Image courtesy of the artists.

Why Do I Never See You At The Club
Places – A Hamilton Radio-DJ Collective

April 4 – May 17, 2025
Opening Reception: April 4, 7 – 9pm
Cannon Gallery

With corporate/nationalist interests increasingly co-opting dance music’s “Peace, Love, Unity, Respect (PLUR)” aesthetics for capital gain and as a means to legitimize state violence, Why Do I Never See You at the Club? explores how people use dance-music to build local knowledge and create opportunities that serve our community’s needs for play, connection, skill-sharing, and placemaking.

Curated by Places and featuring local Hamilton artists, Why Do I Never See You at the Club? is a multimedia project that explores and celebrates dance music culture through nightlife memorabilia, photography, collage, and video works. The event-driven exhibition invites you to film screenings on global rave culture; panel discussions on party organizing and safety in club spaces; workshops for the shy and dance-curious; weekly broadcasts featuring local selectors; and a living library of found objects offering a glimpse into Hamilton’s history of dance music culture—all anchored by a DIY DJ altar station for live playing and sonic exploration.

We create the club we want to go. This exhibit turns the gaze toward the dancefloor/gallery for (un)familiar modes of participation—watching, listening, mixing, mingling, jumping, creating breathing, thinking, dancing, and connecting.

Events Overview:

Global Rave Screening Pt. 1 – Last Year of Darkness
April 10, 6 – 8pm

April Art Crawl
April 11, 7 – 9pm

woodland bot & Guests
April 12, 12 – 3pm

godemperor & Guests
April 19, 12 – 3pm

Panel: Party Building
April 25, 7 – 9pm

Workshop: How to Use CDJs
April 26, 1 – 3pm

Global Rave Screening Pt. 2
May 2, 5:30 – 7:30pm

Peachface Lovedeep & Guests
May 3, 9 – 11:30am

pb & jam (presence, body & jam) with retrograde: dance in motion
May 3, 12 – 2pm

May Art Crawl
May 9, 7 – 9pm

Dunaway & Guests
May 10, 9 – 11:30am

Panel: Safety in Dance and Club Culture
May 10, 1 – 3pm

For full details of Place’s events please visit: www.places-wav.com

Places is a Hamilton-based artist collective exploring the social and experimental sides of DJing, radio, and sound. Co-founded by Jeff Chow (Dunaway), Nikhil Rajput (Peachface Lovedeep), Vania Void (woodland bot), and Jac Hypolite (godemperor), Places evolved from a weekly radio show on CFMU and has since expanded into live events, community workshops, and multimedia projects.

Rooted in collaboration and curiosity, Places treats DJing as more than just mixing one track to another—it’s a tool for education, pleasure and community building. The collective is drawn to mixes that blend spoken word, analog radio, DIY aesthetics, and unconventional formats.

At its heart, Places aims to make DJing and sound art more accessible. By creating events and for skill-sharing, experimentation, and collective listening, the group challenges the idea that DJ culture is exclusive or technical. Instead, they embrace an open-ended approach—one that invites people to engage with music in their own way, whether as selectors, dancers, or listeners.

Documentation by Alison Postma of persistent desires exhibition by Eli Nolet and Ardyn Gibbs at Xpace Cultural Centre, 2025

TENDER LIKE A BRUISE
Eli Nolet and Ardyn Gibbs

April 4 – May 17, 2025
Opening Reception: April 4, 7 – 9 pm
James Gallery

TENDER LIKE A BRUISE is a collaborative exhibition featuring Eli Nolet and Ardyn Gibbs, two Hamilton-based emerging queer and trans artists whose practices investigate queer affect through new media and material explorations.

Engaging with the tensions of how a bruise can be the outcome of both pain and pleasure in relation to queerness, the exhibition seeks to explore the nuanced politics of the queer body and visibility through a lens of relationality and T4T* care.

*T4T meaning “trans 4 trans” – used here to refer to a shared understanding and relation to fellow trans people in our lives in which a reciprocal exchange of love, knowledge, and care takes place.

Ardyn Gibbs is a Queer and Trans, Settler-Indigenous (Mohawk) Artist, Designer and Arts Worker located on the territories of the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe, and the Mississauga’s of the Credit First Nation otherwise known as Hamilton, Ontario. Using digital new media technologies Ardyn’s work explores the themes of Queer Futurity, Digital Dreaming and Visibility/Legibility of Queer bodies in public spaces. Ardyn is passionate about collective dreaming, place keeping and fostering meaningful connections. Their work is constantly shifting, adapting and growing with the world around them.

Eli Nolet (they/them) is a queer trans settler-Indigenous artist and arts worker from the occupied territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee, and Mississaugas (otherwise known as Hamilton, Ontario). Their work explores how technology and affective materiality can function as a vessel for the medium of self and queer potentiality. Across their practice, Nolet is interested in investigating the many layered histories of queer culture and desire, and questioning the binaries of visible/invisible, normative/transgressive.

As an artist-run centre, Hamilton Artists Inc. (the Inc.) empowers artists of all career levels to take risks with their contemporary visual arts practices and present their work in a critical context.

We are open to the public on Wednesday and Thursday 12-5 pm, Friday 12-6 pm and Saturday 12-5 pm.

Accessibility: The Inc. is an accessible venue. Click here for detailed information.

Hamilton Artists Inc.
155 James Street North
Hamilton, ON L8R 2K9
www.theinc.ca | 905.529.3355

Facebook: @HamiltonArtistsInc
Twitter: @HamArtInc
Instagram: @HamiltonArtistsInc

Contact:
Sanaa Humayun, Programming Director
programming@theinc.ca

The Inc. gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council, City of Hamilton, Canada Council for the Arts, Hamilton Community Foundation, Incite Foundation for the Arts, and all of our members, donors, sponsors, and programming partners.