In My Room: Interior Environments

July 4 – August 15, 2013
Main Gallery
Reception: July 4, 4 – 6 pm
Curator: Jane Edmundson

Works from the UofL Art Collection

There’s a world where I can go
And tell my secrets to
In my room
In my room

In this world I lock out
All my worries and my fears
In my room
In my room

Do my dreaming and my scheming, lie awake and pray
Do my crying and my sighing, laugh at yesterday

Now it’s dark and I’m alone
But I won’t be afraid
In my room
In my room

- Brian Wilson/Gary Usher

The border between public and private space is one that each of us traverses daily. Navigating the codes of conduct required of us by peers and strangers alike requires a performance of sorts, where we act to conform to the expectations of our “public” selves – characters that we play in the production of our external, social lives. Through pressures applied from without and within, the construction of public personhood is an ever-changing, yet inevitable constant of interpersonal reciprocity. Given the amount of effort this endless maneuvering requires, the private sphere becomes, for many of us, a space of refuge, relaxation, and quiet. Our fortresses of solitude, the inner rooms of our homes, are where we can temporarily lay down the mantle of public responsibilities, and exist without pretension or posturing. In this way, our private environments mimic our bodies’ interiors; there can be comfort and protection in being contained inside one’s intimate space. Conversely, while the strain of social norms is relaxed when we are at rest from our public lives, isolation and the opportunity for obsessive interior thoughts can reconfigure private rooms as sinister sites of imprisonment for some.

The artworks selected for In My Room depict rooms where we are often solitary – bathrooms, bedrooms, studios. In most of these representations, the spaces are starkly empty, suggesting they were formed via the artists’ personal, private experiences with seclusion. The few works that do offer peopled environments vacillate from warm, intimate scenes of domesticity (Chamber’s Diego Drawing and Smith’s Woman in Tub) to symbolic examinations of the ominous aspects of psychological withdrawl (evident in Hudson’s Shark diptych, where the secluded figure has only the glow of his televised portrait to fend off the menacing creatures in the dark). The mood here is quiet, introspective, and perhaps reflective of the hushed tones and careful movements we, as viewers, employ in the public-yet-sequestered interior environment of the gallery.

Jane Edmundson,
Preparator/Assistant Curator

Nicholas de Grandmaison: Recent Acquisitions

May 2 – June 27, 2013
Main Gallery
Reception: May 2, 6 – 8 pm
Extended viewing hours: Saturdays 10 am – 5 pm

Information concerning the de Grandmaison Oral History Project.

Curator: Josephine Mills

Drawn from the 67 artworks donated by BMO Financial Group, this exhibition features 28 pastel portraits that provide a range of the Aboriginal subjects represented in the gift. The works demonstrate de Grandmaison’s deep respect for the people whom he painted and his exceptional skill at capturing the individual character of his sitters. The exhibition will include a resource area focused on a newly launched oral history project. The U of L Art Gallery and the University Archives are partnering to gather stories on the artist and on the subjects of his paintings. These oral histories will be added to the existing research holdings of archival material on the artist and will help provide context for future audiences attending exhibitions of his works. Information on the oral history project will be provided and people can contact the research team if they wish to participate.

Check the U of L Art Gallery’s website — ulag.ca – for details on a planned informal series of presentations “Conversations about Nicholas de Grandmaison”. These will occur on select Thursday evenings throughout the exhibition. As well, the gallery has extended hours for the run of the exhibition and is open every Saturday along with being open until 8:30 pm on Thursdays in addition to the regular 9 am – 4:30 weekday hours.

Closing Reception & Hoop Dance Performance
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Main Gallery

The closing reception featured a hoop dance performance as well as information about the U of L Art Gallery’s ongoing Nicholas de Grandmaison Oral History Project. Through this project we are collecting stories from First Nations people about their relatives portrayed in de Grandmaison’s work. The art gallery hopes to bring past and present generations together by discovering the story behind the subjects in the portraits. The hoop dance performance showed that First Nations’ cultures are still as proud and strong as they were when de Grandmaison first captured his visual documentation of the subjects.

Annual Curated Student Exhibition 2013

March 8 – April 18, 2013
Main Gallery
Reception: March 8, 8 – 10 pm

Guest Curator: Richard William Hill
Selected artwork from Senior and Advanced Studio Students

The Annual Curated Student Exhibition provides an exceptional opportunity for the professional development of Art Studio majors as they near completion of their degree. The exhibition gives students a realistic experience with the process of submitting their work and receiving feedback from an established curator. The exhibition is only open to Senior and Advanced Studio students in order to focus attention on those with the goal of becoming professional artists. In applying for this exhibition, the students follow the same process and standards for documenting, describing and proposing their art work as they will when applying to public art galleries, artist run-centres, or for government grants. Staff from the Art Gallery provide advice on preparing the proposals and share insights into what curators look for when deciding to book a studio visit and choose art work for an exhibition.

An established curator from outside of Lethbridge is invited to create the exhibition. The curator views the proposals and selects a short-list of students for follow-up meetings during a visit to Lethbridge. From these studio visits, the curator makes the final selection and works with the Art Gallery staff to lay-out and install the exhibition.

