Opening Reception: Saturday, October 15, 2-5 PM

Jay Dart, Disintegration, Pastel & coloured pencil on panel, 12 x 12 inches, 2022

Jay Dart - “Ten Hundred Years of Yawns and Dust”

“If this endlessness’s a must,
then I’m a disintegrate int’ dust.”
– Jiggs

To commemorate the 10th anniversary of the inception of his Yawnder series, Jay Dart is showing new drawings alongside rarely-exhibited pieces from this body of work in a touring exhibition titled Ten Hundred Years of Yawns & Dust. This series features the exploits of his alter ego, Jiggs, and a cast of wanderers in a whimsical mindscape through which a narrative continues to evolve about the mystical nature of inspiration, the quest for innovative creation, and the dissemination of ideas. Within this conceptually layered world, Dart explores themes of identity, innocence lost/recovered, isolation, ecology, and interconnection in modern society.

Among the new works featured at Slate Gallery, the second stop on the tour, is an installation titled Out On Other PlaneS (OOPS), in which he continues to find new approaches to presenting his drawings so that the scenes extend beyond the picture plane. Each of the five pieces in this installation carry on from the front of the panels, along the sides, and continue onto the walls, with drawing in between them to present conjoined scenes from a new found part of the Yawnderverse called the Planes. Here, Dart is exploring his fascination with other planes of existence as he continues to contemplate the role of the artist in contemporary culture.

In the Postcards From Yawnder, we return to some of the earliest settings from the saga, only this time the mystical dust storm of Vooka has blown in. The name for this atmospheric event references the concept of VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) which has been used to describe the state of anxious, unpredictability that defines the “new normal” of our times. The wanderers in this mythical world who have been figuratively pondering what’s “in the air” are now also contending with what’s literally in their airborne surroundings.

Over more than a decade, Jay Dart has created approximately 300 pieces for the Yawnder series which includes not only drawings but also mixed-media works, installations, animated videos and bookworks that add another dimension to the works on paper. Some of the pieces from the Yawnder archives that are included in this exhibition were featured in his bookworks Where Yawns Go, the first volume of a series recounts the narrative within his imagined world, and the Field Guide to Yawnder, a catalogue for his first touring public gallery exhibition which is also available at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Jay Dart is a Canadian drawist and designer whose practice extends from drawings to bookworks, mixed media pieces, installations, and animated videos. His work has been shown in galleries across Canada and in art fairs including Paris (Drawing Now), New York (Art on Paper), Montreal (Papier), Amsterdam (100 Euro Show), Portland (100 Dollar Show) and Art Toronto (solo booth). He is the recipient of multiple grants and honours including from the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and National Magazine Awards. His work has been featured on CBC radio and television, including a profile on The Exhibitionists. Dart is a graduate of the University of Guelph’s Fine Art programme, and he currently lives and draws with his family in the small hamlet of Ashburn, Ontario.