Saturday 15 October 2016

Last Call for Last Folio Media Preview on Friday


Last Folio
Photographs by Yuri Dojc. Film by Katya Krausova.
Behind the Scenes: Interviews with the artist

MEDIA PREVIEW
Friday October 21, 2016





Yuri Dojc Torah fragment, attic, Bardejov, 2006  Chromogenic Print. Courtesy of the artist.

WHAT:            A special preview of the Canadian première of the exhibition Last Folio and interviews with Yuri Dojc.

WHEN:           Friday, October 21, 2016
                        10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

WHERE:        Art Gallery of Hamilton
                        123 King Street West, downtown Hamilton,  L8P 4S8


RSVP:            To book your time and for further information, please contact:

Steve Denyes, Manager, Communications
[T] 905.527.6610, ext. 255


Friday 14 October 2016

LAST FOLIO. YURI DOJC AT ART GALLERY OF HAMILTON


Last Folio
Photographs by Yuri Dojc. Film by Katya Krausova.
Canadian première of a deeply moving memorial to
the Holocaust and lives interrupted.
Opens at the Art Gallery of Hamilton on October 22



Yuri Dojc Torah fragment, attic, Bardejov, 2006  Chromogenic Print. Courtesy of the artist.

The Art Gallery of Hamilton is very proud to present Last Folio, a multi-media exhibition of photography and film that revisits the history of the Holocaust in Slovakia. The exhibition opens October 22, 2016 and will remain on view until May 14, 2017.

Time had stood still since 1942 in Bardejov, Slovakia, until nearly 10 years ago when Canadian photographer Yuri Dojc returned to visit his family’s former home. On the eve of World War II, many of the villagers had fled, and those remaining were taken away to concentration camps.

Serendipity led Dojc, along with a documentary film team to the local Jewish school, which had been locked since the day those attending were deported to concentration camps. All the schoolbooks were still there; including essay notebooks with corrections--even the sugar was still in the cupboard. The decaying books, which were lying on dusty shelves, the last witnesses of a once thriving culture, are treated by Dojc like the survivors they are–each one captured as a portrait, preserved in their final beauty, silent witnesses to the horrors of history.

Amongst the hundreds of books and fragments photographed one stands out especially–one which miraculously found its way from a dusty pile to its rightful heir–a book once owned by Dojc’s grandfather, Jakab Deutsch. This book will be on display in the exhibition.

Last Folio is a moving photographic journey of memory and loss,” said Shelley Falconer, President and CEO of the Art Gallery of Hamilton. “The AGH is deeply honoured to be the first Canadian institution to exhibit together the complete series and film.”

The multi-media exhibition includes more than 30 photographs of objects and interiors, abandoned synagogues, portraits of Holocaust survivors and a documentary film of Dojc’s artistic journey by international film and television producer/director and writer, Katya Krausova, who collaborated closely with Dojc throughout the project. A 20-minute edited version of the film shot during his numerous trips to Slovakia is included in the exhibition. Together with the survivor portraits they create a greater context from which to view the photographs. 

The documentary film, also entitled Last Folio, undertakes a personal journey into the past and present of Slovakia’s Jewish community. Through interviews with Shoah survivors who remained in Slovakia, as well as the story of Yuri’s parents who spent the war in hiding, the film looks at both the help Slovakian Jews received and the anti-Semitism they experienced. It is Dojc’s stunningly beautiful photographs that let us experience the vibrant cultural history of Slovakian Jews through the now abandoned schools, synagogues and mikvahs (ceremonial baths) he lovingly captures with his camera.

“The images in Last Folio are a last memento of the culture and people who used those books,” said Yuri Dojc. “Most of them are forgotten–they don’t have relatives or graves. I tried to memorialize them. This is not a documentary but my personal salute to a vanished culture and a vanished people. These images absorb me totally. They represent more than what I saw that first day.”

Throughout the run of the exhibition, the AGH will be presenting a broad range of educational and related programming for school children and adults, using Last Folio as a means to deepen understanding of the Holocaust, genocide and the memorializing power of art.

