November 1 – December 20 Object Histories Printed Matter touring program
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August 9 – September 19 2020 Pictus Jared Betts, curated by Paul Edouard Bourque
// jaredbetts.com
Gallery Exhibition and online
Pictus consists of a series of large-scale acrylic paintings on canvas, by Moncton based artist Jared Betts. Created during the winter months of 2018-19, these works are part of a major show currently touring Atlantic Canada. The exhibition is curated by Paul Édouard Bourque.
Jared Betts is currently engaged in exploring cutting edge expression modes in the field of contemporary painting. His use of gesture and expressionist forms has since the onset set the tone for his highly charged pictorial works. Betts aims at rethinking the very parameters of contemporary painting, and his work as such touches on many pertinent and pressing concerns around the practice of chromatic mark-making, and how these relate to artistic ideals in the 21st century.
Betts confronts the picture plane with bravado and panache. Application and treatment of pigmented matter relies on a zen-inspired attitude mastered by the artist who “gazes trance-like at the surface, until the piece happens…”. Painting such as this requires a definite sang-froid and the mastery of one’s state of mind. The realization of a self-contained, autonomous body of work results from Betts’ full-time commitment to the exploratory adventure around mark-making and structural use of colour as a construction strategy for the picture.
Betts has travelled extensively and has benefited from many artist residencies throughout the world. His rapid absorption of other cultural mores has resulted in a global stance, but also a very intimate and personal one, in regards to what it signifies for an artist to articulate and express visual ideas and ideals onto a blank canvas, while maintaining a deep commitment towards the graphic expression of abstraction and form. His vision resonates within contemporary concepts relating to site, space and time. His strong ties to itinerancy and travel underline the inescapable passage of time; sequence allied to process becomes manifest in these large canvases, whose aim seeks to engulf the viewer’s imagination with vibrancy, action and life.
Paul Édouard Bourque
Curator
// jaredbetts.com
Gallery Exhibition and online
Pictus consists of a series of large-scale acrylic paintings on canvas, by Moncton based artist Jared Betts. Created during the winter months of 2018-19, these works are part of a major show currently touring Atlantic Canada. The exhibition is curated by Paul Édouard Bourque.
Jared Betts is currently engaged in exploring cutting edge expression modes in the field of contemporary painting. His use of gesture and expressionist forms has since the onset set the tone for his highly charged pictorial works. Betts aims at rethinking the very parameters of contemporary painting, and his work as such touches on many pertinent and pressing concerns around the practice of chromatic mark-making, and how these relate to artistic ideals in the 21st century.
Betts confronts the picture plane with bravado and panache. Application and treatment of pigmented matter relies on a zen-inspired attitude mastered by the artist who “gazes trance-like at the surface, until the piece happens…”. Painting such as this requires a definite sang-froid and the mastery of one’s state of mind. The realization of a self-contained, autonomous body of work results from Betts’ full-time commitment to the exploratory adventure around mark-making and structural use of colour as a construction strategy for the picture.
Betts has travelled extensively and has benefited from many artist residencies throughout the world. His rapid absorption of other cultural mores has resulted in a global stance, but also a very intimate and personal one, in regards to what it signifies for an artist to articulate and express visual ideas and ideals onto a blank canvas, while maintaining a deep commitment towards the graphic expression of abstraction and form. His vision resonates within contemporary concepts relating to site, space and time. His strong ties to itinerancy and travel underline the inescapable passage of time; sequence allied to process becomes manifest in these large canvases, whose aim seeks to engulf the viewer’s imagination with vibrancy, action and life.
Paul Édouard Bourque
Curator
ONLINE June 14 – August 2 2020 Megafauna and Other Collisions
Elizabeth D’Agostino //elizabethdagostino.com My interests in landscape, as well as naturalistic forms within architecture have evolved into fictitious environments and constructing stories from merging elements both the imagined and real. These subjects are extracted from the world of nature and assigned to new roles within an invented landscape. Elizabeth D’Agostino is an artist working in print media, sculpture and installation. She currently lives and works in Toronto and is a member of Open Studio Fine Art Printmaking Centre and Loop Gallery.Elizabeth D’Agostino holds a BFA from the University of Windsor and a MFA from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, USA. Her work has been exhibited in Canada and internationally including Iziko: Museum of Cape Town, South Africa, Manhattan Graphics Center, New York, and The Print Center, Philadelphia. In addition, D'Agostino's prints can also be found in many private and public collections including the University of Changchun Jilin, China; Columbia College, Chicago, USA; Department of Foreign Affairs Canada; and Ernst and Young, Canada. D’Agostino is the recipient of many awards and fellowships including the Hexagon Special Projects Fellowship at Open Studio, Toronto. In 2015, D’Agostino was selected by the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada to create a carpet design for the newly renovated Canada House in London, England. |
ONLINE April 26 – June 7 2020 Beyond Here Lies Nothing
Brad Necyk // bradnecyk.com/ Brad Necyk is a multimedia artist and writer in Canada whose practice engages with issues of medicine, mental health, and precarious populations and subjects. He recently completed an arts-based, research-creation Ph.D. in Psychiatry at the University of Alberta and his doctoral research was awarded the Governor General’s Gold Medal. His works include drawings and paintings, still and motion film, sculpture, 3D imaging and printing, virtual reality, performance, and narrative writing. He finished a residency with AHS Transplant Services in 2015-16, worked as an artist-researcher in a project on Head and Neck Cancer, and was a visiting artist-researcher at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto 2017-19. His current work focuses on patient experience, auto-ethnography, psychiatry, and, recently, the Anthropocene. His artistic work was included in the 2015 Alberta Biennial, and has been shown internationally, most recently in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Chicago, IL; he has presented academic work at conferences in Canada and internationally, most recently at the 2018 FLUX Symposium at the International Museum for Surgical Sciences in Chicago, IL and SLSA 2019 UC Irvine in California. Brad sits on the boards of several professional bodies and is a Scholar at the Integrative Health Institute at the University of Alberta. He currently teaches courses in Drawing and Intermedia at the University of Alberta and MacEwan University. |

Jess Lincoln An Interior
Sept 8 – Oct 12, Closing reception, Friday, October 11, 7 - 9 pm
An Interior, is a painted room. Alternating large and narrow painted panels, on unstretched canvas, completely cover a three sided space inside the gallery. Its scale, the intimate domestic objects and textiles depicted, wallpaper-like installation and division of images by mouldings and painted cartouches imply a décor in a modest home. It is overwhelming: lushly painted, heavily patterned, enveloping. The large panels’ structure is based on a repeating, geometric quilt pattern, and each contains one large central ‘figure’. This is either my body or its substitute—a mass of flowers, a heap of clothing. Each narrow panel is a column of three smaller paintings. The images in these margins are more varied, each depicting something revealed, something concealed, or something unexpectedly absent. There are still-lives of solitary objects: a pair of boxed pantyhose, the guts of a halved miniature pumpkin, an empty photo frame. There are strange scenes: an empty chair left outside in the dark, another wearing a lacy blouse and heels. An energetic figure wearing only a bed sheet, like a child’s Halloween ghost costume, reappears in each margin as a gesturing guide.
The work An Interior grew from a proposition, ‘What if I painted wallpaper?’ This proposition is related to my ongoing interest in the psychological and social functions of décor and labour spent decorating. An Interior proceeds from understanding that the home and its décor are neither exclusively an exteriorization of one's personality and aspirations nor just a marker of class or cultural identity, but one term in a reciprocal relationship. A home's inhabitants create it, decorate and maintain it according to their needs and the conventions of their community, but the act of living in
the home, interacting with it physically day after day, also creates and alters the inhabitant. The paintings make use of the sensual qualities of oil painting to explore the sensual and habitual process by which one makes and is made by a home. They are a meditation on the psychological import of this relationship through the lens of my body and experience.
Aspects of the work also imply the conventions of historical figurative paintings: the draped nude, a concern with rendering the illusion of volume, the triptych or folding altarpiece. In An Interior, I wanted to bring these things together: a love for the history and craft of painting, and the sense that the home and the aesthetic objects within it are important and meaningful.
Sept 8 – Oct 12, Closing reception, Friday, October 11, 7 - 9 pm
An Interior, is a painted room. Alternating large and narrow painted panels, on unstretched canvas, completely cover a three sided space inside the gallery. Its scale, the intimate domestic objects and textiles depicted, wallpaper-like installation and division of images by mouldings and painted cartouches imply a décor in a modest home. It is overwhelming: lushly painted, heavily patterned, enveloping. The large panels’ structure is based on a repeating, geometric quilt pattern, and each contains one large central ‘figure’. This is either my body or its substitute—a mass of flowers, a heap of clothing. Each narrow panel is a column of three smaller paintings. The images in these margins are more varied, each depicting something revealed, something concealed, or something unexpectedly absent. There are still-lives of solitary objects: a pair of boxed pantyhose, the guts of a halved miniature pumpkin, an empty photo frame. There are strange scenes: an empty chair left outside in the dark, another wearing a lacy blouse and heels. An energetic figure wearing only a bed sheet, like a child’s Halloween ghost costume, reappears in each margin as a gesturing guide.
The work An Interior grew from a proposition, ‘What if I painted wallpaper?’ This proposition is related to my ongoing interest in the psychological and social functions of décor and labour spent decorating. An Interior proceeds from understanding that the home and its décor are neither exclusively an exteriorization of one's personality and aspirations nor just a marker of class or cultural identity, but one term in a reciprocal relationship. A home's inhabitants create it, decorate and maintain it according to their needs and the conventions of their community, but the act of living in
the home, interacting with it physically day after day, also creates and alters the inhabitant. The paintings make use of the sensual qualities of oil painting to explore the sensual and habitual process by which one makes and is made by a home. They are a meditation on the psychological import of this relationship through the lens of my body and experience.
Aspects of the work also imply the conventions of historical figurative paintings: the draped nude, a concern with rendering the illusion of volume, the triptych or folding altarpiece. In An Interior, I wanted to bring these things together: a love for the history and craft of painting, and the sense that the home and the aesthetic objects within it are important and meaningful.

Riisa Gundesen Introvert
July 28-Aug 31, opening Sunday, July 28, 1 - 3 pm
This series reflects my ongoing research into the abject, the grotesque threat that lingers, just out of sight, in the peripheries - of bodies, of gender, of place. The paintings are all self-portraits, beginning as nudes and natures mortes, then losing their form in areas of high texture, colour and abstraction, becoming unsettling and grotesque. I’m interested in the apparent aestheticism of a feminine gender performance - John Berger claims, “Men act and women appear. Men look, and women watch themselves being looked at.” If femininity is in seeming and being seen, then the performance is under threat in moments of privacy, of grotesque intimacy. I display my own interior life in the context of European nudes and allegorical painting, confronting the titillating voyeurism typical of the genre through the lens of a threatening abject. My own home, as the primary site of my experiences with anxiety, depression, and mental illness, takes on a sinister role, full of rotten food, cluttered refuse and discarded objects, while the (my) body reflects interior turmoil, displaying in paint the itching, scratching, picking habits associated with my feelings of panic or mania. Daily tasks related ideologically to femininity - cooking and tidying, applying makeup and maintaining the appearance - take on a disturbing cast, reflective of the anxieties and obsessive thinking I’ve come to associate with them.
The abject is, at it’s core, life’s inescapable fear of contamination by the rotten, the refuse, the reminder of the corpse - that which can never be cast aside. Like an intrusive thought, or the panic attack that you’ve pushed back all week, it lives in the margins, a source of threat and intrigue. It is attractive, as attractive as the whitehead on a pimple, the mysterious tupperware in the back of the fridge, the scab that must be poked and picked and picked, until it scars.
Riisa Gundesen is a visual artist based in Edmonton, AB, where she teaches and maintains a studio practice. She earned her BFA from the University of Lethbridge in 2012, and her MFA from the University of Saskatchewan in 2017. Her work deals with femininity, mental illness, and the abject, in the context of contemporary figurative painting.
Image: Selfie #2 (self-portrait) Oil on canvas, 2016 65” x 45”
July 28-Aug 31, opening Sunday, July 28, 1 - 3 pm
This series reflects my ongoing research into the abject, the grotesque threat that lingers, just out of sight, in the peripheries - of bodies, of gender, of place. The paintings are all self-portraits, beginning as nudes and natures mortes, then losing their form in areas of high texture, colour and abstraction, becoming unsettling and grotesque. I’m interested in the apparent aestheticism of a feminine gender performance - John Berger claims, “Men act and women appear. Men look, and women watch themselves being looked at.” If femininity is in seeming and being seen, then the performance is under threat in moments of privacy, of grotesque intimacy. I display my own interior life in the context of European nudes and allegorical painting, confronting the titillating voyeurism typical of the genre through the lens of a threatening abject. My own home, as the primary site of my experiences with anxiety, depression, and mental illness, takes on a sinister role, full of rotten food, cluttered refuse and discarded objects, while the (my) body reflects interior turmoil, displaying in paint the itching, scratching, picking habits associated with my feelings of panic or mania. Daily tasks related ideologically to femininity - cooking and tidying, applying makeup and maintaining the appearance - take on a disturbing cast, reflective of the anxieties and obsessive thinking I’ve come to associate with them.
The abject is, at it’s core, life’s inescapable fear of contamination by the rotten, the refuse, the reminder of the corpse - that which can never be cast aside. Like an intrusive thought, or the panic attack that you’ve pushed back all week, it lives in the margins, a source of threat and intrigue. It is attractive, as attractive as the whitehead on a pimple, the mysterious tupperware in the back of the fridge, the scab that must be poked and picked and picked, until it scars.
Riisa Gundesen is a visual artist based in Edmonton, AB, where she teaches and maintains a studio practice. She earned her BFA from the University of Lethbridge in 2012, and her MFA from the University of Saskatchewan in 2017. Her work deals with femininity, mental illness, and the abject, in the context of contemporary figurative painting.
Image: Selfie #2 (self-portrait) Oil on canvas, 2016 65” x 45”

