The top of the ABotM. The Artists’ Book of the Moment for 2012.

The self-published artist’s book Studies for Possible Futures is a collection of twenty-two original collages. Utilizing found images, the artist engages in subtle manipulation of the printed-matter to provide meditations on place, hope, and utopia. The resulting images serve as visual-proposals, such as the visions of lunar communes, the creation of new lands, green spaces, or cosmic monuments, all of which attempt to document the artist’s accumulation of research activity and discovery through primarily non-lingusitic means. Approached with curiosity and the inquisitive spirit of a field scientist, the works in this book are small acts of envisioning; they are maps of sorts, made from fragments of the past which are now compiled, combined, re-configured and fragmented into portraits of possible futures.  A circle cut in the middle of Studies for possible futures, vision #1: Lunar Commune, removes almost all of the information from the found image, calling upon our imaginations to see the endless possibilities of the blank centre.

These collages were created as supplemental elements to a larger research project, and its resulting field studies, actions and sculptures, which investigated issues surrounding contested ownership of lands, creation of new lands, and questions of who owns the moon. The work in its current book format was realized a year after a solo exhibition of the same title at 107 Shaw Gallery as a way to share these images and ideas with a larger audience, while at the same time exploring their potential in a different context. Although each collage is numbered within a larger series, only a select few of these studies appear in the book, ordered with an emphasis on narrative content rather than sequential order.

Available from: www.artmetropole.com
More information at: www.maggiegroat.com/

Maggie Groat is a visual artist working in a variety of media including collage, sculpture, artists’ books, video, site specific interventions, and field studies. Forming an ongoing research-based practice, her work explores the interdisciplinary potential of artistic intervention and envisioning.  Maggie’s work is interested in discovering how assuming amateur positions (in other disciplines or even in entirely made up fields) can help locate what occurs in the intersections and gaps between dichotomies, particularly between art/science, politics/poetics, utopia/reality, romanticism/conceptualism. Currently, she is organizing a collaborative artists’ book project that explores the multifaceted use, history and symbolism of Lake Ontario, as well as preparing work in response to the artists’ book How to Avoid the Future Tense by Canadian artists Liz Magor and Joey Morgan for an upcoming exhibition at Xpace Cultural Centre in Toronto, 2013. Her work has been exhibited at a number of places across Canada including Parker Branch, Xpace, Georgia Sherman Projects, The Niagara Artists Centre as well published in Front Magazine and Cmagazine.  Maggie studied visual art and philosophy at York University before attending The University of Guelph, where she received an MFA degree in 2010. She is currently divides her time between living and working in St. Catharines and Toronto, Ontario.