Last Folio Opening Programming

Thursday, October 20, 7:00 p.m.
Screening of Last Folio, the documentary film. AGH BMO World Film Festival.
Yuri Dojc and Katya Krausova in attendance. 
Art Gallery of Hamilton, 123 King Street West, Hamilton, ON  amilton, ON  H

Sunday, October 23, 3:00 p.m. 
Official Opening of Last Folio exhibition. Yuri Dojc and Katya Krausova in attendance. Art Gallery of Hamilton, 123 King Street West, Hamilton, ON 

Thursday, October 27, 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Artist Talk and Tour with Yuri Dojc
Art Gallery of Hamilton, 123 King Street West, Hamilton, ON 

For more information about Last Folio special programming visit

About the Art Gallery of Hamilton
Founded in 1914, the Art Gallery of Hamilton is the oldest and largest public art gallery in southwestern Ontario. Its permanent collection, which is focused on historical Canadian, 19th-century European and Contemporary art, now numbers more than 10,000 works and is recognized as one of the finest in Canada. The AGH is a vital creative hub and centre of lifelong learning that enables people of all ages to enrich their lives by gaining a deeper understanding of art. Visit www.artgalleryofhamilton.com for more information.

VISITOR INFORMATION 
  
Admission:
AGH Members: Free; Adults, $10; Students/Seniors, $8; Children (6-17), $4; under 5 years, Free. Friday Free Night: Free admission on the first Friday of the month.
Gallery Hours:
Tuesday & Wednesday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.; Thursday, 11 a.m.–8 p.m.; Friday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.; Saturday–Sunday, 12 noon–5 p.m.

The AGH will be closed on December 25, December 26, 2016 and January 1, 2017.

The Art Gallery of Hamilton is located at 123 King Street West, downtown Hamilton, Ontario, L8P 4S8.[T] 905.527.6610[E] info@artgalleryofhamilton.com


GROUP TOURS
To arrange for a Group Tour, please contact: Laurie Kilgour-Walsh, Educator
[T] 905.5276.6610, ext. 272
[E] grouptours@artgalleryofhamilton.com


For more information, please contact:
Steve Denyes, Manager, Communications
[T] 905.527.6610 x 255
[E] steve@artgalleryofhamilton.com




Thursday 6 October 2016

Thomas W. Laqueur, David Wootton and Andrea Wulf on Cundill Shortlist 2016

 SHORT LIST ANNOUNCED FOR
2016 CUNDILL PRIZE IN HISTORICAL LITERATURE
Three books to compete for $75,000 (US) grand prize
                    
MONTREAL— October 7, 2016—Today the jury for the world’s most lucrative award for historical non-fiction writing announced this year's short list. Antonia Maioni, Dean of McGill University’s Faculty of Arts and Chair of the Cundill Prize, said, “With this year's finalists for the Cundill Prize in History, the jury has identified three books that combine tremendous erudition, insight and élan. These are books that engage and hold their readers' attention from the first page to the last.” Now in its ninth year, the Cundill Prize features a grand prize of $75,000 (US) and two Recognition of Excellence prizes of $10,000 (US) each.
The winner of the grand prize will be announced at a gala awards ceremony in Toronto on Thursday, November 17, at the Shangri-La Hotel.
The three finalists are:
  • Thomas W. Laqueur - The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains (Princeton University Press)
  • David Wootton - The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution (HarperCollins)
  • Andrea Wulf- The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt’s New World (Alfred A. Knopf, John Murray Publishers)
This year’s short list was chosen by the Cundill jury, which included Timothy Brook, Republic of China Chair, University of British Columbia; John Darwin, Professor of Global and Imperial History and Director, Oxford Centre for Global History, University of Oxford; and Anna Porter, Co-founder, Key Porter Books and author (Buying a Better World: George Soros and Billionaire Philanthropy, The Ghosts of Europe).
About the Prize: The Cundill Prize is the world’s most important international prize for non-fiction historical literature. It was established in 2008 by McGill alumnus F. Peter Cundill, who passed away in January 2011. The prize is administered by McGill University’s Dean of Arts, with assistance from the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada (MISC), and is awarded annually to an individual who has published a book that has made a profound literary, social, and academic impact in the area of history.
For more information on the Cundill Prize: www.cundillprize.com
Follow us on Twitter: @CundillPrize
Short-listed authors are available for comment and interview. For further information, please contact:
Amirah El-Safty, Partnerships & Marketing Manager
 416.971.5004 ext. 253
Cynthia Lee, Senior Communications Officer
McGill University
514-398-6754