To the Moon and Back at ARTsPLACE
June 23 - July 21, 2019
Main Gallery Artists : Ed Beals / Rhonda Barret / Ted Lind /Geoff Butler / Don Pentz / Rion Microys /Martha Little / Sharon Kennedy / Bonnie Baker / Ray Mackie / Julia Redgrave / Lauren Soloy / Eva McCauley / Amy Rubin Flett / Sally O’Grady PLUS space memorabilia
Mym Gallery A Footprint on the Moon : Carol Tonkin
Pop-up gallery Virtual Reality experience NASA moon landing
Chapel Gallery Annapolis Royal Robots ‘battle space’, Annapolis Royal Space Agency (Annapolis West Ed. Centre) and NASA Art
Film screenings
Trip to the Moon (George Meilie 1902) (looped presentation inside the gallery)
Plan 9 From Outer Space (Ed Wood, 1959) outdoor screening
Apollo 11 @ King's Theatre, King's Film Society (Todd Douglas Miller, 2019)
Talks
Artist Ted Lind to present an art talk on lunar art
Naturalist Paul Lalonde to present a night sky talk (pre-registration, max. 10 people)
June 23 - July 21, 2019
Main Gallery Artists : Ed Beals / Rhonda Barret / Ted Lind /Geoff Butler / Don Pentz / Rion Microys /Martha Little / Sharon Kennedy / Bonnie Baker / Ray Mackie / Julia Redgrave / Lauren Soloy / Eva McCauley / Amy Rubin Flett / Sally O’Grady PLUS space memorabilia
Mym Gallery A Footprint on the Moon : Carol Tonkin
Pop-up gallery Virtual Reality experience NASA moon landing
Chapel Gallery Annapolis Royal Robots ‘battle space’, Annapolis Royal Space Agency (Annapolis West Ed. Centre) and NASA Art
Film screenings
Trip to the Moon (George Meilie 1902) (looped presentation inside the gallery)
Plan 9 From Outer Space (Ed Wood, 1959) outdoor screening
Apollo 11 @ King's Theatre, King's Film Society (Todd Douglas Miller, 2019)
Talks
Artist Ted Lind to present an art talk on lunar art
Naturalist Paul Lalonde to present a night sky talk (pre-registration, max. 10 people)

Ian McKinnon still / life
May 5 – June 16, opening Sunday, May 5, 1 - 3 pm
still/life will comprise approximately 130 drawings. The small panels will be installed so as to suggest a tessellation of the gallery wall/s. The exhibition will include a 4-week residency in the gallery space itself where the artist will continue to make daily drawings of objects brought to me by members of the public.
McKinnon describes these drawings as his "visual theology": the highly rendered objects expressing time, space, light and shadow as we understand it in the created order. To the thoughtful eye, this high realism is inconsistent with the iridescent gold that holds it. The gold iridescent "ground" is God, Glory, and the infinite - all which is not created.
still/life will invite the viewer to engage contemplatively with the drawings and to ponder why we seek out such spaces, seek out art – and why we make it; and to reflect further on the vocabulary of transcendence and healing we so often use to describe our experiences with art. These quiet works speak of stillness, of being fully here in the present and presence of grace – of life, still.
___________
Ian McKinnon is a Halifax based artist and educator. He has a BFA from NSCAD (1980) and an MFA from Concordia (1994.) A part-time faculty member, Ian has taught drawing at NSCADU in the Foundation Division since 2003. After course work at the Atlantic School of Theology (2005/6), Ian transferred to the Faculty of Divinity at Trinity College (University of Toronto) where he completed a Master of Theology Studies (2011). His thesis, “Mutual Illumination and the Artist: Dispossession, Disinterested Love and Making Other” is an exploration of and argument for the necessity of theology and contemporary art entering a dialogue. In 2011 Ian resumed his part-time teaching at NSCADU. March 2014 to December 2016 he was Parish Artist-in-Residence at St. Paul’s Anglican Church (Halifax, Nova Scotia) where besides pursuing his own work in a studio graciously provided by the church, he also established a program exhibiting and writing about other artists’ work, within the church itself. A series of large abstract paintings titled “Fragments of Glory” was generated during his residency at Halifax’s historical St. Paul’s Church. Currently Ian is nearing the end of a 15-month project that has culminated in a drawing series, titled “Still/Life,” comprising over 130 pieces.
May 5 – June 16, opening Sunday, May 5, 1 - 3 pm
still/life will comprise approximately 130 drawings. The small panels will be installed so as to suggest a tessellation of the gallery wall/s. The exhibition will include a 4-week residency in the gallery space itself where the artist will continue to make daily drawings of objects brought to me by members of the public.
McKinnon describes these drawings as his "visual theology": the highly rendered objects expressing time, space, light and shadow as we understand it in the created order. To the thoughtful eye, this high realism is inconsistent with the iridescent gold that holds it. The gold iridescent "ground" is God, Glory, and the infinite - all which is not created.
still/life will invite the viewer to engage contemplatively with the drawings and to ponder why we seek out such spaces, seek out art – and why we make it; and to reflect further on the vocabulary of transcendence and healing we so often use to describe our experiences with art. These quiet works speak of stillness, of being fully here in the present and presence of grace – of life, still.
___________
Ian McKinnon is a Halifax based artist and educator. He has a BFA from NSCAD (1980) and an MFA from Concordia (1994.) A part-time faculty member, Ian has taught drawing at NSCADU in the Foundation Division since 2003. After course work at the Atlantic School of Theology (2005/6), Ian transferred to the Faculty of Divinity at Trinity College (University of Toronto) where he completed a Master of Theology Studies (2011). His thesis, “Mutual Illumination and the Artist: Dispossession, Disinterested Love and Making Other” is an exploration of and argument for the necessity of theology and contemporary art entering a dialogue. In 2011 Ian resumed his part-time teaching at NSCADU. March 2014 to December 2016 he was Parish Artist-in-Residence at St. Paul’s Anglican Church (Halifax, Nova Scotia) where besides pursuing his own work in a studio graciously provided by the church, he also established a program exhibiting and writing about other artists’ work, within the church itself. A series of large abstract paintings titled “Fragments of Glory” was generated during his residency at Halifax’s historical St. Paul’s Church. Currently Ian is nearing the end of a 15-month project that has culminated in a drawing series, titled “Still/Life,” comprising over 130 pieces.

Murmuration Rebecca Hamlin Green Mar 24-Apr 27, opening Sunday, March 24, 1 - 3 pm.
Like the mysterious formation of birds in a flock, Murmuration is an installation of felt, lace, clay and paper that spans the interior of the gallery and undulates through form, value and space. By using clay as a means of coloration rather than construction, the connection of clay and earth is more poignant as it is made visually light, featherweight and transitional. Accompanied by bodies of birds in large-scale drawings, felt, lace and curated objects, the elements of this room-sized piece arrange to form a visually cohesive group while still holding the potential for individual connection with material and memory.
Using sculptural, thrown and altered forms along with unorthodox ceramic materials, my work evokes the architecture of wild animals while examining elements of our human identity. In exploring these structures, I use clay taken out of its plastic state and combine the liquid slip with fabric or grass to and then allow them all to harden and adhere together with other found and created ceramic objects, causing all materials to transform visually and conceptually within the forms. The building process is intuitive and collective, with smudges of wet clay becoming a kind of history of process on the walls and floor, allowing the finished piece to reflect the relationships of forms in nature with those we recognize as human.
Rebecca Hamlin Green is an American artist living and working in Chicago, Illinois. Her ceramic and installation work has received national and international attention through group and solo exhibitions in Belgium, Korea, Portland, Berkeley, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Lexington, KY. She has recently installed solo exhibitions at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the University of Arizona in Tucson, where she earned her MFA in 2012. She is fascinated by wildlife and the breadth of patterns, cycles and modulations of natural and domestic systems.
Image: large-scale drawing, Hamlin Green.
Like the mysterious formation of birds in a flock, Murmuration is an installation of felt, lace, clay and paper that spans the interior of the gallery and undulates through form, value and space. By using clay as a means of coloration rather than construction, the connection of clay and earth is more poignant as it is made visually light, featherweight and transitional. Accompanied by bodies of birds in large-scale drawings, felt, lace and curated objects, the elements of this room-sized piece arrange to form a visually cohesive group while still holding the potential for individual connection with material and memory.
Using sculptural, thrown and altered forms along with unorthodox ceramic materials, my work evokes the architecture of wild animals while examining elements of our human identity. In exploring these structures, I use clay taken out of its plastic state and combine the liquid slip with fabric or grass to and then allow them all to harden and adhere together with other found and created ceramic objects, causing all materials to transform visually and conceptually within the forms. The building process is intuitive and collective, with smudges of wet clay becoming a kind of history of process on the walls and floor, allowing the finished piece to reflect the relationships of forms in nature with those we recognize as human.
Rebecca Hamlin Green is an American artist living and working in Chicago, Illinois. Her ceramic and installation work has received national and international attention through group and solo exhibitions in Belgium, Korea, Portland, Berkeley, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Lexington, KY. She has recently installed solo exhibitions at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the University of Arizona in Tucson, where she earned her MFA in 2012. She is fascinated by wildlife and the breadth of patterns, cycles and modulations of natural and domestic systems.
Image: large-scale drawing, Hamlin Green.
2018
May 20 – July 1 In/Visible Charlotte Wilson Hammond
July 8 – August 26 Living Room Amanda McCavour
July 8 - August 26 As Seen on Tumblr Ambivalently Yours
Sept 2 – Oct 13 Let's Talk Leya Evelyn
July 8 – August 26 Living Room Amanda McCavour
July 8 - August 26 As Seen on Tumblr Ambivalently Yours
Sept 2 – Oct 13 Let's Talk Leya Evelyn
2017
April / May Residency and project with Jennifer Angus http://www.jenniferangus.com/
May 7 – June 11 Jennifer Angus (plus extended exhibition through September 2)
June 18 – July 16 Amanda Rhodenizer http://www.arhodenizer.com/
July 23 – August 27 Carrie Allison-Goodfellow http://www.carrie-allison.com/
Sept 3 – Oct 8 Mathieu Leger exhibition & residency http://www.mathieuleger.ca/
May 7 – June 11 Jennifer Angus (plus extended exhibition through September 2)
June 18 – July 16 Amanda Rhodenizer http://www.arhodenizer.com/
July 23 – August 27 Carrie Allison-Goodfellow http://www.carrie-allison.com/
Sept 3 – Oct 8 Mathieu Leger exhibition & residency http://www.mathieuleger.ca/
Jennifer Angus

