We recognize things as they appear to us. But the skin of any organism is merely its outermost structure. We see the superficial first, only considering the complex and permeable interplay of inside and out as an afterthought.
Doubtless, the restored brick edifice on rue Saint-Antoine that houses Bradley Ertaskiran, the au courant contemporary art gallery, with its lofty casement windows and heavyweight steel front door, looks and feels like a manufacturing hub. Which is coincidentally what it is — a nexus where inspiration and industry, creativity and commerce, converge.
Perched on the northern border of Montreal’s formerly working-class Saint-Henri district, Megan Bradley and Antoine Ertaskiran’s exhibition space now anchors a neighbourhood that has transitioned from a material to a more ephemeral type of labour. The tobacco and record factories and tanneries may be gone, new condos and tech start-ups replacing them. Yet the elbow grease ethos remains.
For four years, Bradley and Ertaskiran have helmed one of Montreal’s best-respected galleries, successfully piercing the skin between the commercial and the avant-garde, and unapologetically fashioning great art into a marketable product.
“There is a value to the work that is done by artists,” Ertaskiran explains, “and a value to the art gallery,” in response to the rhetorical question of how to put a price tag on something as simultaneously priceless and worthless as art. “It takes time for artists to get paid, in the sense that they might not sell right away. It could be years of dedication, in some cases.”
“In theory, it is very abstract,” Bradley elaborates, “but in practice, it is very possible. Once you understand how to evaluate an artist, there is a way to look at their peers, or some other examples, and set up a pricing structure. An artist toils away in their studio, alone most of the time, and pays for the studio, and pays for whatever they need to make their work. It’s relentless and challenging sometimes, but this capacity to work with no one around them and to make things that they believe in — they’d better get paid. I don’t find it weird. I don’t struggle with the idea that art should have a price attached to it. It does, and that’s just the way it is.”
Montreal’s art market has evolved rapidly and gained considerable global attention since Bradley and Ertaskiran first entered the fray, having been friends and competitors before joining forces in 2020.
Moving from New Brunswick in 2002 to attend Concordia’s Fine Arts programme, Bradley initially started her own modest space in the Mile-End, and from 2011, worked her way up to director of Parisian Laundry, founded in Bradley Ertaskiran’s current location in 2007.
Ertaskiran, the son of a Paris-based art dealer, studied Art History at Université de Montréal, and inaugurated Galerie Antoine Ertaskiran in 2011 on Rue Payette in Griffintown.
“When I opened my first gallery,” Ertaskiran recalls, “people were saying, ‘there hasn’t been a new gallery in so long.’ To be honest, I never really paid attention. It was a very selfish thing; I opened the gallery for me. But it grew really fast and became something that was part of Montreal. At first, it was just for me to have a space to show art that I liked. But then it really clicked when I put on my first show, and people were like, ‘what’s coming up after this?’”
The works that the pair tend to be drawn to have a curiously intertwined vibe. Their gallery is divided in its architecture, with a bright and clean room on the main level, and the grittier “bunker” in the basement. And though there are two distinct areas, with two distinct co-directors, they have a synergy when speaking to their intermingling tastes.
“It’s something that’s just a feeling,” says Bradley. “It’s nothing that makes sense — for us, anyway. We’ve known each other for a while, so we know each other’s aesthetic, we know what we’re looking for, and it just kind of works in a weird way. It’s not so weird, though, because it comes from experience, too. A lot of trial and error, and developing your own ideas of what you like, and why. There are the prerequisites — like, the artist is serious, they take their work really seriously, and they’re totally dedicated. That kind of stuff is easy. But then there’s the feeling.”
Ertaskiran concurs. “Most of the time, we kind of agree. It’s very rare that we disagree. It’s very instinctive. It’s a whole package we’re looking for.”
The duo conceive of curation as its own form of artistic expression. But they don’t have any hard and fast formula to the artists they choose to represent.
“It’s almost like you’re curating a space based on a shared understanding of what you’re all trying to do together,” says Bradley. “It’s less about a specific aesthetic. Some galleries have a specific look toward very conceptual practices, or a minimalist aesthetic, or whatever. We don’t have that. We like a lot of tactility and a lot of material in the work that we show. There’s a lot of attention to what it’s made of. What is it about the material and the choices? But it’s not so easy to describe, specifically, our aesthetic. It’s more about shared goals.”
“Obviously, we look at the quality of the work,” says Ertaskiran, “but also the person. Megan and I usually look at different artists, and we debate. We talk about their practice. We learn more about the artist and their work. The way the artist talks about their work, how interesting the work is in the gallery context, the potential for a show, or a group show.”
Summer is Bradley Ertaskiran’s season of collaborative effort, a tradition which began in 2020, just as pandemic restrictions were tentatively lifting. Paradoxically, the coronavirus era was an auspicious time to launch a new art gallery.
“We were part of the first businesses that were officially allowed to open, because we are on the street,” says Ertaskiran. “All the malls and everything were closed, but you could have a business on the street. So, that summer, we did a big group show, and we invited 20-something artists.”
“And people came,” says Bradley. “It was something to do. It was a hard time in general. People had shows cancelled, and it was hard on artists. So, we had taken part of our revenue from the show and divided it between every artist that participated. It was good for us, too, being the new business that we were, because we got all this time to figure out what we were, and who we were, together.”
Since its inception, Bradley Ertaskiran has exhibited some of the most interesting new works coming out of Montreal and Canada, more broadly, from diverse artists such as Azza El Siddique, Janet Werner, and Jeremy Shaw — the latter of whom will have a solo exhibition occupying the entire gallery in September — and brought them to larger showcases, like Art Toronto, Felix Art Fair, and Art Basel Miami Beach.
Their current exhibitions feature Ben Tong, the Toronto-born and Los Angeles-based painter and photographer, and Sharona Franklin, another Canadian discovery who hasn’t yet seen many significant shows in privately owned galleries. But both Bradley and Ertaskiran have the keen ability to peer beneath Montreal’s surface, and to differentiate our unique vitality from pricier, more cut-throat cities.
“In New York,” says Ertaskiran, “you can be out all day, every day, every night, at art openings. There’s museums, there’s so much to see, and so many people to see, and I think it’s also part of why it’s such a great city, and why the scene is so vibrant. But we go to art fairs there, and we talk to artists and ask if we can come to their studio this or that day, and they’re like, ‘I’m busy.’”
“In Montreal, you don’t have to think so much about it in terms of a return,” Bradley observes. “For a long time, I thought that maybe it was a slightly negative thing that you could be an artist here without having that kind of pressure of production. But I do think that there are advantages. Having worked with artists who are really in the hustle, sometimes that hustle limits the time that you can think about the work that you’re making. There is a difference here where the pace can be a bit slower,” muses Bradley. “It allows more time for reflection.”◼︎
Bradley Ertaskiran is located at 3550 rue Saint-Antoine Ouest.
Cover image: Megan Bradley and Antoine Ertaskiran photographed by Gaëlle Leyorer.
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