Shary Boyle

Boyle was born in Scarborough, Ontario, the youngest of five children. Her family owned and operated an independent West Hill glass and screen repair business. There are no other professional artists or musicians in her immediate or extended family, though her mother (Kathryn Boyle, 1939-2016) and grandmother (Constance Dadd, 1911-2010) were gifted textile and folk-art hobbyists. She attended Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts high school where she studied art and music theatre daily, then went on to post-secondary studies at the Ontario College of Art, graduating in 1994. She was involved in the Toronto punk and hardcore music scene in her high school and early college years, singing in the band Liquid Joy. Her early interest in music and performance incorporated costume, poster and T-shirt design and the creation and free distribution of small photocopied 'zines. Her earliest 'zines and drawings were compiled in the compilation publication "Witness My Shame" (Conundrum Press, 2004). Between 1998-2006 Boyle supplemented her art practise of drawing and painting through published illustration.[2]

Shary Boyle works across media and genres, and is known for her highly imaginative representational and narrative symbolism that is personal, visionary and at times disturbing. Her work explores themes of gender, identity, sexuality, power and class, evoking emotional and psychic resonance through exquisite craftsmanship.[3] She is particularly known for her explorations of the figure through porcelain sculpture. Boyle's earliest porcelain 'figurine' series (2002-2006) used commercial molds and traditional porcelain lace techniques to create sculptures that mined the historical relationship between decoration and excessive ornamentation as it relates to women and gender issues. The series was introduced in a solo exhibition at the Power Plant in Toronto (Lace Figures, curated by Reid Sheir, 2006). These early figurines became iconic in the Canadian contemporary art scene of the early 2000s, with the series acquired by major museums across the country (The Rooms, Nfld, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Art Gallery of Ontario, Winnipeg Art Gallery) and internationally (Paisley Museum of Art, Scotland). Boyle's early experiments with porcelain and her subversion of female hobby-craft from debased kitsch to contemporary art is credited with reviving porcelain and ceramics as a valid contemporary art medium in early 2000s Toronto, bridging a class divide and questioning hierarchy between 'low' and 'high' art through feminist intervention.

In 2004, her work was featured at the Or Gallery in Vancouver (Companions). In 2006, her first series of porcelain sculpture was presented in a solo exhibition at the Power Plant in Toronto (Lace Figures). Boyle worked exclusively with the Toronto contemporary commercial art gallery Jessica Bradley Art + Projects from 2007 until she left to become independent in 2014. In 2008 the Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Lethbridge showcased her work in a solo show (The History of Light), and in 2009 Boyle's work was first exhibited with Kinngait artist Shuvinai Ashoona (Ghost Noise) at Justina M Barnicke Gallery in Toronto, curated by Nancy Campbell. 2010, Boyle's first national touring exhibition Flesh and Blood opened at the Art Gallery of Ontario. This exhibition was a joint venture between the AGO, Galerie de l’UQAM and the Vancouver Contemporary Art Gallery, and was curated by Louise Déry.[2][4] Boyle represented Canada at the 2013 Venice Biennale with her project Music for Silence.[5] In 2014, Boyle was lead faculty on The Universe and Other Systems residency at The Banff Centre.[6] Boyle is a popular public speaker, with an extensive history of presenting public lectures, panel and symposiums and interviews internationally at universities, art centres, museums and radio/online.