dr_dalton_essay_2017.pdf |
Amanda Rhodenizer Parallel Play
Amanda Rhodenizer’s painting practice engages with the narrative potential of homes and land in transition. These properties may be abandoned, vacant, under construction, or listed for sale or rent. Taking cues from Canadian real-estate and rental practices, she explores the tensions in our relationships with place – colonially, commercially, and emotionally.
Inspired by the advent of the "sharing economy" and the quest for a more authentic "stay experience" (i.e. trying to live like a local), the paintings in Parallel Play consider a balance between access and ownership. Based on a photo-shoot staged by the artist in a modern beachfront rental property, Rhodenizer also made visits to document land for sale on Nova Scotia’s South Shore.
In the field of childhood development, the phrase “parallel play” describes toddlers' tendency to play side by side without trying to influence one another’s behaviour. Likewise, Rhodenizer's paintings give space to the adjacent experiences of guests and hosts, viewer and viewed. Among the wall-to-wall windows and sliding doors, tenants and proprietors frame the view of the landscape outside, while small, discrete studies of "vacant" land consistently punctuate the space in-between.
Inspired by the advent of the "sharing economy" and the quest for a more authentic "stay experience" (i.e. trying to live like a local), the paintings in Parallel Play consider a balance between access and ownership. Based on a photo-shoot staged by the artist in a modern beachfront rental property, Rhodenizer also made visits to document land for sale on Nova Scotia’s South Shore.
In the field of childhood development, the phrase “parallel play” describes toddlers' tendency to play side by side without trying to influence one another’s behaviour. Likewise, Rhodenizer's paintings give space to the adjacent experiences of guests and hosts, viewer and viewed. Among the wall-to-wall windows and sliding doors, tenants and proprietors frame the view of the landscape outside, while small, discrete studies of "vacant" land consistently punctuate the space in-between.
Amanda Rhodenizer’s work calls on figure painting’s ability to conjure both contemporary and historical narratives. She constructs her scenes by staging photoshoots and digitally manipulating images, using them as reference in the studio. The resulting narratives often exist in ‘liminal’ spaces and engage with ideas of home and permanence, invasiveness and temporality.
Born in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, Amanda Rhodenizer received her BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2006. Since receiving her MFA from the University of Waterloo in 2014 she has continued to live and work in Waterloo, Ontario. She was the Nova Scotia winner of the BMO 1st! Art Award (2006) and is the recent recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant and the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund (both 2016). Recently, her work has been presented in solo exhibitions at Rotunda Gallery, and Open Sesame (both in Kitchener), and in group exhibitions at Art Mûr (Montréal), the Orillia Museum of Art & History (Orillia), and in the survey exhibition “Terroir” at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (Halifax). For more information, please visit: www.arhodenizer.com
Born in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, Amanda Rhodenizer received her BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2006. Since receiving her MFA from the University of Waterloo in 2014 she has continued to live and work in Waterloo, Ontario. She was the Nova Scotia winner of the BMO 1st! Art Award (2006) and is the recent recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant and the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund (both 2016). Recently, her work has been presented in solo exhibitions at Rotunda Gallery, and Open Sesame (both in Kitchener), and in group exhibitions at Art Mûr (Montréal), the Orillia Museum of Art & History (Orillia), and in the survey exhibition “Terroir” at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (Halifax). For more information, please visit: www.arhodenizer.com
Carrie Allison-Goodfellow
Artist Statement
Carrie Allison-Goodfellow is a mixed Indigenous European artist currently pursuing her Master in Fine Art at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Carrie received her Bachelor degrees in Art History and in Fine Art from NSCAD University, where she also participated in the Arts in Schools Initiation Program, teaching and practicing art in South Africa. After graduating, Carrie joined in the NSCAD Community Studio Residency program in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, where she maintained a lively artistic practice within the community, completing two public murals. Carrie’s work responds to her maternal Cree and Metis ancestry, thinking through intergenerational cultural loss. Her work seeks to reclaim, remember, recreate and celebrate her ancestry through visual discourses. Carrie looks to Indigenous, mixed-race, antiracist, feminist and environmental theorists to critically examine the world around her.
Artist Statement
Carrie Allison-Goodfellow is a mixed Indigenous European artist currently pursuing her Master in Fine Art at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Carrie received her Bachelor degrees in Art History and in Fine Art from NSCAD University, where she also participated in the Arts in Schools Initiation Program, teaching and practicing art in South Africa. After graduating, Carrie joined in the NSCAD Community Studio Residency program in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, where she maintained a lively artistic practice within the community, completing two public murals. Carrie’s work responds to her maternal Cree and Metis ancestry, thinking through intergenerational cultural loss. Her work seeks to reclaim, remember, recreate and celebrate her ancestry through visual discourses. Carrie looks to Indigenous, mixed-race, antiracist, feminist and environmental theorists to critically examine the world around her.

Displaced contemplates, and calls into question, the destruction and alteration of natural habitats for urbanization and developmental purposes. Carrie Allison-Goodfellow’s work is rooted in her identity as a mixed Indigenous European woman. Her work explores issues such as land, place, identity, histories, environmental discourses, and personal histories and concerns, using botanicals as metaphors for narrating these issues. Through researching both botanical migrations and Aboriginal histories she forms connections that speak to an alternative grand narrative involving the environment, westernization, globalization and Indigenous stories. Using both traditional and non-traditional painting mediums Carrie plays with concepts of ephemerality and colonization. Displaced calls into question colonized space and what the costs of these spaces are.

Plausible Space is an installation of photographs and maps, which are re purposed to reflect what they represent, a landscape showing peaks, valleys, and bodies of water. Photographs presented in the installation depict the artist in two different situations; images of actions where the artist transforms the landscape, the other of a declaration of appropriation of territories. The images are installed as counterpoints to the maps, a dialogue then begins about how we travel, transform, and appropriate geographies. The photographic images are crumpled, revealing a sense of topography, one of the aims of documenting landscapes. Through this mechanism, the artist points out the vulnerability of the paper photograph as well as our appreciation of its content and, subsequently, the object itself.
This installation of cartographic maps in a space is an act in two parts. Conceptually, this is a cluster of representations of space, occupying a space of representation. These maps flatten volumes as they themselves are flattened, and, as a device, they can occupy more, or less, volume. If we consider the content of these documents, both politically and temporally, they cease to function immediately when they are fabricated—the space they represent is continuously transforming, so are the politics. Sculpturally, the work is interested in our engagement with space, both imaginary and real; simultaneously deconstructing and reconstructing the cultural territories we define, spaces we establish as nations, and our resulting identity. This work engages our desires to discover and possess territories.
The maps are pinned to the walls and become slow, transforming entities for the duration of the exhibition. They seem to wilt as the fibres relax into positions of defeat against gravity and humidity, affected by what they represent. There is a true alteration of matter at work here, reflecting the initial idea that their representation is also in flux; the geographic territories themselves are constantly transforming. These works are about transience and the nature of territory. Juxtaposed to the maps are two photographs; one of the artist at work in the landscape, the other of the artist working to metaphorically possess all the geographies. The image of the artist in the landscape is crumpled and becomes a surface that resembles a topography and creates an appearance of a three-dimensional surface. It is a symbol of use and misuse of a surface that represents landscape.
Mathieu Léger hails from the Maritime region of Eastern Canada. Serial artist-in-residence, Léger has participated in 50 artist's residencies. He holds a Bachelor of Arts (Literature and Fine Art - Université de Moncton, 01998). His work reflects on ideas surrounding wilderness, geological time, and process related activities of the natural world. Scouring time, place, and space, his projects are delivered through performance, textworks, photography, and video/audio installations. He is currently developing a 5 year performance project that investigates the physicality of spatial awareness and cartographic conventions. He shares his time between far away places and Moncton, NB, Canada.
This installation of cartographic maps in a space is an act in two parts. Conceptually, this is a cluster of representations of space, occupying a space of representation. These maps flatten volumes as they themselves are flattened, and, as a device, they can occupy more, or less, volume. If we consider the content of these documents, both politically and temporally, they cease to function immediately when they are fabricated—the space they represent is continuously transforming, so are the politics. Sculpturally, the work is interested in our engagement with space, both imaginary and real; simultaneously deconstructing and reconstructing the cultural territories we define, spaces we establish as nations, and our resulting identity. This work engages our desires to discover and possess territories.
The maps are pinned to the walls and become slow, transforming entities for the duration of the exhibition. They seem to wilt as the fibres relax into positions of defeat against gravity and humidity, affected by what they represent. There is a true alteration of matter at work here, reflecting the initial idea that their representation is also in flux; the geographic territories themselves are constantly transforming. These works are about transience and the nature of territory. Juxtaposed to the maps are two photographs; one of the artist at work in the landscape, the other of the artist working to metaphorically possess all the geographies. The image of the artist in the landscape is crumpled and becomes a surface that resembles a topography and creates an appearance of a three-dimensional surface. It is a symbol of use and misuse of a surface that represents landscape.
Mathieu Léger hails from the Maritime region of Eastern Canada. Serial artist-in-residence, Léger has participated in 50 artist's residencies. He holds a Bachelor of Arts (Literature and Fine Art - Université de Moncton, 01998). His work reflects on ideas surrounding wilderness, geological time, and process related activities of the natural world. Scouring time, place, and space, his projects are delivered through performance, textworks, photography, and video/audio installations. He is currently developing a 5 year performance project that investigates the physicality of spatial awareness and cartographic conventions. He shares his time between far away places and Moncton, NB, Canada.
2016
May 6- 29 Door to Door Performance and Installation Guest curator, Eryn Foster & Del Hillier
June 5 – Jul 10 Geography of Bliss Annie Lalande & Bonnie Baker Drawings
July 17 – Aug 21 Sapsucker Sounds Annie Dunning Installation
Aug 28 – Oct 9 Biographica Carol Collicutt residency Painting / Drawing / Photography
June 5 – Jul 10 Geography of Bliss Annie Lalande & Bonnie Baker Drawings
July 17 – Aug 21 Sapsucker Sounds Annie Dunning Installation
Aug 28 – Oct 9 Biographica Carol Collicutt residency Painting / Drawing / Photography
Biographica Carol Collicutt August 28 - October 9
Biographica
For this exhibition, I have drawn from 3 bodies of photographic, or photo based work, all of which address the concepts of memory and identity.
The first series, which consists of large photographs printed on mylar and mounted on dibond, deals with memory as an obscured moment in time. Shot through glass, these photographs express memory as indistinct and hazy. Using photographs of myself as a child and at various points in my adulthood, the idea of recall as unreliable and subjective is emphasized by the distortion and addition of colour of various glass objects. The line “through a glass, darkly” a common phrase in western literature, informed the work.
Altered photographs shot in layers, make up the second series. They are shot on mylar, painted on, scratched, and marked, then reshot and printed on watercolour paper and mounted on dibond. The subject matter varies from architectural views, to landscapes, but in all cases the finished photographs are again mysterious and not quite realistic. Memory is still the driving force, but manifested in dream-like, unreal environments.
The third series, just begun in January 2016 and still in progress, uses archival family photographs, printed in large scale, and directly drawn and written on. These are directly biographical, and autobiographical, since the text and added content relate directly to the photographs in either a subjective or an objective way. Again the idea of stored experience of an individual fascinated and absorbs me.
For this exhibition, I have drawn from 3 bodies of photographic, or photo based work, all of which address the concepts of memory and identity.
The first series, which consists of large photographs printed on mylar and mounted on dibond, deals with memory as an obscured moment in time. Shot through glass, these photographs express memory as indistinct and hazy. Using photographs of myself as a child and at various points in my adulthood, the idea of recall as unreliable and subjective is emphasized by the distortion and addition of colour of various glass objects. The line “through a glass, darkly” a common phrase in western literature, informed the work.
Altered photographs shot in layers, make up the second series. They are shot on mylar, painted on, scratched, and marked, then reshot and printed on watercolour paper and mounted on dibond. The subject matter varies from architectural views, to landscapes, but in all cases the finished photographs are again mysterious and not quite realistic. Memory is still the driving force, but manifested in dream-like, unreal environments.
The third series, just begun in January 2016 and still in progress, uses archival family photographs, printed in large scale, and directly drawn and written on. These are directly biographical, and autobiographical, since the text and added content relate directly to the photographs in either a subjective or an objective way. Again the idea of stored experience of an individual fascinated and absorbs me.
Artist Bio
Carol Collicutt was born and grew up in Halifax graduating from Dalhousie University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature, and later from St. Thomas University with a Bachelor of Education. She received her art training at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, where she focused on drawing and painting. She has maintained a studio in Fredericton for 30 years. Primarily a mixed media artist, she has recently turned to photography as a vehicle for her work on memory and identity, themes which have permeated her work for many years. She has been the recipient of 6 Creation Grants from artsnb, the most recent in 2015, and her work is represented in the New Brunswick Art Bank as well as many corporate and private collections. |
Sapsucker Sounds
Annie Dunning
Sapsucker Sounds is an installation of objects and interactive sound sculptures that offer an opportunity to experience sound generated by a conflation of human and woodpecker culture. The work began with a found log, filled with holes made by a Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker. Each sculpture is a different attempt to interpret the marks the bird has “recorded”.
Sapsuckers, like other woodpeckers, use their hammering to delineate their territorial range as well as find food. In addition to using hollow trees, they have been known to hammer on metal chimney flashing and road signs, taking advantage of the amplification these introduced items offer. This development in woodpecker culture that can expand an individual bird’s territory highlights the potential for inter-species cultural influence that must apply to human culture as well. Annie Dunning is a multi-disciplinary artist and her work is primarily focused on sculpture and installation. She is interested in examining the intersecting elements of culture and the natural world to create new hybrid ideas. Annie received her BFA from Mount Allison University, NB, and her MFA from the University of Guelph, ON. |
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The Geography of Bliss
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the_geography_of_bliss_art_talk.pptx |

