Barbara Balfour: Golden Pavilion Notebook Launch at Art Metropole

Untitled Image. Photo: Barbara Balfour

Barbara Balfour: Golden Pavilion Notebook

Artist’s Book Launch: September 13, 2025, 3 – 5pm
Art Metropole, Toronto

Golden Pavilion Notebook, a new artist’s book by Barbara Balfour, will be launched at Art Metropole. During the reception, there will be intermittent readings by the artist of excerpts from the publication. Ostensibly about Kinkaku-ji, the golden pavilion located in Kyoto, Japan, this artist’s book is at the same time a reflection on impermanence: nomenclatural, architectural, familial. Balfour’s connection to this pavilion is inextricably linked to her late father’s documentation of it in slides, dating from the late 1950s and early 1960s.

As a print-based artist fascinated by the dynamic between the original and the copy, with the copy not being considered inferior, Balfour became intrigued by Kinkaku-ji’s iconic image repeated endlessly in travel guides, the site’s webcam, postcards, and tourists’ digital images – almost always inherently doubled by the temple’s reflection in the nearby lake.

The key material substance referenced in this book is gold, in its many iterations: on Japanese folding screens, in dentistry, and as gold flakes on soft ice cream. Despite its featherweight delicacy, gold is resilient in that it doesn’t oxidize, rust, or tarnish.

Untitled Image. Photo: Barbara Balfour

This is a book in the form of a notebook, where you will encounter such things as:
various names changes
a conflagration
the start of the story
a few false starts
more of the same
duplicates, replacements, facsimiles
slides, carousels, postcards
clichés
disappointment
Japanese breakfast
impermanence
a family chestnut

Golden Pavilion Notebook, 2024. Photo: Barbara Balfour

About the Artist

Barbara Balfour’s art practice is primarily print-based – spanning artists’ books, multiples, and installation. Her curatorial projects and critical writing tend to focus on print media and text-based art practices. Balfour has an ongoing interest in the phenomenon of the unfinished art project and is particularly fond of lithography.

Exhibitions include Caution: Artists! Text messages in art (Kunsttempel, Kassel, Germany, 2021) and Imprints: Art Editing Modernism (The Laurence Sterne Trust, Coxwold, UK, 2021), both group; and the solo exhibition Cabinet des estampes (Produit Rien, Montréal, Québec, 2024). Conference papers include “Inkling: Colour Remix” at the Materiality of Colour Symposium (Oslo Academy of Arts, Oslo, Norway, 2023). Based in Toronto, Balfour is Professor Emerita, Department of Visual Art and Art History, York University.

About Art Metropole

Art Metropole is a non-profit artist-run centre that publishes, promotes, exhibits, archives, and distributes artists’ books, multiples, and related media. We produce exhibitions, talks, readings, and other programs that highlight artists who make books and other artworks that can be widely circulated.

Our shop at 895 College Street, Toronto, stocks artists’ books and publications on contemporary art in all formats, with over 16,000 inventory items. Established in 1974, Art Metropole operates the oldest and longest-running artist-run bookstore in the world. We also distribute works through our online shop, and at art book fairs, pop-ups, and satellite locations internationally.

Art Metropole
896 College Street
Toronto, Ontario
M6H 1A4 Canada
www.artmetropole.com
info@artmetropole.com
+1 416 703 4400

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Accessibility:
Art Metropole is partially accessible. For more information, visit here.

Image Descriptions:
1. A crumpled, shiny substance fills the frame. It seems to be both metallic and plastic.
2. In a blurred reflection, a vase of pink flowers is visible on a surface covered with gold leaf.
3. Two copies of the Golden Pavilion Notebook are placed side to side, showing the front and back covers. A dotted and slightly abstracted image of the pavilion is seen on both.