The Annual Curated Student Exhibition provides a showcase of excellent work by Art Studio majors in that year and gives the students a valuable achievement to list on their résumés. As well, the students who are not selected receive feedback on their proposals and can learn how to improve as they prepare to begin their careers.

Visit the Faculty of Fine Arts.

Artists (click image to enlarge)

Neysa Hale
Separation, Clay, liner, fishing line, 2013

Kara Henry
a living document, Mixed media installation, 2013
I must make the call, and they must end it., Blue pen on paper, 2012

Derrick Hoekstra
My self portrait Of anybody, Routered drawing on plywood, 2013

Jamie McKeague
Polyps, Drift wood, bullet shell, human hair, bumble bee, nylon, cotton, red potatoes, thread, lace, walnut shell, 2013

Claire Reid
Self Expression, Self Portrait, 89 shirts, 54 pants, 40 skirts, 22 dresses, 41 leggings/tights, 30 sweaters/blazers, some socks, ties, scarves and things, and 250 pins, 2013

Kasia Sosnowski
Shaped By Ghosts, Mixed media installation, 2013
Void, Acrylic on canvas, 2012
Broken Hymns, Video, 1:30, 2013

Lisa Spinelli
Journals Unveiled, Digital prints, 2013

Meghan Verkerk
Organic Growth, Paper towel and pen, 2013
Mixed Torso, Plaster, cloth, sawdust, felt, dirt, 2013

Kala Walton
My Embrace is My Teacher, Documented performance, 2012

Curatorial Statement

Formed & Formless

From one point of view the history of art can be read as one of a series of projects for bringing the sensible world into order and giving it form. Out of the unity of undifferentiated sense data distinctions are made, and categories created, named and organized. From this process language emerges, the symbolic order is established and ideal shapes and forms are identified and privileged. We become able to talk about and manage our world. At the same time the forms we institute also manage us, dictating—at least in part—our relationship to the sensorium.

Yet as art historians in the 1990s pointed out, this history of form and meaning-making has been haunted by the question of formlessness. This includes both those elements of materiality and experience that exist prior to the individualization of form and those that are necessarily excluded as particular forms are defined. This may include, for example, all the shapes that elude idealization: the ones that are not quite circles, or not quite rectangles. The millions of colour variations that go unnamed. All the mounds, clumps, blobs and messy strands. All the things that are disintegrating or decomposing, that are coming into or losing form. The things that lack names and fit no categories.

As a precondition of form, the formless exists as potential. And although the formless resists and exceeds language, you will see that for students at the University of Lethbridge, it remains wide-open to dynamic artistic exploration.

- Richard William Hill, Guest Curator

About the Artists

Neysa Hale
In my artwork I focus on social issues and human conditions. To explore such issues I use videos, photographs, installations, textiles, and sculpture work. My most current works focus on death and social understanding by creating environments with visual and audio stimulations.
My most recent work, Separation, focuses on death to invite inner reflection. What is our mark in the world, in the lives of people surrounding us? Death is something that is
common and yet powerful where it marks the beginning of something unknown for some, a spiritual journey for others, or a beginning of rebirth. It is the moment of separation from the physical into the unknown.
As I pound, press, stretch and mould each figure I surround myself with those I lost, and others I never knew, sustaining them through memory and reflection. Who were they and what was their story? Each clay figure is fragile and vulnerable. As clay comes from the earth, so we return. We are held together by a sheer covering, an identity. Individual and yet unified, together presenting a history.
My second work is a video installation titled Op-Lish. In this work I investigate social communication by using sounds and body language in order to create a new language that invites interpretation. I hope to encourage the thought of language and its effects on us when we encounter different languages or speech patterns. The differences can create misunderstandings or labels that are damaging and hurtful. With the three personalities represented on the globes, we see the same person and yet three different personalities.
As such, the work seeks to celebrate unity and uniqueness with a creative approach.

Kara Henry
It’s difficult to separate what I do as an artist from who I am as a person. As a result, work I produce carries with its idiosyncrasies left by the trace of my hand. I would argue that people make connections with a work, not because of the trace of the personal, but rather something ambiguously familiar that they relate back to themselves. How many ways then can a work be read or experienced? Does the artists intent translate across to the viewer and their interpretations? Who creates the meaning or narrative in an artwork? What does the formation of the meaning we take say about who we are? Perhaps we both receive information from a work and project our own information onto it. We don’t just read a work of art, but ourselves. How does the dynamic between the viewer and the artist in putting information into and taking information from something, influence both making and reading ambiguously personal work?

Derrick Hoekstra
So many times when I talk to peers, or other colleagues I hear the fallowing words. I wish I could do that. Which is exactly why I refuse to work with one particular discipline over another. A larger artistic lexicon increases my chances of articulating my thoughts, and feelings. I fearlessly leap into new mediums and projects thrilled with the prospect of the unknown. My process is a just as much intuitive as it is contemplative; A work will come from my heart but be refined by my mind as it comes to maturity. My inspiration comes from my family, my children in particular, other artists around me as well as every day occurrences that go by unnoticed. My current work comes from my interest in line and relationships.

