WHAT TRICKLES THROUGH

All of the artists in What Trickles Through were artists in their country of origin before they immigrated to Canada. The works presented here were all created in Canada at more than an arms length from the birthplaces of these artists - Ortansa Moraru, born in Romania arrived in Canada in 2002; Mahmoud Meraji, born in Iran in 1998 and Ashley Johnson, born in South Africa moved from Johannesburg to Toronto in 2005. All are now Canadian citizens.

Before leaving Romania, Ortansa Moraru was a practiced printmaker. In 2008, I curated the exhibition Aligning with Beauty at the Varley Gallery where I included works by Moraru. In researching the concept of 'beauty', which is often defined as being synonymous with 'art', it became evident that cultural preferences, historical orientation, morals, philosophy and even indications of gender could be driving both the message and the aesthetic of the artworks. There appeared to be a unique visual language expressed in oraru's work, one that had originated in another country before the artist came to Canada. I came to learn that the reverence with which Ortansa first presented her prints to me was built
on the respect for her profession which she had inherited from a long history of master printmakers from Romania. Over twenty-two years as a practicing artist in Toronto, her work has changed but still, there are those engaging hints that notions of place - where and who – affected the imagery and added to what she brought forward.

Ashley Johnson was inventing alternative ways of exhibiting in a fraught South Africa before he left. Imagery that was shocking or dislocating on first seeing Ashley Johnson's paintings was a result of a personal incomprehension of the narrative's origins. Also a committed writer, the text that accompanied his first exhibition at Headbones Gallery in Toronto was a way into the information behind his unique visual vocabulary and it added to my world view. Ashley Johnson's work became the cornerstone of the NEOPRIEST (New Pop Realists Intellectually Engaged in Storytelling) aesthetic that then reciprocally also defined Headbones Gallery. Almost twenty-five years since he arrived, Ashley Johnson continues to wake up the neighbourhood.

Mahmoud Meraji chose Canada as his own work in Iran was being pulled from the walls on museums for being 'inappropriate' for the Iranian cultural agenda. When asked what his painting was about as we mounted his exhibition at Headbones Gallery, Okanagan in 2015, he said that he was “truth seeking”. This affirmation speaks of making a connection with the unrealized (not made actual or real) and then transforming it into a form that can be realized by another. Mahmoud also leaves space for the viewer to explore, to truth seek. When I first saw images of Mahmoud's new paintings and he explained that the marks that appeared abstract but organic, relative but tangential, are based on script - marks which I had read as relating to Persian textiles - it hit me that the part of his work that is fresh on the Canadian art landscape was informed by his unique history and that Mahmoud Meraji could broaden my visual perspective.