8527_the_geography_of_bliss_proof.pdf |
Bio: Bonnie Baker
Bonnie Baker, is a Nova Scotia based artist. After studying printmaking at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD), Baker’s practice focused on textiles until 2007. She returned to her roots reviving a current practice in printmaking and drawing through study at the Women's Studio Workshop, Rosendale NY and under private tutelage.
Both her textile and works on paper has been included in several invitational group exhibitions in Canada and US as well as a slate of solo exhibits. Selected drawings from Lachesis' measure a solo exhibit in 2011 were published in the International Drawing Annual 7 (INDA).
Her textile pieces can be found in the public collections of the Art Bank of Nova Scotia, Royal Bank and Societe internationale des enterprises ECONOMUSE as well as international private collections.
Statement
When beginning a new series of drawings I am looking closely at the object or subject, methodically drawing the same image over and over.
The first couple of drawings are not very good likenesses so I keep making drawings until I can recognize it. I draw to understand my subject better. Once the image gains a life of its own, then I can look at it, think about it, and revise it. The revised drawing is now an expression of a new thought, rich in emotional expression and poetic aftermath.
There is a relationship in my work between a recognizable image and notions of visual perception. The cloud drawings completed in 2013 for the exhibit a cloud is a promise recorded clouds seen daily through a window in my studio. When I made the horizon line more or less prominent or removed altogether the cloudscape drawing embraced
contradiction: the conceptual and the representational, tight realism and total abstraction could coexist in any one image. The enigma of clouds provided me with a way to work through questions around perception and spatial ambiguity.
The rural roads drawings were made recently and relies on much the same selective framing used with the cloud work. Only now I am looking thru a computer screen at the live streamed images. Since 2010 on days storm stayed and house bound, I had downloaded screen shots generated by rural road cams. I am fascinated with the aesthetics of the digital images despite the strictly functional POV of the cameras..
The low resolution images simultaneously portray artificial vistas of genuine landscapes. Inserting the time stamp inside the drawing reinforces this duality. So there are questions here for me about illusionary space within both series.
Drawing from observation is a way of getting out of my head and memory. Drawing what you see in front of you makes you not think or invent too much which appears counter intuitive to the process; over-thinking can make you lose your way because everything, every mark, smudge, space becomes so imbued with activity it becomes meaningless. The very act of drawing contains both outer and inner parts of my world. And the choices I make in the drawing process are an important part of a conversation I have with myself.
Bio : Annie Lalande
Born in a rural francophone village in Ontario, Annie Lalande was drawn to art from a very early age, which led her to pursue Fine Art, graduating in 2001. Motherhood greatly influenced her artwork and more recently, the discovery of her biological Trinidadian father has brought clarity regarding her heritage. This event echoed onto her practice. She no longer draws on a surface, but listens and engages with the surface. In the simplest of actions/interactions and paying close attention to what is being created, her work has become a quest for beauty/poetry. Annie lives and works in Quebec.
Statement
My practice in drawing, explores the paper as a living entity. I am interested in the material’s physiognomy and how it recalls its history, its course, and its roots. In a meditative and introspective approach, I establish a rapport with the subject, to better receive, understand and appreciated it.
This body of work is related to the many questions relating to my personal identity (cultural & spiritual heritage). The identity in question is never exploited to give meaning to the works, neither the works are not destined to comment on the notion of identity. The drawings are meant to be experienced sensually rather than intellectually.
The markings are discreet, sensitive and inspired from imagery of places, objects or people, most often barely discernible. The questioning of identity at the base of my work may be following this formal rhythm, because it is probably itself inflected by thoughts and emotions that intersect and change constantly, but the works are all preliminary poetic experiences. I experience the paper as an entity that carries with it a sequence of slow, organic, microscopic and silent activity related to the growth of living forms and natural patterns. It is a contemplative approach closely linked to careful observation, of where living forms come from and paying attention to what is being created.
Bonnie Baker, is a Nova Scotia based artist. After studying printmaking at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD), Baker’s practice focused on textiles until 2007. She returned to her roots reviving a current practice in printmaking and drawing through study at the Women's Studio Workshop, Rosendale NY and under private tutelage.
Both her textile and works on paper has been included in several invitational group exhibitions in Canada and US as well as a slate of solo exhibits. Selected drawings from Lachesis' measure a solo exhibit in 2011 were published in the International Drawing Annual 7 (INDA).
Her textile pieces can be found in the public collections of the Art Bank of Nova Scotia, Royal Bank and Societe internationale des enterprises ECONOMUSE as well as international private collections.
Statement
When beginning a new series of drawings I am looking closely at the object or subject, methodically drawing the same image over and over.
The first couple of drawings are not very good likenesses so I keep making drawings until I can recognize it. I draw to understand my subject better. Once the image gains a life of its own, then I can look at it, think about it, and revise it. The revised drawing is now an expression of a new thought, rich in emotional expression and poetic aftermath.
There is a relationship in my work between a recognizable image and notions of visual perception. The cloud drawings completed in 2013 for the exhibit a cloud is a promise recorded clouds seen daily through a window in my studio. When I made the horizon line more or less prominent or removed altogether the cloudscape drawing embraced
contradiction: the conceptual and the representational, tight realism and total abstraction could coexist in any one image. The enigma of clouds provided me with a way to work through questions around perception and spatial ambiguity.
The rural roads drawings were made recently and relies on much the same selective framing used with the cloud work. Only now I am looking thru a computer screen at the live streamed images. Since 2010 on days storm stayed and house bound, I had downloaded screen shots generated by rural road cams. I am fascinated with the aesthetics of the digital images despite the strictly functional POV of the cameras..
The low resolution images simultaneously portray artificial vistas of genuine landscapes. Inserting the time stamp inside the drawing reinforces this duality. So there are questions here for me about illusionary space within both series.
Drawing from observation is a way of getting out of my head and memory. Drawing what you see in front of you makes you not think or invent too much which appears counter intuitive to the process; over-thinking can make you lose your way because everything, every mark, smudge, space becomes so imbued with activity it becomes meaningless. The very act of drawing contains both outer and inner parts of my world. And the choices I make in the drawing process are an important part of a conversation I have with myself.
Bio : Annie Lalande
Born in a rural francophone village in Ontario, Annie Lalande was drawn to art from a very early age, which led her to pursue Fine Art, graduating in 2001. Motherhood greatly influenced her artwork and more recently, the discovery of her biological Trinidadian father has brought clarity regarding her heritage. This event echoed onto her practice. She no longer draws on a surface, but listens and engages with the surface. In the simplest of actions/interactions and paying close attention to what is being created, her work has become a quest for beauty/poetry. Annie lives and works in Quebec.
Statement
My practice in drawing, explores the paper as a living entity. I am interested in the material’s physiognomy and how it recalls its history, its course, and its roots. In a meditative and introspective approach, I establish a rapport with the subject, to better receive, understand and appreciated it.
This body of work is related to the many questions relating to my personal identity (cultural & spiritual heritage). The identity in question is never exploited to give meaning to the works, neither the works are not destined to comment on the notion of identity. The drawings are meant to be experienced sensually rather than intellectually.
The markings are discreet, sensitive and inspired from imagery of places, objects or people, most often barely discernible. The questioning of identity at the base of my work may be following this formal rhythm, because it is probably itself inflected by thoughts and emotions that intersect and change constantly, but the works are all preliminary poetic experiences. I experience the paper as an entity that carries with it a sequence of slow, organic, microscopic and silent activity related to the growth of living forms and natural patterns. It is a contemplative approach closely linked to careful observation, of where living forms come from and paying attention to what is being created.
Door to Door Del Hillier curated by Eryn FosterDoor to Door Performance: May 06-13
Door to Door Installation: May 14-29 Opening Saturday May 14, 2 - 4 pm with artist talks at 2:30 pm Project Description: Door to Door Leading up to his exhibition at ARCAC, Del Hillier will be spending a week in Annapolis Royal actively weaving himself into the community. By performing the role of a door-to-door solicitor, he hopes to glean a wealth of stories about the town’s residents. An installation of his artistic response will be on view at the gallery from May 14-29. Bios Del Hillier’s work oscillates between an indoor and outdoor studio where self-learning, experimentation, serendipity, and happenstance are safely at play. Working across sculpture, performance, video, social engagement, acting, and craft, Hillier considers both the aesthetic experience of making work and the work itself of equal importance. These circumstances allow his own idiosyncratic interests to wander and build unique and novel responses to familiar objects and experiences. Del is based in Vancouver. Eryn Foster is an artist, curator and filmmaker based in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Formerly the director of Eyelevel Gallery, an artist run centre in Halifax, she has also worked as an instructor at NSCAD University for over a decade. Presently she is collaborating with her friend Sue Johnson on an experimental documentary, Portrait of a Bearded Lady. This is a feature film about the life and work of Nova Scotian, queer artist and activist, James MacSwain. Eryn Foster and Del Hillier met on an airplane in 2011 and have remained friends, as well as artistic supporters of one another ever since. |
2015
August 30 through October 4 Carol Mahtab 1935 - 2012, still and moving
curated by Janet Larkman
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Carol Mahtab, 1935-2012, still and moving will be shown in the Main and Chapel Galleries at ARTsPLACE, Annapolis Royal from August 30- October 4, 2015. Curated by local artist Janet Larkman, the show will feature a selection of oil paintings and works on paper by the artist and environmental activist from Digby Neck. There will be a reception on Sunday August 30 from 1-3pm, which will include an open invitation to share reflections on Carol’s life and work.
"Carol's contemplative abstract works reflect her interest in Japanese Zen Buddhism, poetry, nature, and the foggy seascapes of her home in Sandy Cove" says Larkman. "This is evidenced in the deep and somewhat mysterious simplicity that radiates from her paintings. Her works appear simple, as if little is 'happening'. Yet when one gets still enough to be really present with them, there is an almost ominous quality, the content being so big it can never be fully known. Her colours boarder on monochromatic, yet when the highly textured surfaces catch the light, a rich palate appears, not so much from the tubes of paint, but from the light of the changing day itself." "I believe that Carol was one of the great abstract painters of our time", says Larkman. "Because she was modest and never self-promoted, her work is not widely known. Fortunately, she left behind a vast inventory of paintings created over her 60-year career. Some of pieces will be shown for the first time at ARTsPLACE." |
July 19 through August 23 Instant Places // Souvenir, Kavanaugh / Birse
Artist residency July 18 - 28
Project installation July 29 - August 23, ARTsPLACE
Project synopsis: Using the recreations of history at Fort Anne and Port Royal as conceptual bookends we conduct experiments in the natural and man-made spaces surrounding Annapolis Royal. During these forays we create temporary zones of sonic reception, writing histories of vibration to be read by the framing eye of a camera. Artists talk – Instant Places “Souvenir” with Laura Kavanaugh and Ian Birse, Friday 24 July, 7 – 8:30pm ARTsPLACE, 396 St. George Street. Free. Join us to find out about the artists project in Annapolis Royal as they spent a week in residence, view their work www.instantplaces.ca |
June 14 through July 12 Station Michael McCormack
June 12 : One night only, site-specific installation at Fort Anne National Historic Site, 7- 10:30 pm (walk-through/drop-in anytime during the event). In partnership with Fort Anne National Historic Site.
June 14 : 12-2pm, Opening reception at ARTsPLACE
Shortwave (SW) radio has played an integral role in Canadian and transnational history as a groundbreaking communicative medium that carried forceful information across political boundaries and shaped global political movements through its influence. As an early form of social media, shortwave radio became a monumental pivot point for the psyche of contemporary communication theory and offers important cultural material to be considered within the Canadian social, political, and physical landscape. STATION considers the affects of acute listening in the isolated and conditioned environments on the individual, and the impact of this action on their surrounding environments. Activating sounds, structures, images and light through radio, STATION reflects on the situation of the radio operator, and the situation of contemporary culture as information gatherers and distributors. We continue to become increasingly active as communicators, information archivists. How has this shaped our social and political landscape today? At what point do we lose footing where information becomes unrecognizable, unidentifiable or impossible to translate? What happens to lost information, or those of us who hang onto it? When does a skill-set become folklore, and what are the risks and consequences?
In the early 1950's, my grandfather BW Cosman worked as a Telecommunications Engineer on the construction of the DEW Line Project, a project consisting of sixty-three Distant Early Warning stations stretching from Alaska to Iceland to provide warning of potential Soviet invasions to North American cities. Much like the Hudson's Bay Company, and the RCMP presence before it, the construction of the DEW Line brought with it infrastructure to a part of the world where many cultures still lived nomadically with a strong relationship with the land and it's resources. In 1963, the American military deemed much of the DEW Line technology redundant after the development of submarine launched cruise missiles, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and other new technologies that rapidly emerged alongside the progression of the Cold War. By the early 1990's most of the 42 sites on Canadian soil were either decommissioned or retrofitted for other use. [1]
STATION converges two main structural elements that together omit a polyrhythmic light throughout the gallery. The space is illuminated by both cold and warm lighting that is accompanied by broadcasts of sound and light through structural materials associated with the mobility and temporality of the DEW Line as it exists in our contemporary consciousness.
[1] The DEW Line stations were situated approximately 80 kilometers apart from each other, spanning 5000 killometers from Alaska to Iceland, with 42 of the 63 sites on Canadian soil.
In the early 1950's, my grandfather BW Cosman worked as a Telecommunications Engineer on the construction of the DEW Line Project, a project consisting of sixty-three Distant Early Warning stations stretching from Alaska to Iceland to provide warning of potential Soviet invasions to North American cities. Much like the Hudson's Bay Company, and the RCMP presence before it, the construction of the DEW Line brought with it infrastructure to a part of the world where many cultures still lived nomadically with a strong relationship with the land and it's resources. In 1963, the American military deemed much of the DEW Line technology redundant after the development of submarine launched cruise missiles, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and other new technologies that rapidly emerged alongside the progression of the Cold War. By the early 1990's most of the 42 sites on Canadian soil were either decommissioned or retrofitted for other use. [1]
STATION converges two main structural elements that together omit a polyrhythmic light throughout the gallery. The space is illuminated by both cold and warm lighting that is accompanied by broadcasts of sound and light through structural materials associated with the mobility and temporality of the DEW Line as it exists in our contemporary consciousness.
[1] The DEW Line stations were situated approximately 80 kilometers apart from each other, spanning 5000 killometers from Alaska to Iceland, with 42 of the 63 sites on Canadian soil.
Kick-off event to Station, Michael McCormack. In partnership with National Historic Site Fort Anne and ARTsPLACE, Michael will be creating a one-off drop-in light and sound installation at Fort Anne on Friday June 12, between the hours of 7 and 10:30pm.
May 10 through June 7 Log Jam Alison Judd
May 10 : 1-3pm, Opening reception at ARTsPLACE
My practice is rooted in printmaking, drawing, installation & language. The work makes evident my ruminations on transience, impermanence & loss as I think about time, the distance between individuals and the erosion of our relationship with landscape.
I am a graduate of the Ontario College of Art & Design in Toronto, (AOCA), Concordia University (BFA) in Montreal, and obtained my Masters of Fine Art (MFA) at York University in Toronto. I teach printmaking at the Ontario College of Art & Design University (OCADU) and at the University of Guelph. |
Artist Statement
Log Jam is a poetic process based work that makes evident my ruminations on transience, impermanence & loss as I think about time, the distance between individuals and the erosion of our relationship with the land. Quiet, still and immense, the prints invite the viewer to pause and consider their beauty – all the while standing downstream of the imagined weight, force and tension of the jam. The wall itself is a consciously built support with exposed framing on the back. It becomes an obstacle situated in the gallery space that the viewer needs to navigate around. In this work, I am interested in the tensions between life and death, consumption, and renewal, and change - Log Jam is evidence of a sudden change, a change that is man-made, that has consequences, and one of terrible strength and beauty. Each time I install the work - it is in an effort to mirror the nature of my investigation – that continues to unfold, and is a constant process of assembling, reorganizing, and perceiving the changes in the relationships between the parts. This work is for people like me, who must think slowly and use repetition as a tool to understand change. It is the slow accretion of construction and insight that subsequent layers impose on me – not I on them. Alison Judd alisonjuddwork.com |
April 5 through May 3
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AFTER FACEB00K PROJECT STATEMENT
The advent of social medias and smartphones has permitted a phenomenal expansion of the conversational image. [1] Each day, more than 350 million pictures [2] are uploaded on Facebook by its users, a large portion of which is publicly available for everyone to see. These pictures are then shared, liked and commented on, in the friendly and casual spirit that is put forward by the social media giant. This incredible amount of images in which the users voluntarily represent themselves in an array of social situations can be perceived as a medium in itself, allowing for a completely new approach to documentary photography.
After Faceb00k considers Facebook’s virtual space like an open territory where it is possible to drift, select, capture and then archive the public content of its users, much like traditional street photographers would wander in the public space, awaiting for the decisive moment. But unlike traditional street photography, the images found on Facebook share the characteristics of being made, selected and communicated by their creators. After Faceb00k gathers its material in the public realm of Facebook through the means of screen captures, a technique that makes it possible to archive images along with the social interactions it sparked in a single format. These screen captures are selected for aesthetic and conceptual reasons, or for their value as social phenomenon, before being stored in an impressively varied typological database.
But despite being the now omniscient, and seemingly immutable tool of our everyday life, Facebook is merely an exchange platform, entirely driven by the activities of its users and maintained for commercial reasons. Facebook is not an archive, but rather a temporary storage structure utterly relying on the will of its users to keep their memories stored on Facebook’s servers. Furthermore, knowing how the social medias and their sharing capabilities are nevertheless relatively new, the concepts of public and private life are still
expected to be radically redefined. This laborious challenge of documenting and archiving the paradigm shifts of contemporary photography, all the while keeping a watchful eye on the evermore commodification of our social interactions, are at the core of the After Faceb00k project.
[1] A term coined to describe how we now, share, discuss and comment on images.JeanSamuel Beuscart et al. « Pourquoi partager mes photos de vacances avec des inconnus ? », Réseaux 2/2009
(n° 154), p. 91129.
[2] U.S Securities and Exchange Commission, « Form 10k»,http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000132680113000003/fb12312012x10k.
htm (december 2012 )
The advent of social medias and smartphones has permitted a phenomenal expansion of the conversational image. [1] Each day, more than 350 million pictures [2] are uploaded on Facebook by its users, a large portion of which is publicly available for everyone to see. These pictures are then shared, liked and commented on, in the friendly and casual spirit that is put forward by the social media giant. This incredible amount of images in which the users voluntarily represent themselves in an array of social situations can be perceived as a medium in itself, allowing for a completely new approach to documentary photography.
After Faceb00k considers Facebook’s virtual space like an open territory where it is possible to drift, select, capture and then archive the public content of its users, much like traditional street photographers would wander in the public space, awaiting for the decisive moment. But unlike traditional street photography, the images found on Facebook share the characteristics of being made, selected and communicated by their creators. After Faceb00k gathers its material in the public realm of Facebook through the means of screen captures, a technique that makes it possible to archive images along with the social interactions it sparked in a single format. These screen captures are selected for aesthetic and conceptual reasons, or for their value as social phenomenon, before being stored in an impressively varied typological database.
But despite being the now omniscient, and seemingly immutable tool of our everyday life, Facebook is merely an exchange platform, entirely driven by the activities of its users and maintained for commercial reasons. Facebook is not an archive, but rather a temporary storage structure utterly relying on the will of its users to keep their memories stored on Facebook’s servers. Furthermore, knowing how the social medias and their sharing capabilities are nevertheless relatively new, the concepts of public and private life are still
expected to be radically redefined. This laborious challenge of documenting and archiving the paradigm shifts of contemporary photography, all the while keeping a watchful eye on the evermore commodification of our social interactions, are at the core of the After Faceb00k project.
[1] A term coined to describe how we now, share, discuss and comment on images.JeanSamuel Beuscart et al. « Pourquoi partager mes photos de vacances avec des inconnus ? », Réseaux 2/2009
(n° 154), p. 91129.
[2] U.S Securities and Exchange Commission, « Form 10k»,http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000132680113000003/fb12312012x10k.
htm (december 2012 )
Interview by Nadine Belliveau (English and French)
2014