Jamie McKeague
I began and continue my process, with a love for shape, form and unrelenting interest in the intersection of pictorial looking (and thinking) and the physical relations to space. I have always been fascinated by microbiology, cells and bacteria, which are reoccurring influences in my practice. The senses are very important in my works, both in the creation process and also in the final product. I appreciate forms that do not conform to the standard of beauty our society holds, such as blisters, clusters, growths and imperfections.
Ambiguity, formlessness and shape are all attributes I take great care in when considering my works.

Claire Reid
I am a fine art studio major this is my 5th and final year of my degree.
I am a multidisciplinary artist my work includes installation, photography and sculpture.
In my work I focus on themes of visual culture, identity and social constructions /paradigms.
I am concerned with the way in which people change or hide themselves in order to fit into society, find love, a job or even feel safe. Social constructs are reinforced by the media in which continually depicts unrealistic concepts of identity and reinforce concepts of normality. Current events influence my work; I am inspired by the social cultural, political and media environment.

Kasia Sosnowski
My current work explores relationships between the viewer, object and language within an installation format. I work in a wide range of media, allowing the materials to speak and guide me. I create environments for my objects to live in and create narratives and conversations within. I make forms that are ambiguous and indistinct allowing the viewer to make subjective associations. I use watercolour, paint, pencil, felt, found objects, and photography to communicate.

When I make work, I only feel I do not think. I like to throw myself into the present, and make work that comes from a space inside my body. I live in a land of materiality and immediacy. This is my favorite place, where everything can be touched and felt out. Impulse is the place I live in, it is where I reside, and it is where my work resides.

To create I must be empty, I must be a vessel for these forms. Read my soul, my guts, my teeth: this is where they come from, from the language of my body. My body is a language.

We forget to look, to breathe, we remind ourselves not to lose our bodies. I hope that the objects I make, the moments I construct give pause to the viewer and take them to a quiet place of contemplation: allowing them to engage with their body and explore their mind. I am interested in the separation between the realm of memory and the realm of experience by integrating language’s inability to visualize reality.

I am compelled to create. It provides an escape for me. I want to return to a place that I trust and find comfort in, make objects and forms there, then pull myself out of that space and present my creations to the world. I am interested in creating quiet moments, moments of pause that gently rest upon language’s spine. Creating a space of refuge, a safe restorative space.

Lisa Spinelli
My work is about process: the process of making art, the process of discovery, and the process of unveiling one’s identity. In the past I have often worked with various forms of self-portraiture, including watered down portraits in acrylic paint meant to portray an emotion as opposed to a “realistic” representation. The following direction of my work was to paint in pure abstraction, also using watered down acrylic paint. This time I used large stretched canvases and placed them on the floor for an effect of large, pooling puddles, combined with dripped lines, which I created by tilting the canvases. In these pure abstract paintings, I was aiming to reveal a subconscious self-portrait that was more about intuitive mark making than portraying anything from physical reality.

Currently, I am exploring a new approach to the self-portrait and individualities in general: the object of the journal and/or diary. I view the journal as a physically simple but elegant object that is more complex beneath its surface. My aim is to examine in depth the significance of a journal as an object, as well as the meaning and history of the act of journaling itself. In this process I am currently using scanners as cameras to document journals, and I am looking into exploring video and installation as well.

Meghan Verkerk
Everywhere we look there are an abundance of gadgets and products surrounding us, from the clothing we wear to the cell phones in our hands. Whenever we open our eyes, there is a product. We cannot hide from mass production – but how does this affect us emotionally and how does it affect our artwork? In my work, I try to experiment with the idea of mass production within the fashion industry, by using plastic manikins.
Recently, I have been teaching art and fashion studies at various high schools, as my practicum towards my Bachelor of Education degree. Teaching has left little time for creating my own art; however, upon returning to the U of L in January, I have been exploring and creating new fashion inspirations, which has led me to start making white plastered figures.
My artwork investigates the interaction of the basic elements of art, in particular, colour and shape. I have been drawn to the simplicity of manikins and how they are ready-made objects that are considered disposable. I want to understand how mass produced fashion is represented, how it impacts people and what influence it has in our modern society.
I am currently interested in the interaction between sculpture and fashion and in trying to find a balance between them. My fascination with mass production has lead me to think about juxtaposition- of making something simple yet different, causing the viewer to have a second glance at my artwork. I am working on a series of plaster casts of baby shirt forms which are a little odd. I enjoy the repetition of the simple forms and the relationship they have with each other.

Kala Walton

I sat on the edge of her small single bed; the bedding was a light green with a large pink floral pattern, a pattern not easily suited to her character, though she had a soft side. I selected my words carefully, despising the feeling of being weak, refusing to cry, even with someone who had seen me at my most vulnerable. I slowly spoke each word, visualizing them in my mind before they escaped my lips. I waited. The blow of honesty didn’t come. I felt her arms reaching for me, her body gently pulling me into hers and I felt the warmth of her soak through me like a dry sponge, expanding as I allowed myself to be immersed in her scent. I did let myself cry then, my whole body sighed with relief, this needed touch, this longing to be held, to be held in such a tender way soothed me to my core. The embrace of another had granted me an understanding of myself. This simple but beautiful gesture of embrace fanned a small spark deep inside me that grew into a small flame of hope.

