out a space for writers to engage in their solitary practice together. This edition features live music by No Cosmos and Experimental Kindness, readings of Street Literature by Rodaisun, and a special closing set of andrew whiteman’s poets workout sound system. The music is an anchor that ritualizes and charges the space, inspiring a stream of consciousness. The event is pay what you can with a suggested $10-15 donation.
Vernissage: Consimilo by Pierre-Yves Girard
June 19th (5-8pm) - La Chaufferie
The first time I came across Pierre-Yves Girard’s paintings, I was hooked. They feature layer upon layer of matter, all blended together into beautiful and enigmatic forms. Consimilo is a short, five-day show featuring a selection of Pierre-Yves Girard’s most recent works. This new body of work was created this past winter while the artist was at his studio located in the boreal forest in the Lac-Saint-Jean region; a creative setting that allows for focus and communication with nature.
Vernissage: No Bystanders by Frantz Patrick Henry
June 19th (5-10pm) - Fonderie Darling
No Bystanders by Frantz Patrick Henry is an immersive, sensitive installation that transforms the space into a landscape of fragments, tensions, and resonances, where collective memory, resistance, and re-enchantment intertwine.
Vernissage: revenons en oiseaux, être un arbre est trop dur et aujourd’hui, il neige by karen elaine spencer
June 19th (5-10pm) - Fonderie Darling
In a poetic journey that transforms mourning into walking, listening and paying attention to the world, karen elaine spencer weaves an intimate and collective space inhabited by gentleness, resistance and memory.
Open Studio: Duets & Dialogs by Atelier Fomenta
June 19th (6-9pm) - 7080 rue Alexandra #206
Enter the world of Fomenta to discover their 2025 collection, as well as ongoing and soon-to-be-released projects. You’ll be welcomed with cold drinks, special scenography and other surprises.
Vernissage: The Red Car by Art Air Collective
June 20th (5-10pm) - AND Art Space
The Red Car is a group exhibition exploring synchronicity. In the Universe, there is a dance between pattern and randomness, and we must be present in our consciousness to try and decipher it. Us humans have an innate desire to give these experiences meaning, something beyond chance; although we can confuse regular occurrences for having deeper significance. Still, if you pay attention, you will begin to notice a fundamental pattern in the Universe. Instances of strangeness occur, and how you react to it is up to you: do you approach with skepticism, or do you immediately want to derive meaning? What is happenstance, and what is a sign?
Vernissage: Graphic Paradise
June 20th (6-10pm) - Le Livart
Graphic Paradise invites visitors to contemplate memories, remembrance, and sweet, intimate moments. Kezna Dalz, Liza Isakov, Jeraume, Cassandra Jetten, Danica Olders, Alexander Tullo, and Wouter Van Kelle present a series of works that engage in dialogue, retracing natural environments and personal or family memories. Conceived around the medium of drawing, the exhibition illustrates these places and objects, whether real or imaginary. Through a selection of original works and a temporary indoor mural, they illustrate their graphic paradises and invite visitors to step into each other's memories for a moment.
Finissage: Beneath the Surface of the Everyday
June 21st (2:30-4:30pm) - Centre SKOL
The exhibition Beneath the Surface of the Everyday ends with an afternoon of exchanges and discussion with artists Annie-Kim Rainville, Alejandra Zamudio, and Sarah Toung Ondo, joined by exhibition writer Gabrielle Izaguirré-Falardeau and curators Félipe Goulet-Letarte and Adrien Guillet.
Vernissage: Kakaráhtatie / Carrying Stories by Sierra Barber
June 21st (5-8pm) - Daphne Art Centre
More details to come!
Vernissage: ᎬᏅᎯ ᎨᏍᏒ ᎡᎶᎯ ᎣᏨᏍᏏᏰᏗᎢ / gvhnvhi gesv elohi otsvsiyediʔi / To Walk in an Intertwined World by Brenda Mallory
June 21st (5-8pm) - Daphne Art Centre
In To Walk in an Intertwined World, Mallory considers an interconnectedness that is strange and mundane, unwieldy and comforting. Her webs of life contain the gap that trips us, the net that catches us, and the laughter that echoes back as we find our footing. They are torn in places, and mended in others – though not always in the ways we expect. At daphne, Mallory guides us through the “intertwined world” through her material imagination, language of abstraction, and sense for the vast, sustaining whole.
