Fiona Smyth's CHEEZ 2 opens @ Gallery 50, Wednesday

CHEEZ 2
at Gallery 50 (50 Gladstone Ave. at Peel).
Opening Wednesday, March 16 from 6 pm to 9 pm.

Fiona Smyth’s CHEEZ was originally a monthly comic/drawing published in Canada's Exclaim Magazine over a ten year period from 1992 to 2002. There were no editorial restrictions on the work apart from the monthly deadline and the colour restrictions of the paper (the art work had to be black and white). Each strip was created shortly before the deadline and numbered in chronological order. The second incarnation of CHEEZ, running online since 2009 to currently, is a weekly offering continuing with the same numbering sequence and restrictive palette.

Visual artist Smyth’s creative process is unrestrained in the CHEEZ series. Recurring motifs and icons inform a non-linear narrative that spans nearly twenty-four years. Feminist imaginings of female bodies are central to this drawing world. Smyth’s stream of conscious approach connects to a long lineage of drawers, cartoonists, and imaginers like Moebius, Giles, Gary Panter, Saul Steinberg, George Grosz, John Scott, Frida Kahlo, and Louise Bourgeois.

A collection of the first one hundred strips was published as CHEEZ 100 by Pedlar Press in 2001
Gallery 50 is offering the sale of individual inkjet prints of the exhibited CHEEZ drawings upon request.

CHEEZ 2 runs from March 15 through to April 3, 2016.
Gallery 50 is open Wednesday to Sunday (1 pm to 5 pm).