If you are in Washington DC this weekend - Two cutting edge literary voices discuss Writers as cartographers


Author Talk: Writers as cartographers with Christine Fischer Guy and Lana Pesch at Potter’s House Café and Bookstore in Washington, DC
 
Border crossings: where are the boundaries of fiction?
 
Fischer (left) and Pesch (right)
 
Washington, DC – October 5th, 2016 - Join authors Christine Fischer Guy and Lana Pesch on Saturday, October 8th as they will consider the idea: Writers as cartographers of the self in relation to their latest works, The Umbrella Mender and Moving Parts. Unfamiliar landscapes give their characters the chance to map new territories of the self, a place to explore, reimagine and reconsider identity.
 
DATE:             October 8th, 2016
TIME:              2:00 – 4:00 pm ET
PLACE:           The Potter’s House Café and Bookstore, 1658 Columbia Road, Northwest, Washington, DC
 
The Author Talk will be moderated by Jillian Kitchener, Video Producer at Reuters.
About Christine Fischer Guy: http://www.christinefischerguy.com
The award-winning journalist’s debut novel, The Umbrella Mender, was published in September 2014 with Wolsak & Wynn (Buckrider Books). Her fiction has appeared in Canadian and US journals and has been nominated for the Writer’s Trust/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize and the Pushcart Prize. She contributes to the LA Review of Books, The Millions, Hazlitt, and Ryeberg.com and teaches creative writing at the School for Continuing Studies at the University of Toronto.
About The Umbrella Mender:
Young nurse Hazel McPherson is drawn to the north to fight the tuberculosis epidemic that rages among first nations people, but what she finds there—about herself and what she believes—becomes a secret she keeps for 60 years.
Author Alissa York says The Umbrella Mender is “a moving mediation on human frailty, a sensitive portrait of conflicting cultures brought together in an uneasy truce, and a heartbreaking tale of unsanctioned love.”
About Lana Pesch: www.lanapesch.com
Toronto based author, producer and communications consultant is an alumnus of the Banff Wired Writing Studio. Her first book, Moving Parts was published by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2015. Her writing has appeared in ELLE CanadaTaddle Creek and Little Bird Stories: Volumes I and II. She was longlisted for the 2014 CBC Short Story Prize and won the Random House of Canada Creative Writing Award at the University of Toronto in 2012. She was a reader for the 2016 CBC Creative non-fiction prize and teaches The Story Intensive for Sarah Selecky’s Story Is a State of Mind School.
About Moving Parts:
Equal parts insightful and heartbreaking, Moving Parts is a provocative collection of deeply imagined, darkly funny stories. Unconventional settings range from a hospital waiting room to a Cessna cockpit; the interrogation room of an Arizona prison to Interstate 10 East outside of Pensacola.
Author Arjun Basu calls it “Witty, moving, urbane, and thoroughly modern, Moving Parts is a knockout collection. A hip cross-country tour of today’s North America."
For further information:
For appearances and interviews with Lana Pesch please contact: lana.pesch@newswire.caor Cynara Geissler, Marketing Manager, Arsenal Pulp Press, tel: (604) 687-4233
For appearances and interviews with Christine Fischer Guy please contact:christine@christinefischerguy.com or Shaun Bradley at shaun@transatlanticagency.com, tel: (902) 693-2026