You have until Thursday evening to check out the The Stamp Show at the Visual Voice Gallery, featuring work by Sigrún Jenny Bardadóttir, Heidi Barkun, Mariana Escribano, Bettina Forget, Mike Patten, and Béatrice Sokoloff.

Mike Patten

The six artists participating in the show were asked to create artworks that integrate rubber stamping. Yes, the lowly rubber stamp has been given new life as a bona fide artmaking tool. Each artist took the idea of rubber stamping and made it part of their own studio practice. Mike Patten, for example, questioned the authority of the prosaic rubber stamp and created a stamp that simply reads MAYBE. Mariana Escribano pressed her stamp into colourful monoprints, Bettina Forget produced Mail Art, and Bardadóttir, Barkun, and Sokoloff created dynamic collages.
The exhibition has a few twists. First of all, the actual rubber stamps are exhibited alongside the artworks and are also for sale. So, if you’re inspired after browsing through the prints, consider creating some yourself! The other oddity is the way the art is displayed. Each artist has one of two prints framed on the wall, but the rest are slipped into plastic sleeves which dangle from clothes-hangers in the centre of the gallery. You feel like you’re browsing through a T-Shirt rack – but artsier.
Art: one size fits all!

Visual Voice Art Gallery
space 421
Sigrún Jenny Bardadóttir, Heidi Barkun, Mariana Escribano, Bettina Forget, Mike Patten, Béatrice Sokoloff
The Stamp Show
exhibition period: December 4 – 18, 2008
www.visualvoicegallery.com