Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain is thrilled to renew presentations at Centre Space, created in Toronto at 65 George Street with Feheley Fine Arts in 2012. For this first new exhibition, the gallery is honoured to present works by Ari Bayuaji from his Weaving the Ocean (2020-ongoing) series.
This series transforms the jetsam of plastic ropes disentangled from the roots of mangrove trees along the coast of Indonesia into hauntingly beautiful tapestries inspired by the rich textile culture of the artist’s homeland.
Aesthetically engaging, Bayuaji’s tapestries result from a creative salvage and upcycling process that saw the artist and locally recruited assistants scour the shoreline of Bali to collect and clean colourful plastic ropes that washed up on shore and then unraveled them into fine threads. In collaboration with a traditional Balinese weaving workshop, Bayuaji designs and creates unique textile pieces in an environmentally conscious way that provides financial security to local crafts persons and economies negatively impacted by the global pandemic. Bayuaji’s equally stunning sculptural practice also draws upon the ocean's detritus as source material – including ropes, minerals and other elements that wash up on shore.
We invite the visitors to peruse the fantastic documents on the series like:
A video on the amazing process behind the production of the works and the community involved:
https://www.pfoac.com/artists/70-ari-bayuaji/video/
The catalogue of the presentation of the series at Warin Lab
https://www.pfoac.com/usr/library/documents/main/artists/70/en_weaving-the-ocean_catalogue.pdf
Ari Bayuaji was born in Indonesia in 1975. Moving permanently to Canada in 2005, he studied Fine art at Concordia University (2005-2010). Dividing his time between Montreal and Bali, the artist is known mainly for his art installations, which incorporate the use of found and ready-made objects in different parts of the world, thereby exposing himself to the various mechanisms of the cultures.
Bayuaji is an expert in conveying aspects of daily life. His works usually try to show the overlooked artistic value in everyday life through objects and places and their societal roles. He has consistently used found/old objects from around the world as the material in almost all and subjects of his artworks. These objects as his creative material might be old, but the “content” as a work of art is entirely new as he injects his work with emotion influenced by contemporary issues he seeks to address.
His works have been collected by major institutions like Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Musée national des beaux-arts du Quebec (Canada), Musée Pointe-à-Callière (Montreal), La
Fondation Agnés B. du Paris, Coral Triangle Center of Bali, Precious Plastic of Bangkok, and Danfoss (Denmark).
His work has been exhibited in some international solo exhibitions, including Mizuma Art Gallery of Singapore (2023), Warin Lab Contemporary in Bangkok, Thailand (2022), Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Singapore (2022), RedBase Art Gallery of Sydney, Australia (2022), Coral Triangle Center of Bali, Indonesia (2022), The Esplanade Theatre on The Bay, Singapore (2014 and 2019), Nunu Fine Art Taipei, Taiwan (2018, 2021), Parkhaus in Malkasten Düsseldorf (2018), Conseil des arts de Montréal (2018), a collaboration with Agnes B. FondationParis at Ste- Alvere, France (2017), and Kunsthal Rotterdam in The Netherlands (2017). Artwork from Ari’s “Weaving The Ocean” project will be featured at the Kennedy Center’s RiverRun festival in Washington, DC (2023).
PFOAC thanks SODEC for its support of this initiative.