14 September - 19 October
"Between Presence and Absence" Sarah Saunders
Artist Statement
My work explores personal and domestic artifacts. I am intrigued by remnants of lives and indications of time passage. Much of my work involved intimacy of subject and scale, and invites reflection on themes of vulnerability, endurance, and memory.
As a whole, my artistic investigation aims to highlight issues of presence, absence, and the ephemerality of out personal history and memories.
Sarah Saunders lives in PEI. She received BA in Design from NSCAD. Prior to this Sarah studied dance, gained a B.Sc. in biology from Acadia and studied sculpture and drawing at the American Centre in Paris.
"Between Presence and Absence" Sarah Saunders
Artist Statement
My work explores personal and domestic artifacts. I am intrigued by remnants of lives and indications of time passage. Much of my work involved intimacy of subject and scale, and invites reflection on themes of vulnerability, endurance, and memory.
As a whole, my artistic investigation aims to highlight issues of presence, absence, and the ephemerality of out personal history and memories.
Sarah Saunders lives in PEI. She received BA in Design from NSCAD. Prior to this Sarah studied dance, gained a B.Sc. in biology from Acadia and studied sculpture and drawing at the American Centre in Paris.

srs-arac_brochinside.pdf |

srs-arac_brochoutside.pdf |

03 August - 07 September
“First Flowers” Sarah Maloney
August 3 through September 7
Sarah Maloney participated in a short residency at ARTsPLACE, May 2013, during the Magnolia season. She created studies towards a body of work which will be exhibited at ARTsPLACE in 2014.
During her short residency Sarah Maloney worked on creating waxes modeled from magnolia flowers that will be used to cast components for a suite of new bronze sculptures.
My work has always focused on issues of feminine identity. For many years I used the body as my subject, fashioning parts in a variety of materials, focusing on the inherent language of materials to add layers of meaning as I welded, knit and beaded aspects of the human anatomy. Beginning in 2004 my subject underwent a transformation from the body to plants in a suite of work that examined similar forms found in anatomy and botany. These hybrid forms incorporated decorative textiles, furniture and embroidery. This work embraced signifiers of the feminine, including from the domestic sphere, forms from nature, and the female body itself, referencing traditions based in the decorative arts. This suite led me to in depth research of flowers and plants, their taxonomy, social history and contemporary uses. While flowers may seem a cliché as signifiers of femininity, yet gender is undeniably embedded in the name of every plant as the Greek and Latin names of all plants are all feminine. The entire history of human evolution is entwined with that of flowering plants as both mammals and angiosperms began evolving at the same time and have evolved in tandem over millennia.
So much of what most people think of as nature (gardens, parks, fields and forests) has been created by humans, or is the by-product of human activity. There is a tendency in our culture to romanticize the natural world, as an Eden to which we long to return. Specifically the notion that women have an inherent relation to the natural world is deeply imbedded in the history and the psyche of our culture. I continue to question this notion in my work, including through choices of form and materials. “Eve” remains, problematically, hostess in any Eden.
My current research is engaged with flowering plants, which I am modelling in wax and casting in bronze and using to create larger bodies of work. I am interested in the forms of the plants and flowers, their evolutionary histories, how they were used and how they continue to be used. I am also interested in plant habitat and the relationship between what is natural and what is altered or constructed. I use bronze for this work because of its long history as a sculptural material and its use in monuments for many centuries. The contrast of the metallic permanence of bronze with the temporality and fragility of the flora that is my current subject matter is of particular interest to me in this stage of my research. I am venturing into landscape sculpture, where the works themselves render landscape (a human construct) from elements drawn from the natural world. I am working to create sculptural landscape with an awareness of the history of Canadian landscape art refocused through a lens of feminism and what is associated with so-called women’s work.
Sculpture and painting, though they share much, are often seen as contrasting forms. In my work I am interested in combining the landscape genre drawn from painting with the tradition of statuary, particularly that of modelling in wax and rendering in bronze that comes to us from the Romans and which realized its height with the work of Rodin. By approaching both and by applying feminist precepts to traditional genres, I hope to tease new meanings out of old, or at least familiar, forms.
The title for First Flowers refers to both the history of a specific plant, (magnolias originated over 65 million years ago and are one the few species of primitive flowers to grow continuously since,) and to the fact that they bloom so early in the spring, branches full of flowers before the trees leaf out. These wall mounted bronze and steel sculptures are like wallpaper come to life, growing out of the wall, recreating the barrier that actual tree branches create within the architecture of the gallery.
Sarah Maloney, 2014
Sarah Maloney is a Halifax artist who completed an MFA at the University of Windsor and a BFA at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.
“First Flowers” Sarah Maloney
August 3 through September 7
Sarah Maloney participated in a short residency at ARTsPLACE, May 2013, during the Magnolia season. She created studies towards a body of work which will be exhibited at ARTsPLACE in 2014.
During her short residency Sarah Maloney worked on creating waxes modeled from magnolia flowers that will be used to cast components for a suite of new bronze sculptures.
My work has always focused on issues of feminine identity. For many years I used the body as my subject, fashioning parts in a variety of materials, focusing on the inherent language of materials to add layers of meaning as I welded, knit and beaded aspects of the human anatomy. Beginning in 2004 my subject underwent a transformation from the body to plants in a suite of work that examined similar forms found in anatomy and botany. These hybrid forms incorporated decorative textiles, furniture and embroidery. This work embraced signifiers of the feminine, including from the domestic sphere, forms from nature, and the female body itself, referencing traditions based in the decorative arts. This suite led me to in depth research of flowers and plants, their taxonomy, social history and contemporary uses. While flowers may seem a cliché as signifiers of femininity, yet gender is undeniably embedded in the name of every plant as the Greek and Latin names of all plants are all feminine. The entire history of human evolution is entwined with that of flowering plants as both mammals and angiosperms began evolving at the same time and have evolved in tandem over millennia.
So much of what most people think of as nature (gardens, parks, fields and forests) has been created by humans, or is the by-product of human activity. There is a tendency in our culture to romanticize the natural world, as an Eden to which we long to return. Specifically the notion that women have an inherent relation to the natural world is deeply imbedded in the history and the psyche of our culture. I continue to question this notion in my work, including through choices of form and materials. “Eve” remains, problematically, hostess in any Eden.
My current research is engaged with flowering plants, which I am modelling in wax and casting in bronze and using to create larger bodies of work. I am interested in the forms of the plants and flowers, their evolutionary histories, how they were used and how they continue to be used. I am also interested in plant habitat and the relationship between what is natural and what is altered or constructed. I use bronze for this work because of its long history as a sculptural material and its use in monuments for many centuries. The contrast of the metallic permanence of bronze with the temporality and fragility of the flora that is my current subject matter is of particular interest to me in this stage of my research. I am venturing into landscape sculpture, where the works themselves render landscape (a human construct) from elements drawn from the natural world. I am working to create sculptural landscape with an awareness of the history of Canadian landscape art refocused through a lens of feminism and what is associated with so-called women’s work.
Sculpture and painting, though they share much, are often seen as contrasting forms. In my work I am interested in combining the landscape genre drawn from painting with the tradition of statuary, particularly that of modelling in wax and rendering in bronze that comes to us from the Romans and which realized its height with the work of Rodin. By approaching both and by applying feminist precepts to traditional genres, I hope to tease new meanings out of old, or at least familiar, forms.
The title for First Flowers refers to both the history of a specific plant, (magnolias originated over 65 million years ago and are one the few species of primitive flowers to grow continuously since,) and to the fact that they bloom so early in the spring, branches full of flowers before the trees leaf out. These wall mounted bronze and steel sculptures are like wallpaper come to life, growing out of the wall, recreating the barrier that actual tree branches create within the architecture of the gallery.
Sarah Maloney, 2014
Sarah Maloney is a Halifax artist who completed an MFA at the University of Windsor and a BFA at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.

