Programs

Digital Projects are how we reach audiences beyond the gallery space. Whether online exhibition, digital works, audio recordings, or a combination of all and more, we use Digital Projects to invite artists to consider new modes of distributing their art. Consider them as an invitation to a conversation; a place to make community happen anywhere.

YYZBOOKS is our press dedicated to encouraging ideas, critical thinking, and above all the appreciation of art, culture, and writing. Much like our exhibitions at YYZ Artists’ Outlet, we publish works that are as challenging as they are accessible—clear, direct communication between the most diverse pool of writers and readers. We publish a wide range of books about Canadian criticism and art history. By facilitating new avenues of discourse within Canadian publishing, YYZBOOKS has become a crucial forum for the most exciting and invigorating forms of printed and digital writing.

Publications can be bought at our shop.

YYZ Artists’ Outlet presents six exhibitions per year. We believe that self-curation is a methodology. Our selected artists have free reign to produce the exhibition they know will push their practice forward. Artists know best how to present their own work. YYZ Artists’ Outlet is here to support them as they do so.

YYZ Artists’ Outlet hosts a range of special programming, such as talks, workshops, and other forms of interactive events.

See upcoming events on our Calendar.

YYZResidency is the moment when our gallery is transformed into a site for experimentation and an incubator for new work. Rather than keep the artist sequestered away in isolation as they create, YYZResidency opens up the process to invite in the public for an opportunity to see the true process of art in production. We believe that this intervention on the traditional mode of artists’ residencies offers an illumination necessary to the artist, the art, and the collective intersection between peer, audience, and inspiration: under this light, every part of art becomes a collaboration.

Our mandate to put artists first extends beyond exhibition and into the concept of the retrospective. With YYretroZpective, we provide support for open creation and free experimentation. We know how necessary it is for our artists to initiate and curate their own take on a retrospective exhibition.

At YYZ Artists’ Outlet, we believe that as an artist-run centre, it is imperative that we support artists at every stage of their career. That extends from the first show out of school into the survey look of a lifetime practice. By asking artists to assume the structure of a retrospective exhibition, we are also offering the authority usually only afforded to an institution. Our ultimate goal is to present our respect for those ongoing phases with the tangible materials to show their practice in whatever manner they wish to see it represented.

We define support for our YYreZidency program as 24/7 access to the use of the gallery as a site for process and experimentation, while also offering the public an opportunity to see the processes of art production.

YYZ Artists’ Outlet is many things. We could still be many more. Our intervention program, YYZUNLIMITED, is an invitation to reinvent our organization itself. We ask artists to reimagine what sort of opportunities are still possible at YYZ Artists’ Outlet, without the limits of a traditional exhibition structure. This could be an off site project, an artist book, an LP, an audio project, a dance performance, or an intervention within an exhibition. YYZUNLIMITED is how we encourage our community to strengthen and flourish: by creating new material evidence of a future in communal progress.

The mentoring support for our YYZLAB program is where we offer institutional engagement in the development of the practice of emerging artists. We facilitate critical conversations between arts professionals and LAB participants. Artists gain an understanding of the art milieu through directed workshops, talks and panel discussions, studio critiques, and exhibition opportunities.