Dear friends and colleagues,
After four years of programming, the gallery has closed. 8eleven’s public program concluded with our final exhibition Soft Turns: PLANT/PIXEL in April 2018.
With the end of our lease, it felt like the right moment to embrace change. Affordable spaces in Toronto are increasingly difficult to maintain, and our gallery was not shielded from this reality. As a primarily self-funded organization, we strove to exist between a commercial gallery and an artist-run centre. We operated with limited resources for four years and the time came to acknowledge that this was not sustainable in the long term without a significant change to the collective-run model and non-hierarchical board structures to which we were committed.
We are extremely proud of the programs and legacy that 8eleven has built. We especially want to acknowledge the founding members and all of our previous members that contributed to this organization and allowed it to grow in the ways that it has. 8eleven worked hard to give artists a space in which to experiment and take risks, and from the outset we sought to be a space that challenged accepted gallery models, extending to our auxiliary programming as well as our gallery exhibitions, through a range of music events, readings, dance parties, and even schvitzes.
First and foremost we are extremely grateful to all the artists who collaborated with us. We are also thankful for the support of various funding bodies along the way. Centrally, we are incredibly indebted to the rich community of artists, curators, volunteers, writers, and peers who supported us as friends and colleagues over the years — we thank you for your dedication, generosity, enthusiasm and camaraderie. Without you, the immense project of 8eleven would not have happened.
We are all on to new endeavours and will surely see many of you in the near future. We look forward to continued opportunities to collaborate. For any inquiries please contact us at 8elevengallery@gmail.
All our love,
8eleven (is forever).