The Canada Collection in Forestburg

July 6 – August 10, 2013
The Forestburg and District Museum
An Off-Site Project
Reception: July 6, 2 – 5 pm

Curator: David Smith
Artist: Arianna Richardson

Investigations into the construction and propagation of national, provincial and regional identity drive my practice. I am interested in theories of semiotics and hyperreality and how, through the souvenir and tourism industries, they are put to use to build national identity. Signs of Canada are of particular interest because of the unique and fast-paced construction of nationalism that came with the 1967 Centennial, occurring simultaneously with the permeating introduction of television and mass culture in 1960s North America. Because of the firm grip of hyperreality on the Canadian image, it’s orchestrated nature can be discovered writhing beneath a superficial, often humorous veneer.

The Hobbyist project is an ongoing document of investigations into this specific period in Canada’s history and many Hobbyist products appropriate the imagery of discarded items found in thrift stores and garage sales that are reminiscent of the period. In utilizing this particular aesthetic, I aim to question the relevance of the items and the ideas they represent in our increasingly digital and fast-paced society.

As craft and mass production represent another major avenue of interest, The Hobbyist has been working towards the creation of a mail-order catalogue offering DIY craft kits (eg- paint by numbers, embroidery kits, knitting patterns), a variety of Canadian souvenirs, (toques, personalized cigarette holders, flags, apparel, etc.), topical essays, varied sundries and photo-books. All of these items are handmade in a pseudo-mass produced manner and are intended to provoke the viewer out of passivity, engaging them in the active development of a new sort of consumer market aimed at promoting human interaction, creativity and critical thinking.

The series, Frontier, consists of 27 snapshots taken from across Alberta and Saskatchewan in the Summer of 2012. The particularly mythical ideals that are represented by these recreational vehicles: the rugged, wild frontier of the west and the freedom of the wilderness-braving Canadian, reveal themselves as signs made irrelevant by the passage of time. In various states of use and abandonment, these vehicles and their faded facades hearken back to a time not long past when the propagation of identity through consumerism was readily apparent. The series prompts inquiry into current projections of Canadian nationalism, heightening awareness and opening up a critical discourse when it comes to the meaning of contemporary Canadian-ness in a time of utmost ambiguity in the matter.

The Forestburg and District Museum

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.

Out of the Ordinary: Annual Curated Student Exhibition

Main Gallery
Guest Curator: Emily Falvey

The University of Lethbridge Art Gallery provides an exceptional opportunity for the professional development of Art Studio majors as they near completion of their degree. The Annual Curated Student Exhibition has recently been revised to give students realistic experience with the process of applying for exhibitions and receiving feedback from an established curator. The exhibition is only open to senior art majors 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 and artist run-centres or for 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)

Donna Bilyk
Chip Painting, acrylic on chipboard, 2010
Chip Painting – Details, acrylic on board, 2010 

Katie Bruce
Untitled (Woodshop), embossed and embroidered BFK Rives paper, 2010 

Brenna Crabtree
Cryptic, acrylic on masonite, 2011 

Allison Crop Eared Wolf
Indian Act; Revised, handmade paper from the Indian act, hair, 2011
Indian Act: An Indian Perspective, Digital photograph, 2010 

Kalen Hussey
Scars,HDR photograph, 2011 

Chad Patterson
Salt Lick, cast aluminum, found material, 2010 

Bonnie Patton
preFIXation, cedar wood, plastic, paper stickers, ink, typewriter ribbon, 2010
Remain Calm…, vinyl lettering, 2010 

Arianna Richardson
The Hobbyist Collection, mixed media video, 2011
Showcase, cabinet, paper, 2011
Tinsel Tick, wire mattress, tinsel, pillows, 2010 

Corinne Thiessen Hepher
…eaten @ 1:55, video, 2011
not uniform suit, nylon pantyhose, polyester fibre, thread, 2011 

Jena Ursel
Polyps I, wool, linen, 2011
The Button Project, buttons, crochet cotton, 2009 

