Julie Gladstone
Heart Breathing
2024

About the Item

Julie Gladstone is a Canadian Interdisciplinary artist well known for her abstract painting and installations, while also working in drawing, photography, sculpture, knitting, embroidery, textiles, music, performance and DIY video work. Her practice involves collecting contemporary artefacts, creating altars, amulets, spiritual couture and garments for rites of passage around motherhood, and inventing contemporary ceremonies for healing. Gladstone holds an MFA the Interdisciplinary Studio program at OCAD University, and a BFA with a major in Painting and Drawing and a minor in Film Studies from Concordia University. Gladstone is the recipient of an Ontario Graduate Scholarship and the Dean's Scholarship and the Stevenson Colour Scholarship. She has participated in artist residencies at SIM Residency in Iceland and Artscape Gibraltar point on Toronto Island and has lived in Haida Gwaii where she volunteered at the Haida Heritage Centre archiving the rare book collection and exhibiting in the Ocean Art Show. Gladstone has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions widely in Canada and the United States. Notable exhibitions have included Surface Tension at the Artport Gallery as part of Design TO, A solo exhibition at the Museum of Jewish Montreal, You are Not Wonderful Just Because you are a Mother Exhibition curated by Qiana Mestrich, the Department of Canadian Heritage in Toronto,and The Talahassee Museum. Her work has been supported by the Toronto and Ontario Arts Councils, the Government of Quebec, Artscape, and the City of Edmonton. Gladstone’s work has been featured by CBC Arts, Toronto Guardian, Toronto Life and the Canadian Jewish News. Her first International solo exhibition was produced with the support of the Judío David Melul Museum, in Béjar Spain in the summer of 2019 and was followed by a solo exhibition s at the Museum of Jewish Montreal. Inspired by family mythology and diaspora, the exhibiton became part of a quest to discover the medieval village in Spain from which her ancestors were exiled during in 1492, during the Spanish Inquisition. By integrating Medieval Sephardic and Kabbalistic iconography and the flora and fauna from her ancestral environment as a way to create metaphysical protective garments, for herself, her unborn child and as retroactive protective garments for her ancestors in the diaspora. These works were exhibited in the village from which her ancestors were exiled 500 years earlier and are a contemplation of the meaning of a homeland in an era of displacement, climate change and the disconnection from ones culture and land that comes from a diaspora heritage.

Creator:

Julie Gladstone (Canadian, Jewish)

Creation Year:

2024

Dimensions:

Height: 60 in (152.4 cm)Width: 58 in (147.32 cm)Depth: 2 in (5.08 cm)

Medium:

Oil

Movement & Style:

Contemporary

Period:

2010-