My art practice encompasses sculpture, installation and video. My current project focuses on human intimacy, the embrace, and the personal experience of coming to self.
The idea of the other in the caress is central to my artistic exploration. Temple Grandin is an American doctor of animal science and a consultant to the livestock industry whose understanding of the importance of being embraced has driven her success in the livestock industry. She has constructed her own hugging machine that allows her to feel the comfort of an embrace without being enveloped by another. Grandin has allowed her life experiences to inform her work. Diagnosed with autism at a young age Grandin has written many books about her experiences as an autistic woman including, Temple Grandin: How the Girl Who Loved Cows Embraced Autism and Changed the World. Her understanding of self has allowed her to succeed, not despite but because of her autism.
I’m going through a period of intense self-discovery, which has led to an evolution in my artistic practice from an attempt to understand identity through childhood memory into a focus on the present. In my current work I’ve chosen to closely align my exploration of identity with my artistic practice, allowing personal discoveries to inform my work as they arise, thus creating a dynamic and shifting artistic terrain. Understanding my sexuality is an essential element of this process of discovery; the impact of the embodied self being enveloped by the body of another is an experience that has brought further understanding of my own identity.
My most recent art work involves the pairing of the bodies of women lying in positions of repose and embrace, and draping their bodies with wet plaster gauze. The resultant sculptural traces reference time, commemorate and are quietly attentive to intimate exchange. The embrace is represented as a beautiful interaction between two people that can hold many different layers of intention. The intention of the embrace can be admiration, celebration, greeting, formality, kinship, friendship, passion, love, loneliness, despair, fear, support, and condolence. I am most interested in the caress of the lover, and my work focuses specifically on the intimate exchange of lesbian lovers.

The Uncanny Valley

January 10 – February 28, 2013
Main Gallery
Reception: January 10, 4 – 6 pm

Curator: Jane Edmundson
Works from the U of L Art Collection

In his 1906 essay “On the Psychology of the Uncanny”, German psychiatrist Ernst Jentsch describes the experience of the uncanny as “a lack of orientation”, where something happens that causes one to feel unease and alienation.  This essence of discomfort is often brought about during the interaction between a living human body and lifeless objects which mimic the animate; in Jentsch’s day such incorporeal doubles included waxwork figures, realistic dolls and automatons. In the century since its first description, the opportunities for encountering the uncanny have multiplied exponentially, through the proliferation of mannequins in our limitless shopping malls, the development of artificially intelligent machines and highly efficient humanoid robots, the design and manufacture of anatomically correct “companionship” RealDolls, and customizable, personalized avatars in virtual reality games. Freud posited that the emotional disquietude that is felt upon interactions with these not-quite-human actors stems from our uncertainty at whether or not they indeed may be alive; this questioning dread was expertly tapped by George A. Romero in 1968’s gruesome satire, Night of the Living Dead, and continues in today’s mass zombie culture obsession. The humanoid imitations of life provoke increasing trepidation as they loom most closely to complete realism; the more convincing the fake and the greater familiarity and recognition of ourselves found in it, the more ghastly its void ofhumanness becomes. The extreme drop in emotional comfort level upon the confrontation of lifeless objects that very closely mimic the animate was dubbed the “uncanny valley” by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori in 1970 (see Fig. 1).

How is the uneasiness of the uncanny engaged in the interaction between the viewer and hyperrealistic artworks that depict the human form? The works selected for The Uncanny Valley display representations of humanness (or spaces remarkable for being devoid of humanity, in the case of Richard Estes’ painstakingly rendered, eerily empty cityscapes) that unsettle the viewer with their realism, which serves to heighten their dreamlike (or nightmarish) quality. These human bodies, flattened on canvas and paper, are frozen, hollow, and dead; the act of their creation by the artist’s hand also surmising their deficiency as mere imitations of life. Ivan Eyre and David Inshaw’s figures exist in abstracted, surreal realms that are at once familiar and alien, while Elsbeth Coop’s Prosthesis depicts a tense marriage of flesh and machine. Christopher Pratt, Barbara Pratt, and Jeremy Smith obscure the faces of their human subjects, and Jack Chambers’ Diego, as we are told, is sleeping rather than dead, but the inability to connect to the faces in these works nonetheless unnerves. Finally, David Barnett and Phil Richards employ the suspended forms of children,  which have been used to great visceral effect in horror films about reanimation and ghostly apparitions, due in part to youth’s ability to remind the viewer of the ravages of time and their own mortality. The artists’ choice to render their human subjects in extremely realistic compositions draws us into these environments while concurrently inspiring apprehension and trepidation, as though we expect the depicted forms to suddenly move, grasping at the corporeal life they are denied by their illusory humanity.

