ChromaZone and associated artists in 1980s Toronto

Saturday February 21  |  2 - 3:30 PM

Koffler301

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The 1980s in Toronto was a vibrant and transformative period. The city was bubbling with experimental energy—a burgeoning alternative scene with artist-run centres, pop-up and underground galleries, street art, and more.

Co-founders of the ChromaZone/Chromatique Collective and associated artists speak about Toronto's art scene in the 1980s and the collective's formation, ethos, and impact.

The panel will conclude with questions from the audience.

Moderator: Josh Heuman, Head of Artistic Engagement, Koffler Arts

Panelists: Andy Fabo, Oliver Girling, Joslyn Rogers, Brian Burnett, Eldon Garnet, and Andrew James Paterson

Andy Fabo is an artist, art critic, independent curator, AIDS activist, and art educator. He did his undergraduate studies at the University of Calgary and the Alberta College of Art before moving to Toronto in 1975. He received his MFA from OCAD University in 2013. Fabo’s paintings, drawings, and videos have exhibited widely nationally and internationally. In 2005 he had a retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art that featured over thirty years of work, from the first mixed media paintings that he exhibited in Studs (1979 at A Space), to paintings from his time as a founding member of the ChromaZone/Chromatique Collective, to his activist and memorializing response to the AIDS epidemic.

Oliver Girling was born in the U.K. and grew up in Toronto. He studied at York University and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, and spent most of his artistic career in Toronto. Girling's work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions both nationally and internationally. He was a founding member of the ChromaZone collective, and during the 1980s and ‘90s was an influential contributor to the vibrant Queen West art scene at the time. Oliver’s work is included in various public, corporate, and private collections, including The National Gallery of Canada, The Art Gallery of Ontario, and The Canada Council Art Bank. He currently works and lives on Manitoulin Island in Ontario.

Joslyn Rogers is a Toronto-based actor, writer, and director. She has worked extensively as a writer/performer with international theatre company Dopo Lavoro Teatrale (DLT) to devise new theatrical works which have been presented world-wide and showcased on platforms such as CBC Arts. She has written and directed a series of short-films that have screened at multiple festivals, won distribution with ARTA, and holds the screenwriter credit on a feature film set to shoot in Tunisia, Spring, 2026. Her short-film, Rae Johnson: Angels and Monsters, was featured on forbes.com in 2020; a prologue to her first feature documentary film project of the same title, which is under development with support from Canada Council for the Arts.

Brian Burnett’s paintings are expressive, visceral and textured manipulations of acrylic paint. He has explored aerial and street views of city landscapes, Ontario wetlands and bogs in his work. In the last 10 years, he has focused on the intersection between digital technology and painting. Currently, he has returned to a pure painting practice. He has been an art instructor at the Toronto School of Art and a professor of Fine Art at Centennial College. Burnett has exhibited regularly since 1979 in Canada, the USA, and the UK. His work is included in many prominent public, corporate and private collections in Canada and the USA.

Eldon Garnet is an internationally acclaimed Canadian artist known for a multidisciplinary approach to his work. He constructs a disquieting ambiguity by using whatever means of expression he deems suitable. Instead of defining himself as an artist with a central medium, he tries to create an allegory of image, words, sound and time. His projects often take on the qualities of a contemporary Gesamtkunstwerk that surpasses both the obvious narrative and the postmodern ironic.

Andrew James Paterson is an interdisciplinary artist based in Toronto. His work engages in a playful questioning of language, philosophy, community and capitalism in a wide range of disciplines, including video, performance, writing, film and music. Paterson has contributed to artist-run discourse for four plus decades - serving on the boards of Trinity Square Video, A Space, and YYZ Artists’ Outlet. He has curated media-arts and other programmes, edited and co-edited books, contributed to anthologies, coordinated the8fest small-gauge film festival (2011-2017). His media works have shown locally, nationally, and internationally. In 2019, Paterson was awarded a Governor General’s Award for his work in Visual and Media Arts. In 2024, his life and work were the subject of a survey exhibition Never Enough Night at the plumb in Toronto.