Curatorial Statement

Visual art that explores the aesthetic and political potential of the everyday has a long and rich history. Although art historians usually associate this kind of work with modern and avant-garde artistic practice, it can in fact be traced to 16th- and 17th-century Renaissance still lifes, which used symbols of ephemerality—such as cut flowers, rotting fruit, small insects, and skulls—to both celebrate and caution against over-consumption. At the time, these detailed trompe-l’œil paintings were considered the lowest fine-art genre, and so artists were at greater liberty to experiment with them. In many ways, painters such as Cornelius Gijsbrechts (Antwerp, ca.1630-1675) and Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin (France, 1699-1779) laid the groundwork for pivotal 20th-century artists like Meret Oppenhiem, Marcel Duchamp, and Any Warhol, whose work turned mundane, found objects and images into vectors of outrage, wonder, and dread.

Out of the Ordinary revisits the practice of extracting unusual and unexpected forms and meanings from everyday materials and subjects. By creating work that incorporates or builds upon found objects, patterns, and text, the artists in this exhibition explore a wide range of issues, including states of contradiction, processes of legitimation, and acts of both violence and healing. Corinne Thiessen Hepher’s work, for example, uses costumes and body extensions to explore themes of metamorphosis and hybridity. Often constructed from found materials such as pantyhose, her work plays on the distinction between intimacy and extroversion, the beautiful and the grotesque. Less dramatic, although no less paradoxical, Katie Bruce’s prints focus on discrete cracks and other patterns that develop naturally in the built environment. Approaching these formations like readymade engravings, she uses them to emboss paper, then works back into the resulting image with embroidery. Also working with textiles, Jena Ursel explores the relationship between repetitive, ritualistic processes and therapy. Inspired by a personal struggle with depression, her work represents both a form of self-examination and a means of escape. In a similar vein, Kalen Hussey’s photographs consider the tension between strength and vulnerability by zeroing in on accidental and self-inflicted scars.

Among the more playful works in the show, Bonnie Patton’s preFIXation (2010) treats prefixes and suffixes as alchemical devices capable of transforming any word. A set of language games made from altered Rubik’s Cubes, handmade Scrabble pieces, and dice, the surreal randomness of this work is echoed by a text fragment enlarged to fill an entire wall. Combing craft techniques with found vintage and kitsch objects, Arianna Richardson’s multimedia practice critiques methods of assigning value based on a distinction between fine-art collectors and hobbyists. Brenna Crabtree’s ongoing series of bread tags explores the hidden formal possibilities of extremely banal subject matter, while Chad Patterson’s tactile sculpture, Salt Lick (2010), offers a playful take on the Duchampian readymade. Also referencing modernist frameworks, Donna Bilyk’s Chip Painting (2010) undermines abstraction as a form of individual expression by using programmatic methods and a limited palate of commercial paint.

Perhaps the most political work in the show, Indian Act; Revised (2011), by Allison Crop Eared Wolf (Blackfoot, Blood nation), deconstructs the offensive Act of Parliament used by the federal government to define who is an “Indian.” Motivated by a desire to both highlight and obliterate this disturbing document, she painstakingly shredded a copy of the Act by hand, turning the remains into sheets of hand-made paper. Embedded in each sheet is a lock of the artist’s hair, a reference to the Blackfoot custom of burying hair after it has been cut.

Emily Falvey, Guest Curator

————————

Originally from Nova Scotia, Emily Falvey is now a Montreal-based independent curator and art critic. In 2009 the Canada Council for the Arts awarded her the Joan Yvonne Lowndes Award for critical and curatorial writing, and in 2006 she received the Curatorial Writing Award (Contemporary Essay) from the Ontario Association of Art Galleries. She is currently working on the manuscript for her first book of art criticism, titled Torn Halves and Half-Truths: Strategies of Paradox in Recent Canadian Art. Her curatorial work includes Exploded View (2010), Nite Ride (co-curated with Ryan Stec, 2009), Blue like an Orange (2009), and Buildup (2008). She was Curator of Contemporary Art at the Ottawa Art Gallery from 2004 to 2008.