firstflowers_v2_2.pdf |

inhabiting_the_inner_sanctum_gs_review_2014.pdf |

22 June - 27 July
"The Golden Shrine" Cynthia Dinan-Mitchell
Golden Shrine” is a macabre installation that suggests a mausoleum in the gallery space, created with printmaking, textile, and sculpture. It is a place for spiritual contemplation paired with a reference to violent cult practices and sacrifices. Golden Shrine questions notions such as hierarchy, the history of ornamentation, taste and beauty.“My work plays with a perverted notion of interior decoration. I create excessive and saturated environments that resemble theatrical settings or home decors. Everything is handmade; from the wallpaper, to the tables, to ceramics, to sculpture, to the framed artwork”. Cynthia Dinan-Mitchell.
Cynthia Dinan-Mitchell has explored installations and seriography for the past 10 years. She has a Bachelors degree from the Studio-Art program from Concordia (Montreal) and a Masters degree in Visual Arts from Laval University (Quebec). Her works have been shown at numerous galleries and art centres throughout Quebec, Canada, Belguim, and the US. She lives and works in Quebec.
Photo: Cynthia Dinan-Mitchell, Wallpaper: silkscreen on rag paper offerings: brass vase, bones, silk screened cushions, feathers and ceramic roses
"The Golden Shrine" Cynthia Dinan-Mitchell
Golden Shrine” is a macabre installation that suggests a mausoleum in the gallery space, created with printmaking, textile, and sculpture. It is a place for spiritual contemplation paired with a reference to violent cult practices and sacrifices. Golden Shrine questions notions such as hierarchy, the history of ornamentation, taste and beauty.“My work plays with a perverted notion of interior decoration. I create excessive and saturated environments that resemble theatrical settings or home decors. Everything is handmade; from the wallpaper, to the tables, to ceramics, to sculpture, to the framed artwork”. Cynthia Dinan-Mitchell.
Cynthia Dinan-Mitchell has explored installations and seriography for the past 10 years. She has a Bachelors degree from the Studio-Art program from Concordia (Montreal) and a Masters degree in Visual Arts from Laval University (Quebec). Her works have been shown at numerous galleries and art centres throughout Quebec, Canada, Belguim, and the US. She lives and works in Quebec.
Photo: Cynthia Dinan-Mitchell, Wallpaper: silkscreen on rag paper offerings: brass vase, bones, silk screened cushions, feathers and ceramic roses
11 May - 15 June
"Machinations" Paul Bernhardt Artist Statement The drawings and paintings I create are based on the landscape and structures of contemporary environment. The works originate from sketches (and memories) of the places and things I encounter in my immediate surroundings: parking lots, tollbooths, fences, billboards, and other apparently banal subject matter. Ultimately my work explores the tensions between various oppositions: the natural and the synthetic, abstraction and representation, entropy and control. These tensions serve to both engage and alienate the viewer, an allegory for our own contradictory relationship to the landscape. |
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30 March - 4 May
"Fleshold" D'Arcy Wilson
Artist Statement
My creative research explores a divide between western people and wildlife resulting from simulacrum; through representation the wild animal has become a constructed being. I am subsequently interested in the absence of wildlife in its original form for this culture, and the psychological consequences for the human victim. My work considers the human as an isolated species of animal in search of a connection to, or role within, nature. The artwork explores gender differences in relationships to wildlife; it converses with the complex activity of nurturing and its destructive potential to inflict harm on other species. I employ performance, installation, drawing, and a range of other media to explore themes of absence, loss, isolation, and vulnerability in western society's post-colonial relationship to wildlife.
“Fleshold” D’Arcy Wilson
Review written by Ruth Bull, Visual Artist and ARTsPLACE Artist-run Centre Committee Member
D’Arcy Wilson is a Halifax -based interdisciplinary artist. D’Arcy’s work explores the challenges we face when encountering nature and our separation from nature in the context of sustainability and conservation. Her work poses several questions related to our narcissistic tendencies to only see nature as an extension of ourselves: Do we see it as a resource that we can use? Do we see it as something we want to nurture, and how does this human nurturing translate to animals?
Most recently in 2012 D’Arcy participated in an artist in residence program in collaboration with the Ecology Action Center and the Khyber Center for the Arts for Re: Focus Sustainable Art. This residency emphasized human isolation in the wild and was comprised of onsite performances in remote locations in some of Nova Scotia’s largest wilderness areas. Series of photographs and videos documented the performances. D’Arcy has also participated in residencies at the Banff Center and the Confederation Center in Charlottetown, PEI.
The current exhibition at ARTsPLACE is called Fleshold. It was also exhibited at ODD Gallery, Dawson City, Yukon, La Centrale, Montreal, Quebec and Galerie sans Nom, Moncton, New Brunswick. This intriguing exhibition demonstrates our anthropomorphic tendencies to familiarize another species, our need to domesticate animals to bring them into our human environment. D’Arcy ‘s proposal was to visit animal rescue shelters and provide hand sewn quilts for various animals: foxes, skunks - any mammals that would most benefit from a comforting object. The exhibit documents this exchange with a video, photographs and the actual hand sewn quilts.
The video provides the narrative for the project. It projects 2 images side by side on a large screen. It is visually quite compelling because of the contrast of the 2 images: one image is a close up of D’Arcy hand sewing the quilts and it brings us into the meditative calmness of quilting; the other image shows the creatures reacting to this foreign object covered with human scent. We watch a fox kit, raccoon cubs, fawns, an adult coyote, a fisher, squirrels, a bird, and skunk kits. For example: the fox kit plays with the quilt like a kitten, the fisher uses it as a place to crawl into, the infant raccoons cry and gingerly try to step around it, the squirrels are too busy with each other to notice it, the fawn bends down to nibble it. The quilts on display all show the wear and tear of their journey with the animals - torn and smelling.
A crossover occurs between the 2 video images - we want the animals to be nurtured, to feel the nurturing gesture created by the quilter. Another surprising crossover aspect is that by her action of sewing and quilting D’Arcy is repeating animals’ nest building and architectural tendencies. Animals can be great builders, so that we too are maybe not that far removed from the animal world.
D’Arcy’s quilts in Fleshold are a gesture of nurturing, protecting and symbolize holding. This human intervention is still just an intervention. It doesn’t bridge the differences. It doesn’t make “the other” more familiar. It only makes it a possession.
"Fleshold" D'Arcy Wilson
Artist Statement
My creative research explores a divide between western people and wildlife resulting from simulacrum; through representation the wild animal has become a constructed being. I am subsequently interested in the absence of wildlife in its original form for this culture, and the psychological consequences for the human victim. My work considers the human as an isolated species of animal in search of a connection to, or role within, nature. The artwork explores gender differences in relationships to wildlife; it converses with the complex activity of nurturing and its destructive potential to inflict harm on other species. I employ performance, installation, drawing, and a range of other media to explore themes of absence, loss, isolation, and vulnerability in western society's post-colonial relationship to wildlife.
“Fleshold” D’Arcy Wilson
Review written by Ruth Bull, Visual Artist and ARTsPLACE Artist-run Centre Committee Member
D’Arcy Wilson is a Halifax -based interdisciplinary artist. D’Arcy’s work explores the challenges we face when encountering nature and our separation from nature in the context of sustainability and conservation. Her work poses several questions related to our narcissistic tendencies to only see nature as an extension of ourselves: Do we see it as a resource that we can use? Do we see it as something we want to nurture, and how does this human nurturing translate to animals?
Most recently in 2012 D’Arcy participated in an artist in residence program in collaboration with the Ecology Action Center and the Khyber Center for the Arts for Re: Focus Sustainable Art. This residency emphasized human isolation in the wild and was comprised of onsite performances in remote locations in some of Nova Scotia’s largest wilderness areas. Series of photographs and videos documented the performances. D’Arcy has also participated in residencies at the Banff Center and the Confederation Center in Charlottetown, PEI.
The current exhibition at ARTsPLACE is called Fleshold. It was also exhibited at ODD Gallery, Dawson City, Yukon, La Centrale, Montreal, Quebec and Galerie sans Nom, Moncton, New Brunswick. This intriguing exhibition demonstrates our anthropomorphic tendencies to familiarize another species, our need to domesticate animals to bring them into our human environment. D’Arcy ‘s proposal was to visit animal rescue shelters and provide hand sewn quilts for various animals: foxes, skunks - any mammals that would most benefit from a comforting object. The exhibit documents this exchange with a video, photographs and the actual hand sewn quilts.
The video provides the narrative for the project. It projects 2 images side by side on a large screen. It is visually quite compelling because of the contrast of the 2 images: one image is a close up of D’Arcy hand sewing the quilts and it brings us into the meditative calmness of quilting; the other image shows the creatures reacting to this foreign object covered with human scent. We watch a fox kit, raccoon cubs, fawns, an adult coyote, a fisher, squirrels, a bird, and skunk kits. For example: the fox kit plays with the quilt like a kitten, the fisher uses it as a place to crawl into, the infant raccoons cry and gingerly try to step around it, the squirrels are too busy with each other to notice it, the fawn bends down to nibble it. The quilts on display all show the wear and tear of their journey with the animals - torn and smelling.
A crossover occurs between the 2 video images - we want the animals to be nurtured, to feel the nurturing gesture created by the quilter. Another surprising crossover aspect is that by her action of sewing and quilting D’Arcy is repeating animals’ nest building and architectural tendencies. Animals can be great builders, so that we too are maybe not that far removed from the animal world.
D’Arcy’s quilts in Fleshold are a gesture of nurturing, protecting and symbolize holding. This human intervention is still just an intervention. It doesn’t bridge the differences. It doesn’t make “the other” more familiar. It only makes it a possession.
2013 ARC
Artist Symposium Month September 15 - October 13, 2013
Schedule
September 15 Artist Trading Cards Workshop and Launch event 12-2pm
Light refreshment & pot luck finger food. Pre-registration necessary by September 8th. Free to attend, some materials available (cards provided) bring own media.This will become a quarterly Trading Card event for artists. Artists will produce some for trade and some for display / sale.
Artist trading cards (or ATCs) are miniature works of art about the same size as modern trading cards or 2 1⁄2 by 3 1⁄2 inches (64 mm × 89 mm), small enough to fit inside standard card-collector pockets, sleeves or sheets. Cards are produced in various media, including dry media (pencils, pens, markers, etc.), wet media (watercolor, acrylic paints, etc.), paper media (in the form of collage, papercuts, found objects, etc.) or even metals or fiber. The cards are usually traded or exchanged. When sold, they are usually referred to as art card editions and originals (ACEOs). How?
September 27 7.30pm Motion Activated : Live Performance Art (opening), free will offering
Motion Activated, is the result of a three-year collaboration between dancer Veronique MacKenzie, sound technician and composer Lukas Pearse, and visual artist Susan Tooke, that attempts to fuse the three disciplines with technology to create an interactive experience for the audience.
Motion Activated is “Innovative and fun” (Chronicle Herald)“Your mere presence changes the nature of the exhibit” (Halifax Weekend Herald)
“A one-of-a-kind interactive experience that pushes technological boundaries (The Coast)
Motion Activated is an interactive electro-acoustic installation and performance project, which speaks to relationships between the body, space and time. Created by established Nova Scotia artists, dancer Véronique Mackenzie, visual artist/animator Susan Tooke and audio-visual artist Lukas Pearse, this sensory excursion explores the intricacies of trained movement, the creation and execution of line, and the phenomenon of muscle memory.
The installation fuses two-dimensional images with three-dimensional movement so that a thread is established between live and captured motion. Interactive elements respond to the movement of the viewer’s own body, resulting in a delightful response by mere physical attendance and inadvertent engagement.
Sound plays an integral part of Motion Activated where Pearse uses MacKenzie’s movements and gestures to create a stochastic soundtrack for the piece. In two special live performances, Pearse’s design in audio- and time-based media interact with MacKenzie’s dance composition to create an interactive acoustic dialogue called “Data Duet”.
Motion Activated: an interactive installation; created by Pearse, MacKenzie and Tooke, curated by Robin Metcalfe, was presented at St Mary’s University Art Gallery, Halifax NS, July 2013, in a different form.Opening and live performance, doors open 7pm, performance 7:30pm Friday 27 September
Live performance and closing October 13, doors open 7pm, performance 7:30pm (free will offering for the live events on the 28th September and 13th)
Motion Activated Interactive installation exhibit open from 28th September - 13 October, free entry to gallery
September 30, 7pm Open Forum for Artists and Craftspeople on their Materials and Media with Professional Art Conservator, Michelle Gallinger, free admission
Part of ARTsPLACE ARC's Professional Development series for Artists. Conservator Michelle Gallinger will be at ARTsPLACE for a free open Q & A about materials and media for artists and craftspeople. Have questions about certain chemicals/reactions/interactions? Bring current projects with you! Michelle is a professional Art Conservator and can cover everything from painting to carving, metalwork and ceramic.
BIO: Michelle Gallinger: Accredited in 2008, conservator, specialization in paintings and painted objects. Internships at the National Gallery of Canada and the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Since 1998, in private practice working on a variety of materials, offering services in the conservation of paintings, murals, frames and soapstone sculpture. Experienced in course instruction (workshops), active in treatments and consultation for both private and institutional clients and executing onsite conservation projects.
October 4th, 7pm Artist Talk, International Artist Residencies: with Katie Belcher, free event
Katie Belcher’s drawings have been exhibited nationally and internationally. She is the recipient of numerous grants, and has participated in artist residencies in Canada and Europe. In 2012 she received a Canada Council for the Arts residency at the Cité Internationale des arts (Paris, France). In addition to her studio practice, Belcher works as a curator and arts administrator. She was recently hired as the Director of Eyelevel Gallery. She curated four exhibitions during her time as Program Coordinator at MSVU Art Gallery (2008-2013). Katie Belcher writes for Visual Arts News and various independent contracts.