- Jane Edmundson
Assistant Curator/Preparator

And Yet We Still Remain

November 1 – December 21, 2012
Main Gallery
Reception: November 1, 4 – 6 pm

Join us at the opening as we enjoy a slice of Dodolab’s Not Quite Famous Lethbridge Pizza

Curator: Andrew Hunter
Artist: Lisa Hirmer and works from the U of L Art Collection

And yet we still remain, going around, and again, in dominion’s plot…

A Mari usque ad Mare (“From Sea to Sea”)
Canada’s motto derived from Psalm 72:8 – “He shall have dominion from sea to sea and from the river unto the ends of the earth.”

For well over a century, the Canadian landscape has been an extensively manipulated one, dramatically transformed by industry, agriculture and urban development, yet it continues to be read, and often labelled as, wilderness. Post clearcut Algonquin Park, the managed forests of British Columbia and New Brunswick, the vast wheat fields of the prairies, are all prime examples of irreversibly altered terrain layered over with a skewed narrative of nature, one that remains nailed to the wall in many exhibitions, runs through tourism promotions and underscores populist political speech. This idea seems deeply imbedded in interpretations of the iconic landscapes of the Group of Seven, Emily Carr, Tom Thomson, and their peers, descendents and followers. Unsullied terrain, a pristine untrammelled wilderness, a resilient pure nature, is believed to be still out there. At the heart of this collaborative exhibition is a firm conviction that the persistence of this problematic narrative of the landscape offers a false comfort, a fantasy world of pure spaces that has become a risky dead-end narrative, a cul-de-sac where one can circle endlessly, spinning, and being spun, a pernicious tale that masks Canadians’ true relationship to the natural world.

Central to this exhibition are selections from Lisa Hirmer’s ongoing Dirt Pile series. Her photographs capture the extracted earth of engineered building sites that loom on the fringes of new construction, heaps of exhumed soil, rock and plant material often left forgotten and abandoned to be absorbed back into nature to become mound features in the landscape that are eventually read as natural. Hirmer’s framing of these fabricated features in the landscape suggests the signature images of Lawren S. Harris, his mountains, islands and icebergs of the 1920-30s, works that pushed him to abstraction, a space where few Canadians ultimately wished to venture (and so Harris remained trapped in a heroic nature-based story of a nation of his own making). More than simply documents of a marginal aspect of the built environment, Hirmer’s photographs stand as compelling statements, articulating a subtle iconic framing of subject matter, plotting a precariously detached, at times ethereal engagement with the landscape, a landscape with which Canadians remain ambiguously connected. They are positioned here with historical works from the University of Lethbridge collection and photographs by Lawren S. Harris (the source of his iceberg paintings). What this exhibition proposes is that Hirmer’s works are a far more authentic representation of the Canadian landscape, a terrain that has been consistently altered, shaped and manipulated, but that remains hidden behind a projection of a more palatable story of place.

We have changed the atmosphere, and thus we are changing the weather. By changing the weather, we make every spot on earth man made and artificial. We have deprived nature of its independence, and this is fatal to its meaning. Nature’s independence is its meaning; without it there is nothing but us. – Bill McKibben, The End of Nature, Random House, 1989, p.50

While our ways and means of shaping and transforming this world have continued to evolve and expand, no longer contained by specific geography or geology, the over-arching narration, the voice over to our film of Canada, has not changed. And this narrative also continues to be expanded and enhanced, now incorporating the absurd belief that we are capable of “restoring” the environment, that we can design and rebuild natural systems, as if nature can be put on hold, in storage, while we extract what we need. Perhaps the most glaringly disturbing example of this fantasy is the newly created Gateway Park on the edge of Syncrude’s massive operations in the oil/tar sands of Northern Alberta with its small and rarely seen herd of introduced wood bison that reside in a former wetland now “restored” as pine woods. Elements of the natural always return, as is so evident in a number of Hirmer’s images, but it is always less, less complex, less diverse, a weaker system. Some things always vanish. Some things can’t wait until we are done using the land.

The series of photographs by Lawren S. Harris are positioned here in direct dialogue with Lisa Hirmer’s work. This is the critical conversation, the connection that inspired And Yet We Still Remain. Harris took these images in 1930 while travelling throughout the eastern arctic with fellow Group of Seven member A.Y. Jackson on board the Beothic, a commercial sealing ship on loan to the RCMP and Canadian government researchers. From the ship (named for indigenous people of Newfoundland & Labrador pushed to extinction by Europeans), Harris photographed numerous massive icebergs, resulting in a set of images that would inspire such iconic works as Icebergs, Davis Strait, 1930 (McMichael Canadian Art Collection). He also photographed settlements and the Inuit, but this subject matter did not make it into his subsequent works, paintings that project a cold, empty, unpeopled and distant place that Harris believed was the real Canada, a place all true Canadians could identify with, although most would never go there. Distance is critical to the Canadian narrative of the land, stories of places conceptually embraced but rarely physically witnessed, rarely experienced as more than narrative or representation. Harris’s reified scenes continue to grow in value and retain their iconic status, but the real place no longer exists, is no longer out there, in the distance, pure. We can keep telling the story, but it doesn’t change the physical truth. We can spin consoling tales, but cannot resuscitate the natural systems no matter how much we design, plan, shape and attempt to hide or pretend we are still one with nature.

