A focused exhibition at Art Metropole in Toronto presents a selection of mail art submissions by the late transgressive artist Genesis Breyer P-Orridge to the Canadian collective General Idea in the 1970s. Drawn from the National Gallery of Canada's collection, the show features letters, collages, photos, and ephemera that capture P-Orridge's early, boundary-pushing work with collectives like COUM Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle.
The exhibition highlights the significance of mail art as a subversive, non-commercial network for experimental artists operating outside mainstream markets. It also marks a homecoming for these works, returning them to the very artist-run space General Idea founded in 1974, which originally served as an archive for such artistic exchanges before its holdings were transferred to the national collection.