In 2014, Boyle presented a 10-yr drawing/text collaboration with video artist Emily Vey Duke (The Illuminations Project) at Oakville Galleries, touring to Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in 2018. The Illuminations Project publication was launched by Oakville Galleries Press in 2015. In 2015 Boyle travelled to the Kinngait Studios on Baffin Island, NU, to collaborate for the second time with Shuvinai Ashoona. The drawings they created together, as well as their independent drawings and sculptures, were presented (Universal Cobra) in 2015 at Pierre-Francois Ouellette Art Contemporain (Montreal) in a co-produced exhibition with Feheley Fine Art (Toronto). A publication by the same name (You've Changed Imprints) was released in 2016. In 2016 Boyle travelled to Kangiqliniq, NU to meet the ceramic artists working at Matchbox Studios, inviting John Kurok and Pierre Aupilardjuk to join her on a ceramic residency at Medlata Historic Potteries in Medicine Hat, Alberta for September 2016. The same year Boyle proposed, researched and co-organized (Earthlings), an artist-curated exhibition produced by the Esker Foundation (Calgary) in 2017, touring to the Doris McCarthy Gallery UTSC (2017), Galerie de l'UQAM, Montreal (2018) and the Winnipeg Art Gallery (2018). Earthlings is an exhibition of visionary ceramic sculpture and works on paper by seven Canadian artists (Roger Aksadjuak, Shuvinai Ashoona, Pierre Aupilardjuk, Shary Boyle, Jessie Kenalogak, John Kurok, and Leo Napayok), produced both individually and collaboratively. in 2017 Boyle has been invited to present a series of new sculptures at the Gyeonggi International Ceramic Biennale (Seoul, Korea). Boyle's public artwork "Cracked Wheat"[7] is located outside of the Gardiner Museum (Toronto) and was installed in 2019.

In addition to her sculptural and performance work, Boyle performs with musicians, creating shadow vignettes and "live" drawings, which are animated and projected onstage using vintage overhead projectors. In 2006, Boyle was invited to perform at the Hammer Museum in LA (A Night with Kramers Ergot), where she presented a live solo performance in costume with a curated soundtrack. Boyle collaborated with Doug Paisley to form Dark Hand and Lamplight, an opening act for Will Oldham's 10-date 2006 California tour.[8] She has also worked with Feist, Peaches, and Christine Fellows.[9] In 2012, she collaborated with the latter to present an original theater piece, Everything Under the Moon at the Enwave Theatre in Toronto.[10] In 2014, Boyle and Fellows collaborated on a new live multi-disciplinary performance called Spell to Bring Lost Creature Home, by invitation of the Northern Arts and Cultural Centre. The pair presented Spell to Bring Lost Creatures Home on a 5-date small plane tour of the Northwest Territories in October 2014, and across Canada for 10 dates in 2015.[11] In 2016 Boyle presented her first commissioned stage design for Voix de Ville!, a production of the Niagara Artists Centre at the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre in St Catharines.

Boyle's work is included in many public and private collections, including The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Giverny Capital, Montreal Collection, The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax, Musee d'art contemporain de Montreal, The Bailey Collection, ON/NYC, The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, and la Maison Rouge, Paris.[3]

Boyle has won a number of awards, receiving the Canada Council for the Arts International Studio Program residency at Space in London, UK, in 2007,[8] and the 2009 Gershon Iskowitz Prize.[12] She received the K. M. Hunter Artist Award in 2000, the Chalmers Foundation Award in 2004,[13] was a finalist for the Sobey Art Award in 2007 and 2009,[10] and in 2010, she won the Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Award.[14]

Her work has been featured in a number of publications. These include:

• The Story of Jane Doe (Random House, 2003),
• Witness My Shame (Conundrum Press, 2004),
• Kramer's Ergot #6 and # 7 (Buenaventura Press, 2006, 2008),
• Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope: All-Story (AZX Publications, 2007),
• Furnish and Fragiles (Die Gestalten, 2007, 2008)
• The Believer magazine (McSweeney's Publishing, 2008),
• Otherworld Uprising: Shary Boyle (Conundrum Press, 2008).[8]
• Flesh and Blood (UQAM Press, 2011),
• 2013 Venice Biennale monograph Music for Silence: Shary Boyle,[15]
• "Shine A Light: Canadian Biennial 2014",[16]
• "Loud Silence",[17]
• "HB: No 4, Erotica" (Montreal: Editions HB, 2015),
• "Shary Boyle and Emily Vey Duke, The Illuminations Project" (Oakville Galleries Press), *"Ceramix: from Rodin to Schütte",[18]
• "A23. Vol. 1 The Mysticism of the Female",[19]
• "Noise Ghost and Other Stories",[20]
• "Shuvinai Ashoona and Shary Boyle. Universal Cobra" (You’ve Changed Imprints, 2016), *"Earthlings" (Esker Foundation, 2017), and
• "Vitamin C: New Perspectives in Contemporary Art, Ceramics" (London, UK: Phaidon Press, 2017).

• Shary Boyle