Week 45: June 15th
Don’t forget to keep hope alive… and touch grass.
Welcome to Community Service, a biweekly newsletter featuring a curated selection of art and design events in Montreal. Not included in this list is the much awaited reopening of Jarry pool (June 20th… see you there). This edition covers events happening in Montreal during the middle and end of June.
Artist Talk: A Closer Look
June 16th (2pm) - La Guilde
Curator My-Van Dam hosts a discussion with the artists Caroline Pham, Wasselena Bilak, and Pauline Ebel, whose works are featured in the exhibition ‘States of Being’. The artists will discuss how they expand jewellery beyond adornment and demystify the creative processes behind their works.
The exhibition States of Being brings together the works of these same artists, known as ORA-C, Bilak Jewelry, and Soie Lait. Moving between organic, affective, and corporeal states, their practices propose different ways of inhabiting material and relating to objects. Jewellery becomes a space of encounter: forms through which memory, presence, and movement converge.
Vernissage: A Light That Never Goes Out
June 18th (5-10pm) - Fonderie Darling
Fonderie Darling kicks off its summer program with a festive evening for the opening of the group exhibition “A Light That Never Goes Out”, featuring works by Omar Castillo Alfaro, Camille Charbonneau, Jesús Hilario-Reyes, Simon Petepiece, Jeremy Shaw, and James Webb.
Dedicated to the glimmers of light that refuse to fade in the face of the darkness that surrounds us, this exhibition pays tribute to those lights that nourish the hope of healing. To those that, in the dead of night, watch over the celebration, rebuild connections, and teach us to no longer be alone together, as well as to those moments of dazzling brilliance that offer a glimpse of the beyond and carry the promise of shared transcendence. Bar service until the end!
Vernissage: Bouquet Final
June 19th (6-10pm) - Le Livart
For its summer exhibition, Livart invites six artists from the art boutique to reinterpret and explore a French expression whose symbolic richness is often overlooked: the grand finale. Through their photographic work, they each offer a unique take on it—be it tribute, climax, transformation, or promise of the future. The exhibition highlights the vitality of photography in Quebec while creating a sensitive dialogue between tradition and modernity. In an ultra-connected world, marked by immediacy and constant change, the exhibition encourages visitors to slow down and rediscover the value of gestures shaped by time.
Publication Launch: À Flots 5th Edition
June 20th (12-8pm) - Parc Laurier
À Flots is a bilingual student magazine that provides a platform for emerging artists of all disciplines through its printed publications.
On June 20th, À Flots invites you to Parc Laurier for the opening and launch of their latest issue, which centers on the theme of noise. Designed to celebrate emerging creativity, the event allows for friendly encounters between artists, works, and the public in an open and accessible space for everyone. By using the park as a venue, À Flots demonstrates its commitment to making art more accessible and encouraging new ways to discover, share, and experience it collectively.
Vernissage and Performance: Love Songs to End Colonization
June 20th (7-9pm) - FOFA Gallery Courtyard
Peter Morin and Jimmie Kilpatrick are friends who share an abiding love for karaoke and present it through their ongoing artistic collaboration, “Love Songs to End Colonization / Kanorónhkhwa’tshera Karenna’shón:’a Taká:taste ne Aionkhiia’tó:rarake,” a participatory karaoke project founded in kindness, joy, futurity, and engaging a collective voice through singing.
By repurposing popular love songs, this project critiques, confronts, and dismantles the historical notions and the current presence of settler colonialism and utilizes karaoke as a methodology for social change. Listeners are invited to perform a song, sing along, clap, dance, or simply witness and soak in love and music to dismantle colonialism, one love song at a time.
Open Studio: Open 303
June 25th (6pm) - Wow Atlas (170 Jean-Talon O, room 303)
Visit the studios of Alia Aluma, Bastik, Bronwyn Garden-Smith, Christelle Saint-Julien, Dana Sulit, Flore de Ris, Gemma Else, Linsey Myriam Bain, Lovestruck Prints, Pascha Marrow, Rebecca Munce, Sadé Huh, and Sloane Sherman! Take a sneak peek at the process, browse prints, and meet the artists!
Vernissage: Entre Deux Fêtes
June 26th (5-9pm) - 155 Avenue Van Horne
Master’s students in Visual and Media Arts at UQAM, from all cohorts, invite you to their summer group exhibition. Over 30 artists will showcase the results of their recent research-creation work.
Performance: Relational Tensions [Night One]
June 26th (6pm) - La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse
In a world increasingly marked by individualism and isolation, ‘Relational Tensions’ questions our ways of being together, of forming communities, of coexisting. The four performances of this festival explore our contemporary ways of interacting and relating, as well as the complexities that emerge from them.
Elyse St-Amour calls for intergenerational solidarity, addressing the complexities of aging for feminized people in a society that champions youth. Tricia Enns invites you to explore how technology both fractures and fosters togetherness, walking the thin (and often moving) line between technological mediation that helps and harms us. Camille-Zoé Valcourt-Synnott provides artists with a space to talk shop–taken for granted in many professions–and a reminder of the radical potential of gathering together. Belén Pedrocca and Amanda Préval weave us through the often invisible work of forming friendships, mutual care routines, and the complexities of social relationships.
Here, performance is a tool for encounters. An embodied space where bodies, ideas, experiences, struggles, and different forms of presence engage in dialogue. Relational Tensions will continue on Saturday, June 27th with a finissage at 7:30pm.
Vernissage: Bird’s Eye
June 27th (1-6pm) - Parc Jarry (coordinates 45.5347910,-73.6249403)
Treat it like birding. Bird’s Eye is a trio show with work by Gabor Bata, Emma Cross, and Fiona Ruth, on a pine tree path in Jarry park (coordinates 45.5347910,-73.6249403).
Vernissage: Adeu x Olivier Rodrigue
June 27th (3-7pm) - 5638 Avenue du Parc
Adeu x Olivier Rodrigue is a collaborative exhibition and immersive experience, marrying visual art and gastronomy. The exhibition features ten paintings by Montréal artist Olivier Rodrigue, including six works never before exhibited, alongside a site-specific installation created for the occasion. The culinary collective ADEU will present a series of bites inspired by the artworks, creating a conversation between image, material, and taste.
Risk lies at the heart of Rodrigue’s practice. His paintings are built within a fragile balance between intention and accident, embracing uncertainty as a creative force. Rather than seeking complete control, he allows each work to emerge through experimentation, resistance, and discovery. This exhibition brings together two disciplines united by a shared openness to process, intuition, and the unknown.
Screenings and Lecture: BIRTH 7 with Seth Scriver
June 27th (7-10pm) - White Wall Studio
BIRTH’s 7th event is set to screen animated shorts and the animated feature documentary: “Endless Cookie”. The animator filmmaker Seth Scriver will also be in attendance.
This edition of Community Service was written by Lucie Hannah Miller (she/her). Lucie is always excited to learn something new and loves exploring creative avenues and mediums. Lately she’s been drawn to ceramics, textiles, and really anything offline.
If you have an art or design-related event you would like to include in future editions of the newsletter, please fill out this form. Submissions for events happening between June 29th and July 12th are due no later than June 26th. We now charge $25 for late submissions.
See you around.