October 5th, VANS Workshop with Katie Belcher, Applying for Artist Residencies. 1-4pm. Hosted by ARTsPLACE. $40 for VANS members, $55 non members (please register through Visual Arts NS here) Maximum 12 participants. Registration Deadline: September 30.
Feeling like you need a creative reboot? This workshop focuses on applying and preparing yourself for artist residencies. Learn about the benefits of local, out of province and international residencies, as well as the differences between structured programs and independent research models. Gain some insight into finding and making residency opportunities. Learn to differentiate between different models. Find ways to fund residencies that charge a fee, and learn to find those that pay. We’ll discuss the pros and cons of several models and workshop ideas for non-traditional approaches. There will also be a brief discussion about a few logistical considerations when attending an artist residency abroad.
October 6th Elephant Grass Print Collective "Monotype Medley" at the Parker's Cove Studio, Annapolis NS. 1pm to 4pm. $20 for EGPC and ARCAC members and $25 for non-members. Maximum of 8 participants.
Monotypes is the most direct form of printmaking appealing to painters, drawers, book artists and people with interests in other medium. Starting off with the trace monoprint technique, EGPC members will show you how to print first a positive, then negative print of your image from a single plate. We will then expand our printmaking vocabulary by adding and removing ink on the same plate to print a small varied edition of prints. Although this workshop is geared as an introduction to working on an etching press for the novice, experienced printmakers can use the time to try out Akua waterbased intaglio inks.
Bring small drawings (no larger than 5”x 7”) on light weight paper that can be traced over and wear clothing to be messy in. Inks, plate, tools and 3 pieces of paper will be supplied. You may also purchase additional paper for $3 per 22” x 30” sheet, Register by October 1st
October 10th, 7pm Artists Legal Issues Talk, Q & A with Wayne Boucher and Susan Tooke of CARFAC Maritimes, plus a screening of "Sum of its Parts: Nancy Edell" Free event
Wayne Boucher and Susan Tooke of CARFAC Maritimes will be at ARTsPLACE to talk about legal issues facing artists, and talk about the work CARFAC plus a screening of "Sum of its Parts: Nancy Edell". This film by Winnipegger Kirby Hammond Sum of its parts, is an intimate portrait of the artist and a stunning visual representation of her works. It also contains interviews with Nancy’s heirs, and discusses the difficult problem of artist estates and inheritance tax laws.
October 12th Care of Paintings workshop with Art Conservator Michelle Gallinger, $25, materials provided, 10am - 6pm
Full Day Workshop, practical, hands-on application on the preservation and conservation of paintings and art objects. $25 per person, bring own lunch - materials provided. Max 20 places.
RESCHEDULED
BIO: Michelle Gallinger: Accredited in 2008, conservator, specialization in paintings and painted objects. Internships at the National Gallery of Canada and the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Since 1998, in private practice working on a variety of materials, offering services in the conservation of paintings, murals, frames and soapstone sculpture. Experienced in course instruction (workshops), active in treatments and consultation for both private and institutional clients and executing onsite conservation projects.
October 13th, 7.30pm Motion Activated Live Performance Art (closing), free will offering
Motion Activated, is the result of a three-year collaboration between dancer Veronique MacKenzie, sound technician and composer Lukas Pearse, and visual artist Susan Tooke, that attempts to fuse the three disciplines with technology to create an interactive experience for the audience.
Motion Activated is “Innovative and fun” (Chronicle Herald)“Your mere presence changes the nature of the exhibit” (Halifax Weekend Herald)
“A one-of-a-kind interactive experience that pushes technological boundaries (The Coast)
Motion Activated is an interactive electro-acoustic installation and performance project, which speaks to relationships between the body, space and time. Created by established Nova Scotia artists, dancer Véronique Mackenzie, visual artist/animator Susan Tooke and audio-visual artist Lukas Pearse, this sensory excursion explores the intricacies of trained movement, the creation and execution of line, and the phenomenon of muscle memory.
The installation fuses two-dimensional images with three-dimensional movement so that a thread is established between live and captured motion. Interactive elements respond to the movement of the viewer’s own body, resulting in a delightful response by mere physical attendance and inadvertent engagement.
Sound plays an integral part of Motion Activated where Pearse uses MacKenzie’s movements and gestures to create a stochastic soundtrack for the piece. In two special live performances, Pearse’s design in audio- and time-based media interact with MacKenzie’s dance composition to create an interactive acoustic dialogue called “Data Duet”.
Motion Activated: an interactive installation; created by Pearse, MacKenzie and Tooke, curated by Robin Metcalfe, was presented at St Mary’s University Art Gallery, Halifax NS, July 2013, in a different form.
Live performance and closing October 13, doors open 7pm, performance 7:30pm (free will offering for the live events on the 28th September and 13th)
Light refreshment & pot luck finger food. Pre-registration necessary by September 8th. Free to attend, some materials available (cards provided) bring own media.This will become a quarterly Trading Card event for artists. Artists will produce some for trade and some for display / sale.
Artist trading cards (or ATCs) are miniature works of art about the same size as modern trading cards or 2 1⁄2 by 3 1⁄2 inches (64 mm × 89 mm), small enough to fit inside standard card-collector pockets, sleeves or sheets. Cards are produced in various media, including dry media (pencils, pens, markers, etc.), wet media (watercolor, acrylic paints, etc.), paper media (in the form of collage, papercuts, found objects, etc.) or even metals or fiber. The cards are usually traded or exchanged. When sold, they are usually referred to as art card editions and originals (ACEOs). How?
September 27 7.30pm Motion Activated : Live Performance Art (opening), free will offering
Motion Activated, is the result of a three-year collaboration between dancer Veronique MacKenzie, sound technician and composer Lukas Pearse, and visual artist Susan Tooke, that attempts to fuse the three disciplines with technology to create an interactive experience for the audience.
Motion Activated is “Innovative and fun” (Chronicle Herald)“Your mere presence changes the nature of the exhibit” (Halifax Weekend Herald)
“A one-of-a-kind interactive experience that pushes technological boundaries (The Coast)
Motion Activated is an interactive electro-acoustic installation and performance project, which speaks to relationships between the body, space and time. Created by established Nova Scotia artists, dancer Véronique Mackenzie, visual artist/animator Susan Tooke and audio-visual artist Lukas Pearse, this sensory excursion explores the intricacies of trained movement, the creation and execution of line, and the phenomenon of muscle memory.
The installation fuses two-dimensional images with three-dimensional movement so that a thread is established between live and captured motion. Interactive elements respond to the movement of the viewer’s own body, resulting in a delightful response by mere physical attendance and inadvertent engagement.
Sound plays an integral part of Motion Activated where Pearse uses MacKenzie’s movements and gestures to create a stochastic soundtrack for the piece. In two special live performances, Pearse’s design in audio- and time-based media interact with MacKenzie’s dance composition to create an interactive acoustic dialogue called “Data Duet”.
Motion Activated: an interactive installation; created by Pearse, MacKenzie and Tooke, curated by Robin Metcalfe, was presented at St Mary’s University Art Gallery, Halifax NS, July 2013, in a different form.Opening and live performance, doors open 7pm, performance 7:30pm Friday 27 September
Live performance and closing October 13, doors open 7pm, performance 7:30pm (free will offering for the live events on the 28th September and 13th)
Motion Activated Interactive installation exhibit open from 28th September - 13 October, free entry to gallery
September 30, 7pm Open Forum for Artists and Craftspeople on their Materials and Media with Professional Art Conservator, Michelle Gallinger, free admission
Part of ARTsPLACE ARC's Professional Development series for Artists. Conservator Michelle Gallinger will be at ARTsPLACE for a free open Q & A about materials and media for artists and craftspeople. Have questions about certain chemicals/reactions/interactions? Bring current projects with you! Michelle is a professional Art Conservator and can cover everything from painting to carving, metalwork and ceramic.
BIO: Michelle Gallinger: Accredited in 2008, conservator, specialization in paintings and painted objects. Internships at the National Gallery of Canada and the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Since 1998, in private practice working on a variety of materials, offering services in the conservation of paintings, murals, frames and soapstone sculpture. Experienced in course instruction (workshops), active in treatments and consultation for both private and institutional clients and executing onsite conservation projects.
October 4th, 7pm Artist Talk, International Artist Residencies: with Katie Belcher, free event
Katie Belcher’s drawings have been exhibited nationally and internationally. She is the recipient of numerous grants, and has participated in artist residencies in Canada and Europe. In 2012 she received a Canada Council for the Arts residency at the Cité Internationale des arts (Paris, France). In addition to her studio practice, Belcher works as a curator and arts administrator. She was recently hired as the Director of Eyelevel Gallery. She curated four exhibitions during her time as Program Coordinator at MSVU Art Gallery (2008-2013). Katie Belcher writes for Visual Arts News and various independent contracts.
October 5th, VANS Workshop with Katie Belcher, Applying for Artist Residencies. 1-4pm. Hosted by ARTsPLACE. $40 for VANS members, $55 non members (please register through Visual Arts NS here) Maximum 12 participants. Registration Deadline: September 30.
Feeling like you need a creative reboot? This workshop focuses on applying and preparing yourself for artist residencies. Learn about the benefits of local, out of province and international residencies, as well as the differences between structured programs and independent research models. Gain some insight into finding and making residency opportunities. Learn to differentiate between different models. Find ways to fund residencies that charge a fee, and learn to find those that pay. We’ll discuss the pros and cons of several models and workshop ideas for non-traditional approaches. There will also be a brief discussion about a few logistical considerations when attending an artist residency abroad.
October 6th Elephant Grass Print Collective "Monotype Medley" at the Parker's Cove Studio, Annapolis NS. 1pm to 4pm. $20 for EGPC and ARCAC members and $25 for non-members. Maximum of 8 participants.
Monotypes is the most direct form of printmaking appealing to painters, drawers, book artists and people with interests in other medium. Starting off with the trace monoprint technique, EGPC members will show you how to print first a positive, then negative print of your image from a single plate. We will then expand our printmaking vocabulary by adding and removing ink on the same plate to print a small varied edition of prints. Although this workshop is geared as an introduction to working on an etching press for the novice, experienced printmakers can use the time to try out Akua waterbased intaglio inks.
Bring small drawings (no larger than 5”x 7”) on light weight paper that can be traced over and wear clothing to be messy in. Inks, plate, tools and 3 pieces of paper will be supplied. You may also purchase additional paper for $3 per 22” x 30” sheet, Register by October 1st
October 10th, 7pm Artists Legal Issues Talk, Q & A with Wayne Boucher and Susan Tooke of CARFAC Maritimes, plus a screening of "Sum of its Parts: Nancy Edell" Free event
Wayne Boucher and Susan Tooke of CARFAC Maritimes will be at ARTsPLACE to talk about legal issues facing artists, and talk about the work CARFAC plus a screening of "Sum of its Parts: Nancy Edell". This film by Winnipegger Kirby Hammond Sum of its parts, is an intimate portrait of the artist and a stunning visual representation of her works. It also contains interviews with Nancy’s heirs, and discusses the difficult problem of artist estates and inheritance tax laws.
October 12th Care of Paintings workshop with Art Conservator Michelle Gallinger, $25, materials provided, 10am - 6pm
Full Day Workshop, practical, hands-on application on the preservation and conservation of paintings and art objects. $25 per person, bring own lunch - materials provided. Max 20 places.
RESCHEDULED
BIO: Michelle Gallinger: Accredited in 2008, conservator, specialization in paintings and painted objects. Internships at the National Gallery of Canada and the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Since 1998, in private practice working on a variety of materials, offering services in the conservation of paintings, murals, frames and soapstone sculpture. Experienced in course instruction (workshops), active in treatments and consultation for both private and institutional clients and executing onsite conservation projects.
October 13th, 7.30pm Motion Activated Live Performance Art (closing), free will offering
Motion Activated, is the result of a three-year collaboration between dancer Veronique MacKenzie, sound technician and composer Lukas Pearse, and visual artist Susan Tooke, that attempts to fuse the three disciplines with technology to create an interactive experience for the audience.
Motion Activated is “Innovative and fun” (Chronicle Herald)“Your mere presence changes the nature of the exhibit” (Halifax Weekend Herald)
“A one-of-a-kind interactive experience that pushes technological boundaries (The Coast)
Motion Activated is an interactive electro-acoustic installation and performance project, which speaks to relationships between the body, space and time. Created by established Nova Scotia artists, dancer Véronique Mackenzie, visual artist/animator Susan Tooke and audio-visual artist Lukas Pearse, this sensory excursion explores the intricacies of trained movement, the creation and execution of line, and the phenomenon of muscle memory.
The installation fuses two-dimensional images with three-dimensional movement so that a thread is established between live and captured motion. Interactive elements respond to the movement of the viewer’s own body, resulting in a delightful response by mere physical attendance and inadvertent engagement.
Sound plays an integral part of Motion Activated where Pearse uses MacKenzie’s movements and gestures to create a stochastic soundtrack for the piece. In two special live performances, Pearse’s design in audio- and time-based media interact with MacKenzie’s dance composition to create an interactive acoustic dialogue called “Data Duet”.
Motion Activated: an interactive installation; created by Pearse, MacKenzie and Tooke, curated by Robin Metcalfe, was presented at St Mary’s University Art Gallery, Halifax NS, July 2013, in a different form.
Live performance and closing October 13, doors open 7pm, performance 7:30pm (free will offering for the live events on the 28th September and 13th)
"Black & Blue"
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"Smackerels" Steve de Bruyn
21st June - 28th July