The Object of My Attention: Annual Curated Student Exhibiton

Main Gallery
Guest curator: Sandra Dyck

The University of Lethbridge Art Gallery provides an exceptional opportunity for the professional development of Art Studio majors as they near completion of their degree. The Annual Curated Student Exhibition has recently been revised to give students realistic experience with the process of applying for exhibitions and receiving feedback from an established curator. The exhibition is only open to senior art majors 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 and artist run-centres or for 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)

Monique Bedard
Interior Void, digital video, 2010
Untitled, digital prints, 2010

Brenna Crabtree
Kwik-Lok Closures, acrylic on plywood, 2010

Francine Desjardins
Untitled, ink on paper, 2010

Jarrett Duncan
Clowning, digital video projection, 2009

Jason Jessen
Totem Pole, pressure treated post, 2009

Yan Luo
A Clear and Present Danger, wax casts of hand sanitizers, 2009
Self Portrait, wood, glass, lens, fluorescent lights, 2010

Julia Marjerrison
Shapes, watercolour on paper, 2009

Kazumi Marthiensen
Silent Roar, silkscreen on polyester, 2010

Kari Martinez
Untitled, fabric on cardboard, 2010
Fabric Cube 1, fabric and batting, 2010
Fabric Cube 2, fabric and batting, 2010
Fat Cube, fabric and batting, 2010

Sara McKarney
My Parents’ Kitchen Table, fingernail scratch marks and ink on thermal fax paper, 2010

Arianna Richardson
Bric-à-Brac Husbandry, plaster, glitter, sugar, 2010
Bric-à-Brac Husbandry, plaster, glitter, sugar, 2010

Curatorial Statement

“The creative mind,” Carl Jung said, “plays with the objects it loves.” This exhibition is about objects. It presents things that artists have made anew, recycled, copied, re-examined, modified and recontextualized. Their “love” of objects – their sustained attention to them – makes us look at the stuff of life in fresh ways and from different angles.

Kari Martinez and Jason Jessen, for example, re-purpose familiar materials – quilting fabrics and pressure-treated lumber – to new, Minimalist, ends. Brenna Crabtree takes the most banal of objects, the plastic bread clip, and, in a classic Pop art gesture, makes it monumental.

Yan Luo and Arianna Richardson rework ordinary things: Luo the now-ubiquitous dispenser of hand sanitizer and Richardson some thrift-store tchotchkes. By casting in wax (Luo) and plaster (Richardson) multiple copies that are variously embellished and installed in orderly arrays, the artists effect fundamental shifts in the contexts for their reception.

Jarrett Duncan and Monique Bedard sit in front of the camera, objectifying themselves in videos at once intimate and intense. Bedard’s enigmatic photographs of the exterior world shot from a camera held inside her mouth revisit traditional concepts of self-portraiture. Yan Luo’s portable camera obscura offers up a constructed image — of a Bauhaus-style chair – that is continually modified by the lens’s capture of real-time activity occurring outside the crate’s confines.

Sara McKarney uses her fingernails and scroll-like sheets of fragile thermal fax paper to make a frottage drawing that records the surface of her parents’ kitchen table – an object that will change over time, even as the drawing fades and deteriorates. In accordion books made from her folded and bound monotypes, Francine Desjardins seeks to give form to the inexpressible: the sound (and her experience) of music. Kazumi Marthiensen’s kimono is motivated by a similar, but more specific, impulse to make experience visible: the helicopters and planes adorning her garment manifest the people of Okinawa’s resistance to the presence of an American air force on their island.

Julia Marjerrison draws in a spontaneous way, using watercolour pens and water to create quirky pairs of forms that play on the tension between abstraction and representation. Our persistent attempts to “identify” these imagined shapes – to associate them with things in the real world – demonstrate the very power and presence of objects.

Sandra Dyck

About the Curator
Sandra Dyck is curator at the Carleton University Art Gallery in Ottawa. She has curated 40 and coordinated 150 exhibitions, and published 16 catalogues. Her recent essay, A Pilgrim’s Progress: The Life and Art of Gerald Trottier, was recognized with a 2009 Curatorial Writing Award from the Ontario Association of Art Galleries. She contributed essays to Around and About Marius Barbeau: Modelling Twentieth-Century Culture, published by the Canadian Museum of Civilization in 2008, and Edwin Holgate, published by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 2005.