Vernissage: Figure-Ground Positions
June 21st (6-9pm) - Carmine’s Room at 7615 rue Berri
The second season of apartment gallery Carmine’s Room opens with Figure-Ground Positions, co-created by Eija Loponen-Stephenson, Yael Ezerzer, and Liam Kenna. Figure-Ground Positions documents a performance that unfolded within the double living room. Visitors are invited to engage with its traces and take home a score that gestures toward its repetition. Drinks will be generously provided by Polari and Zamalek, and visitors are welcome to bring their own. After 9pm, the home will close and the celebration will continue down the street at Polari, a favourite local wine bar.
Summer Solstice Season Closing by Centre SKOL
June 21st (7-9pm) - Outdoor lot at 6919 Marconi Street
Centre SKOL wraps up its 2024–2025 season with an open-air celebration! Music, refreshments, spontaneous interventions and open exchanges between members, artists, and guests — a festive gathering to mark the summer solstice and close the season all together.
Pop-up: Connecting Past and Present by MemoryLand Studio
June 21-22nd - Coming Age
MemoryLand Studio is hosting its first pop-up on June 21–22 at Coming Age in the Mile End. The event will showcase handmade ceramics, textiles, custom graphic shirts, a limited run of zines, selected archival works, new collaborations by Diane Garcia Ramos for MemoryLand, and drinks provided by Zamalek.
Zine Launch: 119 106: All Through Our Lenses by Hugo Perrier and Matias Munoz
June 22nd (2-5pm) - Wills Boutique
119 106 is a dual-perspective project, capturing the raw energy of Toronto in its most vibrant and chaotic corners. Shot entirely in Toronto over a 4-day trip, the photos were taken on the fly—no filters, no staging—just the city, the people, and the artists in the middle of it all. Through their lenses, Montreal-based photographers, Matias and Hugo present a raw, honest portrait of a city in flux—Hugo using flash to isolate sharp, close-range moments, and Matias working with wide compositions to reveal space and atmosphere.
Vernissage: Espiral
June 26th (5pm) - CIDIHCA
Espiral is a continuation. Rooted in the ever-turning logic of Frankétienne’s spiralism, the exhibition insists that imagination is movement: between languages, disciplines, identities, and worlds. Through painting, photography, text, voice, and memory, Espiral traces the vibrant fracture of the Haitian imaginary where chaos births creation, and the artist never truly dies. Frankétienne lives on in the spiraling energy of our dreams, our struggles, and our collective becoming.
Launch: SAT-L01 by HM.Acteson
June 27th (5-9pm) - 250 Beaumont
A new creation by HM.Acteson, the SAT-L01 is a small and simple light. As a standalone piece or combined with additional units, SAT-L01 is designed to function as a desk light, sconce, pendulum, or chandelier. SAT-L01 will launch on Friday, June 27, at 250 Beaumont from 17:00-21.00, with refreshments provided by Zamalek and Wills Beer. The exhibition will continue throughout the weekend.
Anniversary Party: The Pit
June 28th (5pm) - Maison de L’Amitié
Head to Maison de L’Amitié on Duluth to celebrate the one year anniversary of The Pit Periodical. The event will feature three special guests: Metatron Press with their fantastic book selection, Café Rufián with the finest coldbrew, and County Law with lively and smooth Canadiana country. Tickets are $20 and are payable at the door or by e-transfer at thepitperiodical@gmail.com.
Workshop: Scent Club by Chimie
June 29th (11am-1pm) or (2:30-4:30pm) - 7154 rue St-Urbain
I end this newsletter with a love letter to new experiences. When I was first invited to Scent Club by Heather Peat I admit I was a little skeptical, as my comfort zone tends to end before workshops enter the picture. But over the course of the two hour scent workshop devoted to tea I experienced a sense of camaraderie that I didn’t know I had been lacking. Heather leads the workshop with a gentle guiding light, reminiscent of your favourite teacher from when you were young. Her scent clubs are incredibly well hosted and interesting.
She’s hosting a second edition of the tea themed workshop on June 29th. Tickets are $25 and you can sign up here.
If you have an art or design-related event you would like to include in future editions of the newsletter, you can fill out this form or send us an email at communityservmag@gmail.com.
Submissions for events happening between June 30th and July 13th are due no later than June 27th. Please note that we are now charging $25 for late submissions.
See you around.