-Andrew Hunter, Guest Curator

Artist/Curator Biography

Lisa Hirmer is a designer/photographer/artist/writer based in Guelph, Ontario. She has a Bachelors of Architectural Studies and a Masters of Architecture from the University of Waterloo. Her masters thesis On Wilderness focussed on the significance of nature and wilderness in contemporary culture – work which won an Ontario Association of Architects Award of Excellence and was placed on the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada’s Honour Roll. Her photographic and graphic work has been exhibited in projects in Canada, Europe and the UK. Her photographs, which are often paired with writing (whether her own or that of a collaborator), have been featured in numerous publications including: OnSite, FUSE, Horizonte, PLAT and nomorepotlucks.

Andrew Hunter is an artist/writer/curator/educator based in Hamilton, Ontario. He has exhibited and published widely in Canada and internationally (including exhibitions at the National Gallery of Canada, Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Gallery of Alberta and Dubrovnik Museum of Modern Art) and has held curatorial and programming positions at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Kamloops Art Gallery and McMichael Canadian Art Collection. For a number of years, Hunter has been engaged in a critical exploration of dominant ideas and myths of Canada including such projects as The Other Landscape (exhibition and catalogue, Art Gallery of Alberta, 2003), Mapping Tom (published in the catalogue for the exhibition Tom Thomson, Art Gallery of Ontario/National Gallery of Canada, 2002) and Emily Carr: Clear Cut (published in the catalogue for the exhibition Emily Carr: New Perspectives, National Gallery of Canada/Vancouver Art Gallery, 2006). This exhibition can be considered an extension of his ULAG publication Cul-de-Sac, published in 2004, based on selections from the gallery’s collection and the touring exhibition Sea to Sky (curated by Josephine Mills).

Lisa Hirmer and Andrew Hunter are also principals of DodoLab, an art and design based program that researches, engages and responds to contemporary community challenges, with a focus on the natural world, social systems, the built environment and cities in transition. In 2010 they received a Canada Council for the Arts Independent Critic and Curators in Architecture grant for their collaborative project Marginalia.

Rural Readymade

September 13 – October 25, 2012
Main Gallery
Reception: September 13, 4 – 6 pm
Curator’s Talk & Tour: September 13, 4:30 pm

Curated by Shauna McCabe
Organized by the Confederation Centre Art Gallery, Charlottetown.

Rural Readymade brings together work by a selection of contemporary artists who start from the same impulse–to explore the found and the familiar in their lived environments, imbuing ordinary objects and elements of everyday life with new meaning. Reconciling their experiences within primarily rural contexts, each work offers insight into the evolution of the contemporary “readymade,” underscoring an enduring tension between what is, and what is not, art.

An idea originating in the work of Marcel Duchamp in 1915, the readymade modified mass produced, manufactured objects–a bottle rack, a comb, a shovel–repositioned by the artist to subvert aesthetic assumptions and the unconscious reliance on the visual. “All in all,” Duchamp suggested, “the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualification and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.”

Each of the artists here has adapted such urban precedents to rural purposes, often exploring the readymade within a broader creative engagement with environmental issues, public space, and social practice. The result is a range of works that reposition landscapes and architectures, popular culture and everyday forms – entry points that highlight the mutability of interpretation and meaning.

Responding to everyday surroundings where the use and adaptation of found materials are deeply engrained in daily life, the work of these artists playfully and adeptly blurs registers–between the mundane and aesthetic, natural and handmade, low-tech and no-tech, DIY and folk cultures. The collective vernacular that emerges in Rural Readymade is one that speaks of an agile and persistent drive towards the creative reimagination of art and everyday life.

Link to the Confederation Centre Art Gallery

Main Gallery Closed

June 1 – September 13, 2012
University Air System Upgrades

During the summer months in the University Hall building there will be some mechanical upgrades done that will require temporary ventilation slow downs or shutdowns. Most ventilation shutdowns will occur after hours. But, because we need to keep the artwork at a constant temperature and humidity, to ensure their stability, we have decided to suspend our activity for the summer months. All this means is that you will have more reason to enjoy the exhibitions opening in the Helen Christou Gallery over the summer and build anticipation for Rural Readymade, opening in the Main Gallery on September 13.

