October 25 to December 16 2013
Openings in Québec and Montreal, Friday October 25 at 5PM

Proud to be part of 20/40, an event initiated by Accès Culture Montréal, Centre MATERIA presents À toutes mailles! This event made it possible for MATERIA to organize, for the first time, two exhibitions held simultaneously in Montreal and Quebec City. The curator, Carole Baillargeon, selected artists who practice knitting in unusual ways, beyond the purely functional purposes. The participating artists are especially concerned to be part of the social fabric by making tight bonds with their communities.

For a long time, knitting was considered with contempt by artists and the use of this technique in contemporary fine art is recent. With the familiar character of knitting, artists found a way to raise their audience’s emotions.

Centre MATERIA (Québec)
Cécile Dachary (France) let her intuition free to crochet works without using conventional stich patterns. Doug Guildford (Ontario and Nova Scotia) sees in the fishing net a motif engaging a dialogue with his crocheted sculptures. Janet Morton (Ontario) takes advantage of the prejudices against knitting to create art works that transform the mundane into unique art works.

Maison de la culture Marie-Uguay (Montréal)
The Colifichet collective (Marie-Eve Gagnon, Marie-Michèle B. Lemaire, Dominique Savoie and Marie-France Tremblay) practices “eight hands knitting” to create folk-art inspired works suffused with sweet irony. Helga Schlitter’s mosaics formally evoke knitting; each individual colored area unites to the others to form a single surface. Jacques Samson invites visitors to transgress the « please do not touch » rule and pet his Sculptures Toutou. Luce Pelletier explores the relation between her works and their projected shadows. Mylène Michaud, the only artist who favors knitting-machine, uses digital images from the internet, such as QR codes and Google maps, as patterns.