Temple Bates, 'Jettison', July 8 - 31, 2011

Temple Bates, 'Woolly Cheeks', 23 x 19.5 inches, oil on canvas, 2011

Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects is pleased to present new paintings by Toronto-based artist Temple Bates, in conjunction with the launch of her book Hermoddities. Signed copies will be available for purchase at the opening reception.

"The sensibility has me fuddling back through my memories for drawings by Dr. Seuss, whose creations like those in a Bates painting, look uncannily like self-portraits with fur added. Bates takes figures from childhood imaginings — sea monsters, wooly toy-creatures, over-sized facial features — and puts them in the context of classical portraiture and naturalist landscape. This synthesis, I believe, encapsulates one of the major dialogues in modern art we're having today about maturity and youth."

- Lee Henderson

"Bates' paintings are as odd as her Catpeeps but there is so much more here. Each one is a character, a woolly-cheeked critter with a backstory, living in forests, but sitting uncomfortably long enough to be painted. There is a sense of timelessness here; are these creatures medieval or futuristic, children or old men? Hermetic oddities, hermaphrodities. Sometimes cute, sometimes cruel."

- Andy Brown, publisher, Conundrum Press

Hermoddities
by Temple Bates
published by Conundrum Press
ISBN 978-1-894994-57-6
6x6", 192 pages, full colour, July 2010
$20