Monica Tap (born 1962 in Edmonton, Alberta) is a Canadian painter, artist and academic. She lives in Toronto, Ontario, and teaches at the University of Guelph. She is known for engaging and challenging conventions around landscape and still-life painting.
Tap has exhibited her work across Canada and abroad, and is currently represented by MKG127 in Toronto and Pete Robertson Gallery in Edmonton.
Tap often uses photographs and video stills as source material for her paintings. Barry Schwabsky has noted that "her art offers one of the richest and most original revisionary instances of how the temporality of the act of looking can continue to keep painting in motion today".
Education
Tap attended NSCAD University (BFA 1990, MFA 1996), and studied Fine Arts under Gerald Ferguson.
Exhibitions
Selected solo and two-person exhibitions
2014 Teufelsmoor and other haunts. Gallery Stratford. Stratford, ON.
2013 New work. MKG127 (front gallery). Toronto, ON.
2012 Road work. The String Room Gallery, Wells College. Aurora, New York.
2012 Six ways from Sunday. Wynick/Tuck Gallery, Toronto, ON
2011 Another Roadside Abstraction: David Garneau and Monica Tap. Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina, SK.
2011 Monica Tap: Study Notes. Wynick/Tuck Gallery, Toronto. ON.
2011 Road Trip. Peter Robertson Gallery, Edmonton, AB.
2010 Sequence and Passage: Mara Korkola and Monica Tap, Cambridge Art Galleries, Cambridge, ON.
2010 Here and also elsewhere: New Paintings, Wynick/Tuck Gallery, Toronto, ON.
2009 Unnatural: Michel Daigneault and Monica Tap. Rodman Hall, St Catherine’s, ON.
2008 Monica Tap: Split Seconds. Art Gallery of Windsor, Windsor, ON
2008 Views from the Train: One-second Hudson and other works. McLaren Art Centre, Barrie, ON.
2008 The Passing Landscape. Art Gallery of Sudbury, Sudbury, ON.
2007 Séance, Margaret Thatcher Projects, New York, NY
2007 One-second Hudson, Wynick/Tuck Gallery, Toronto, ON.
2007 Grand River Chronicles: Séance. Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, Kitchener, ON.
2005 (also: 2003, 2000, 1998) Wynick/Tuck Gallery, Toronto, ON.
2005 Over here/ over there. Open Studio Gallery, Toronto, ON.
2005 Paintings. Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge, AB.
2002 Further, Tom Thompson Memorial Art Gallery. Owen Sound, ON.
2002 Douglas Udell Gallery, Edmonton, AB, and Vancouver, B.C. (2000, 1997)
2000 Field work, The Painting Center, New York, NY.
1999 Fields, Gallery 1.1.1, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, MN.
1996 Reprise, Dalhousie University Art Gallery, Halifax, NS.
Recent group exhibitions
2015 Stopping by Woods. Harbourfront Gallery (Artport Gallery). Toronto, ON.
2015 Running on Empty. Robert McLaughlin Gallery. Oshawa, ON.
2014 Crossover. Boston Cyberarts Gallery. Boston, MA.
2013 STAG. Dispari & Dispari Projects, Reggio Emilia, Italy
2012 60 Painters. Curator: Scott Sawtell. Toronto, ON
2010 Art School Dismissed, curator/ producer: Heather Nicol, Toronto, ON
Selected awards and honours
2008 Banff Centre for the Arts, “Artist in a Mountain Landscape"
