The Banquet Years:

Ted Fullerton, Will Gorlitz, John Kissick, Stu Oxley, Martin Pearce, Cheryl Ruddock

Exhibition Dates: April 5, 2024 - June 2, 2024

Opening Reception: April 5, 2024, 7:00 pm

In his 1969 book, The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France, 1885 to World War I, Roger Shattuck identified dinners, large and small, grand and humble, as markers of fin-de-siecle occasions and as progenitors of a nascent revolution in all aspects of life, but, most significantly in the creative arts. Shattuck casts four very different artists to represent the period - Rousseau, Satie, Jarry and Apollinaire.

A hundred years later and a continent removed, our group of artists has met consistently, but sporadically. We have eaten, talked, visited studios and taken encouragement and inspiration from our disparate approaches to painting.

Let’s be clear - it’s all been more modest. We can assume that our menus have been lower on the Michelin scale, and Paisley Street in downtown Guelph, certainly lacks some of the charm of the Boulevard Montparnasse. Ours is not a revolutionary historical moment - early twentieth century “newness” seems, in some ways, more distant than Giotto. However, our long engagement with making paintings defines us all. And to gather, share food and talk, before we return to our studios, has been sustaining in times that have increasingly seemed so very dark.