The 1960s

April 19 – June 1, 2012
Curated by Allison Spencer & David Smith, Museum Studies Interns
Main Gallery

During the 1960s the Minimalist movement developed in response to the Abstract Expressionist practices happening in New York City. Artists began to create works that were neither painting or sculpture in the traditional sense. Looking back to Russian Constructivism, which emphasized modular fabrication and industrial materials, and also Marcel Duchamp’s prefabricated readymades, these artists employed processes of art production that emphasized formal qualities and eliminated extraneous detail. Minimalism has been viewed as a reaction against the Abstract Expressionist art movement, which was criticized as overly emotional and self-expressive. The Minimalists privileged work that was less spontaneous and more calculated. In seeking to present this vision for their work, they attempted to remove traces of the artist’s hand, and thus turned to industrial modes of production. The emphasis on the formal qualities of Minimalist work also sought to eliminate the ‘relational composition’ which had been dominant in European art. To accomplish this, Minimalist art often utilizes geometric forms in order to pair down the composition. Artists like Frank Stella began to paint canvases in patterns that were dictated by the shape of the canvas; in this way, the work was self-referencing. Other artists such as Ad Reinhardt were working with less obvious compositional elements. Reinhardt is perhaps most remembered for his ‘Black’ paintings from the 1960s, which at first glance appear to be simply monochromatic black paintings or prints, but are revealed, upon careful observation, to be executed with variations of black or nearly black tones. The work within this segment of the exhibition was chosen based on the emphasis the artists placed on formal qualities.
The 1960s is a two-part exhibition; the second part can be seen in the Helen Christou Gallery satellite space in LINC. The selection of works in satellite space is devoted to a different movement of art that began to take shape in the 1950s and was at its crest in the 1960s, known as Pop art.

- Allison Spencer & David Smith, Museum Studies Interns

it all

will fall

right

into

place

ACSE 2012

March 9 – April 12, 2012
Main Gallery

Guest Curator: Dawn Cain
Selected artwork from Senior and Advanced Studio Students

The Annual Curated Student Exhibition provides an exceptional opportunity for the professional development of Art Studio majors as they near completion of their degree. The exhibition gives students a realistic experience with the process of submitting their work and receiving feedback from an established curator. The exhibition is only open to Senior and Advanced Studio students in order to focus attention on those with the goal of becoming professional artists. In applying for this exhibition, the students follow the same process and standards for documenting, describing and proposing their art work as they will when applying to public art galleries, artist run-centres, or for government grants. Staff from the Art Gallery provide advice on preparing the proposals and share insights into what curators look for when deciding to book a studio visit and choose art work for an exhibition.

An established curator from outside of Lethbridge is invited to create the exhibition. The curator views the proposals and selects a short-list of students for follow-up meetings during a visit to Lethbridge. From these studio visits, the curator makes the final selection and works with the Art Gallery staff to lay-out and install the exhibition.

The Annual Curated Student Exhibition provides a showcase of excellent work by Art Studio majors in that year and gives the students a valuable achievement to list on their résumés. As well, the students who are not selected receive feedback on their proposals and can learn how to improve as they prepare to begin their careers.

Visit the Faculty of Fine Arts.

Artists (click image to enlarge)

Charissa Brown
Bunny III, Oil on canvas, 2012
Cognitive dissonance, Oil on canvas, 2012 

Sarah Christensen
A Walk Within (1), Digital video, 1:34min, 2011
Moment 2 (excerpt from A Video Diary, 1:46:07), Digital Video, 1:44min, 2011 

Cindy Gauthier
Chimera, Ink on paper, 2011
Stripped, Bone and beehive, 2011 

Neysa Hale
Second Skin, Yarn, photo documentation, digital video, 2011 

Derrick Hoekstra
x(52)=, Playing cards, 2012 

Nicole Lalonde
Drip (clip), Digital video, 2011
Wipe (clip), Digital video, 2011 

Bonnie Patton
Book Still (Batman), Xerograph on paper, 2012
It All Will Fall Right Into Place (revisited), Digital video, 2012 

Arianna Richardson
Select wallpapers from the Collection
Newfoundland, Embroidery on vintage chair, 2011
Contemplating a Move, Digital photographs, 2011
Canada Smokes (Call 524-3752 to order your today), Cross-stich, found objects, 2012
Deep Dark Woods Dance, Digital video, 2:36min, 2011 

Curatorial Statement

it all
will fall
right
into
place*

The eight artists featured in the exhibition communicate their ideas through a diverse range of materials and idioms. Apart from their shared experience as students in the flux of discovery and experimentation, perhaps what unites them most is a probing interest in the creative process.

Each of these artists is remarkably fearless in their explorations, exploiting the possibilities of paint, ink, fibres, textiles, found objects, photocopiers, video and digital software in the creation of works that intrigue and absorb the viewer.

For this group of promising artists nearing the end of their undergraduate studies, it all will fall right into place.

- Dawn Cain, Guest Curator

* The title of a work by Bonnie Patton, this phrase, which conveys a sense of hopeful optimism that captures the essence of the exhibition, has been adopted as its banner.

About the Artists

Charissa Brown
Illusions that project a narrative of genuine and sincere emotion that can transcend spoken language are an important part of my work. Colors that are vivid and at times jarring are something that gives the images another layer of visual and symbolic meaning.
Bunny III is fascinatingly symbolic through western culture. It can start as the sweet Easter bunny, be a chocolate idol in a children’s movie, a sexual symbol in a magazine or a symbol of witchcraft. Cognitive dissonance is about conflicting views and opinions about actions and emotions within one’s self.

