“What constitutes our world? We move through it, but even as we travel, we are trying to recreate home. We’re trying to step outside of our comfort zone and at the same time protect ourselves in this vulnerable situation.” — STEPHEN ANDREWS

The work of Stephen Andrews has long mediated the successive crises of the contemporary world, exploring conflict, social change and identity. For more than a decade, Andrews confronted the AIDS epidemic personally and artistically. Later, his work registered the impact of the attacks of September 11, 2001, the subsequent “War on Terror”, the financial crash of 2008 and a new wave of global protests, from those surrounding the 2010 G20 summit in Toronto to those associated with the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring. Embedding, layering and erasing meaning, Andrews’s work creates a triangle, where meaning resides between the process of painting (magical and sensuous), the represented image (a chronicle of fragility and resilience) and the invitation to the viewer (to look carefully and engage).

Published to coincide with a major exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Stephen Andrews POV provides a comprehensive overview of the last fifteen years of Andrews’s work, a time when painting has emerged as his primary area of inquiry alongside a multifaceted approach to production that has resulted in drawings, photographs, animations, videos, installations, ceramics and ephemera.