Sarah Christensen
My existence has always included various forms of self-documentation, which are currently being engaged through my experimentation with video. I enjoy the uncomfortable and challenging process of baring my thoughts, fears, joys, insecurities, and musings to the motion camera, as this process exemplifies the raw sense of an intimate experience and is defenseless to the interpretation of the other. This immediately gratifying medium has provided a place to explore my vulnerability through exposing my captured moments.

Cindy Gauthier
I grew up with two very different ways of looking at the body: the scientific approach utilized by medicine, and the distortions and mutilations in horror films. After beginning university, I began seeing even more ways to look at the body being exposed to grotesque art, as well as theories about abjection and different theories about horror films. However, my artwork is not intended to be exactly like any of these despite sharing subject matter; rather, I want to distort to create a space where anything, particularly the body, is both beautiful and flawed, grotesque yet intriguing.

Neysa Hale
Yarn in Second Skin draws upon the textile world while inscribing “a range of protective, comforting and homely values.” Its characteristics together with the enveloping of my body create a relationship to nostalgia – the act of yearning for the past – by becoming a second skin. It moves and breathes covers and protects me in the way that skin protects my body, while the act of crocheting behaves like a returning memory repeating itself over and over again becoming an expression, a connection, and a stabilizer.

Derrick Hoekstra
There are many ways to measure time, weeks months hours days that being said with fifty two cards in a deck one for each week of the year four suits four seasons I have measured my own life with these decks of cards.

Nicole Lalonde
Drip – Manifested through simple, performative gestures, my works revolve around concepts of twinship, sexuality, identity, and dichotomies. For the most part, these broad subjects are employed as a means to understanding society and culture.
Wipe – Recently my grandmother passed away due to Fahr’s Syndrome – a debilitating disease much like Alzheimer’s. Although, my chances of inheriting this disease are slim, I cannot help feeling haunted by a potential loss of self. Ingrained within this piece is both my fear of mental illness and the complicated emotions and psychological states that I experienced during this time.

Bonnie Patton likes to learn.
She likes to learn to the point where her artwork is all about learning,
specifically about language,
but learning in general.
She learns by working with her hands, using paper and typewriters and photocopiers
and anything else that strikes her fancy.
She learns by writing.
Bonnie Patton likes to write.
She likes to write to the point where her artwork is all about text and words.
Bonnie Patton likes to play.

The works included in this exhibition are the result of subjecting the phrase “It All Will Fall Right Into Place” to a combination of the format inspired by Lewis Carroll’s “Square Poem” and photocopy experimentation in which the paper was moved around while the photocopier was scanning. The result is a new and unusual way of looking at text and the visual forms it can appear in.

Arianna Richardson
“O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot-love
in all they sons command.
With glowing hearts
we see thee rise,
The True North
strong and free,
And stand on guard,
O Canada,
We stand on guard
for thee.
O Canada,
glorious and free!
We stand on guard,
we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada,
we stand on guard for three!”

- R. Stanley Weir, 1908

About the Curator

Dawn Cain has been the Curator of BMO Financial Group’s Corporate Art Collection since 2003. Cain was formerly Curator of the Malcove Collection at the University of Toronto, where she also taught undergraduate and graduate level courses in art history from 1997 to 2006. In addition to her curatorial responsibilities for BMO’s art collection, which include proposing installations for the BMO Project Room, Cain developed, organizes and administers the BMO 1st Art! Invitational Student Art Competition and curates the annual 1st Art! exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MoCCA). When she is not at BMO, Dawn researches, lectures and writes in her areas of expertise. Currently she is working with Elisa Coish on a documentary film and biographical text about Dr. Lillian Malcove, a Freudian psychoanalyst and art collector of significance, who was raised in Canada and lived in New York from the 1920s to the early 1980s.

The Winnipeg Alphabestiary

January 12 – March 1, 2012
Main Gallery

Curated by Mary Reid and organized by the Winnipeg Art Gallery

In 2010 the WAG was fortinate to have had the opportunity to acquire The Winnipeg Alphabestiary, a special project conceived and executed by international arts publication Border Crossings to mark their 25th anniversary. Border Crossings has played a significant role in the encouragement and promotion of Winnipeg artists locally, nationally, and internationally. The criteria for the artist selection was straightforward: all 26 creators call Winnipeg home. Whether these artists were currently living in the city or not was irrelevant as it is through their practices that Winnipeg has earned an international reputation for artistic excellence. Secondly, the work also had to be representational in its form which resulted in many exquisite drawings and paintings.

The alphabestiary format has a long history and is closely associated with children’s books. Generally, the alphabestiary assists the child’s development in terms of language (in particular learning the alphabet). However this process also lends itself strongly to letter and image association. One defining characteristic that seperates us from animals is language, and yet it is interesting that through an alphabesiary we use animals to understand the most basic components of our language.

The animals in The Winnipeg Alphabestiary shift between real life sources and wholly inventive creatures. As Border Crossings editor Meeka Walsh writes, The Winnipeg Alphabestiary is about “both Beauty and the Beast and Beauty in the Beast.”

- Mary Reid

Link to Winnipeg Art Gallery