Installation View
"Rolls Through"
Forest City Gallery London, ON
2013
Artist Steve de Bruyn will be installing his sculptural work "Smackerels" at ARTsPLACE during the few days before the opening reception on the 22nd June.
Steve's early work referenced his interest in skate culture, with installations forming functional skate ramps. His work has moved towards less functional installations, incorporating elements that hint to roller coasters, Hot Wheels play sets and marble runs. The work will be built on site using a mix of found and donated scrap materials.
The artist writes "As a teenager I went on several skiing trips with my parents. This was twenty years ago and what are now known as terrain parks were a relatively new thing and somewhat of a novelty. The building of these features on mountainsides had no other point than to creatively attempt to create unnaturally interesting obstacles for the purpose of fun. A certain ski area we went to one year had these terrain areas scattered all over the mountain and it was a very exciting thing for me. They had named them all and the names and locations of each obstacle were marked on the trail map. One of these spots had been dubbed ‘Smackerels.’ At the time I found it a little cheesy that they all had these names but that particular one has stuck with me all this time. These Smackerels turned out to be a series of rolling bumps the width of a city bus. I know this because they had hauled an actual city bus up onto the hill and it was partially buried beneath one of them. The spirit in which this was done stuck me with its playfulness and creativity and that has also stuck with me all these years. My Smackerels will hopefully convey a similar spirit; experimentation, playfulness and the appreciation and incorporation of discarded objects from the urban environment. This show will encourage interaction and discourage the declaration of these works as precious objects. My intent here is very similar to that of the ski area employee all those years ago. I hope for you to come around a corner and be surprised and then enjoy the ride."
Steve is based in London Ontario. He has family ties to Nova Scotia and is a Graduate of NSCAD (2002)
The reception on the 22nd is free to attend, the artist will be present.
Steve's early work referenced his interest in skate culture, with installations forming functional skate ramps. His work has moved towards less functional installations, incorporating elements that hint to roller coasters, Hot Wheels play sets and marble runs. The work will be built on site using a mix of found and donated scrap materials.
The artist writes "As a teenager I went on several skiing trips with my parents. This was twenty years ago and what are now known as terrain parks were a relatively new thing and somewhat of a novelty. The building of these features on mountainsides had no other point than to creatively attempt to create unnaturally interesting obstacles for the purpose of fun. A certain ski area we went to one year had these terrain areas scattered all over the mountain and it was a very exciting thing for me. They had named them all and the names and locations of each obstacle were marked on the trail map. One of these spots had been dubbed ‘Smackerels.’ At the time I found it a little cheesy that they all had these names but that particular one has stuck with me all this time. These Smackerels turned out to be a series of rolling bumps the width of a city bus. I know this because they had hauled an actual city bus up onto the hill and it was partially buried beneath one of them. The spirit in which this was done stuck me with its playfulness and creativity and that has also stuck with me all these years. My Smackerels will hopefully convey a similar spirit; experimentation, playfulness and the appreciation and incorporation of discarded objects from the urban environment. This show will encourage interaction and discourage the declaration of these works as precious objects. My intent here is very similar to that of the ski area employee all those years ago. I hope for you to come around a corner and be surprised and then enjoy the ride."
Steve is based in London Ontario. He has family ties to Nova Scotia and is a Graduate of NSCAD (2002)
The reception on the 22nd is free to attend, the artist will be present.
Box 534, 396 St. George St. Annapolis Royal, NS, Canada : [email protected] : 902-532-7069 : Open Hours Tues-Fri 10am - 4:30pm / Weekends 1-4pm (by volunteer, call ahead)
Registered Charity Number: 11878 7506 RR0001
ARC Exhibitions 2013
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“Anti-Depression Chamber” (Mushaboom Design)
Julie Adamson Miller & Barry Roode May 12th – June 16th 2013 ARTsPLACE Artist-run Centre is pleased to present “Anti-Depression Chamber” an exhibition by Julie Adamson Miller and Barry Roode. An opening will be held on Sunday, May 12th 2-4pm, all are welcome. Major depression is the No.1 psychological disorder in the western world. It is growing in all age groups, in virtually every community, and the growth is seen most in the young, especially teens. At the rate of increase, it will be the 2nd most disabling condition in the world by 2020, behind heart disease. (Public Health Agency of Canada) If one does not suffer from the condition, but is closely connected to others who do, there may be feelings of helplessness with respect to their recovery process. Adamson’s art practice investigates shelter, it is the forum from which she investigates and discusses issues of societal importance, the installation Anti-depression Chamber is the vehicle used to explore some of the issues surrounding depression. Adamson’s approach to creating the shelter is a positive one viewing the issue from a healing perspective and as a mood altering space where one has the opportunity for visual, auditory and physical pleasure. The installation also acts as a forum for the exchange of information and experiences about depression whereby the viewer is asked to respond to the question, “What is your antidote to depression?” and to record their answer on sticky notes which become a part of the exhibition. Shelter is defined as protection, asylum or sanctuary; humans build physical, as well as emotional shelters for protection. Adamson's art practice investigates the relationship between the two through the creation of architectural environments. The constructs speak not only of the individual connection between the body and shelter, but also the correlation between shelter and the human condition. Anti-depression Chamber borrows its shape from the natural environment mimicking the curl of a wave, or the curve of a shell; the footprint echoes the shape of a drop of water, elemental to all life. The shelter is constructed from a lightweight and translucent dye printed fabric that glows when infused with light. Artist and textile designer Barry Roode of Mushaboom Design has created the artwork on the walls of the shelter. Roode draws his inspiration from nature; the patterns are abstracted from the landscape and evoke the energy and colour found in the natural and wild environment of the eastern shore of Nova Scotia. Julie Adamson Miller is a sculptor and installation artist living on the eastern shore of Nova Scotia. Her studies include a Fine Arts Degree, three years of Architecture and a diploma in Fashion Design. Select solo exhibitions include the Latcham Gallery and Maclaren Art Centre in Ontario and the Craig Gallery and ArtsPlace in Nova Scotia and has received several awards and grants for her work. Julie is an active community artist with a growing list of projects that can be viewed at jamcommunityart.com. http://jamcommunityart.com/ http://www.mushaboomdesign.com/ |
Artist residency, May 2013Sarah Maloney was at ARTsPLACE Gallery for a 2 weekend residency in May, during the Magnolia season. Sarah was in Annapolis Royal 11-14th May and 18-21st May. She created studies towards a body of work which will be exhibited at ARTsPLACE in 2014.
During her two weekend residence Sarah Maloney worked on creating waxes modeled from magnolia flowers that will be used to cast components for a suite of new bronze sculptures. Maloney uses bronze for this work because of its long history as a sculptural material and its use in monuments for many centuries. She is interested in the contrast of the permanence of bronze and its metallic nature with the temporality and fragility of flora. Her research engages in the forms of the plants and flowers, their evolutionary histories, how they were used and how they continue to be used. She is also interested in plant habitat and the relationship between what is natural and what is altered or constructed, venturing into landscape sculpture, where the works themselves render landscape (a human construct) from elements drawn from the natural world. Sarah Maloney is a Halifax artist who completed an MFA at the University of Windsor and a BFA at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. She has received numerous grants and awards from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Nova Scotia Department of Communities, Heritage and Culture, The New Brunswick Arts Board and the Ontario Arts Council. Her work is held in the collection of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Canada council Art Bank and the New Brunswick Art Bank. She has exhibited in group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally. Including Fray at the Textile Museum Toronto; Corpus, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery; and Atlantic Crossing, Dresden Germany. She has been artist-in-residence at the Memory Disability Clinic, Camp Hill Hospital, Halifax and at Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland. She currently teaches in the foundation and sculpture programs at NSCAD University. www.smaloneycom http://www.studio21.ca/sarah-maloney.html |
Snapshot: East Coast Contemporary Aboriginal Art curated by Alan Syliboy
7th April - 5th May, opening 7th April, 2-4pm Snapshot is the first major exhibition of contemporary Aboriginal Art in Halifax since Re-claiming History opened at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in June 2000. It focuses on contemporary East Coast Aboriginal art and is curated by renowned Mi’kmaq artist Alan Syliboy. Snapshot provides a glimpse of Mi’kmaq and Maliseet contemporary art at this particular time in 2013. It aims to raise the profile of Aboriginal artists in Atlantic Canada and to accord them the same respect and recognition that First Nations artists already receive in Central and Western Canada. |
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Snapshot showcases the work of six emerging and mid-career artists:
Frannie Francis, Ursula Johnson, Dozay Christmas, Charles Doucette, Gerald Gloade and Jerry Evans.
Francine (Frannie) Francis is a Mi’kmaq artist from the Metepenagiag First Nation in New Brunswick. In her latest series of paintings, Frannie draws inspiration from the porcupine quillwork baskets that are a part of her heritage. She writes: “The laying down of a quill, and the laying down of layer upon layer of paint to create the textured effect in the simplistic forms of dragonflies, turtles and basket covers, the dragonflies symbolizing change and regeneration, the turtles symbolizing heaven and earth, perseverance and Mother Earth”
Ursula Johnson is a Mi’kmaq artist from Eskasoni First Nation and an alumnus of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Her work ranges in styles and techniques, including video, photography, mixed media, performance, installation and traditional Aboriginal art forms Her current work fuses Mi’kmaq basketry and contemporary fine art in her interpretation of the “Urban Aboriginal” and the urgency of cultural preservation. She writes: “Mi'kmaw basketry has had an extensive journey from: Functional Form to "Indian" Craft to Fine Art to Artifact to Archive. My contemporary practice includes creating non-functional forms that reference the traditional techniques that members of my family and other community members have passed on to me. I refer to these non-functional forms as O'pltek (It’s not right) Baskets which are created for the Archive.”
Dozay Christmas has spent much of her life cultivating her passion for art. Growing up in Western New Brunswick on the Tobique Reserve, Dozay is the middle child of a large family. At eighteen, she left the banks of the Tobique to pursue a formal education at NSCAD. Her intention had initially been to pursue a career in education. It was not until her third year at NSCAD, with encouragement from several important individuals that Dozay decided to switch to the fine arts program and pursue a full-time career as an artist.. Dozay has exhibited her art at galleries across the Maritimes, Ontario and the United States She writes: “In this body of work, I want to express how Glooscap/Kluskap has influenced me, to keep pursuing his history in Wabanaki culture. I have seen and read his personality as a strong role model and hero. His stories and lessons are very similar, from Newfoundland to Northern Maine. I truly believe that he has returned to inspire our people to live strong and proud. The people of the Wabanaki have always believed that he will return, to help and inspire us.“
Charles Doucette is a resident of the Chapel Island Indian Reservation in Cape Breton, He graduated from NSCAD in 1987. Charles works in multiple media, including sculpture, painting, goldsmithing, installations and poetry. Charles works conceptually, with an idea determining the method and medium of the resulting piece. He was one of seven Mi’kmaq artists selected by the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games for the Aboriginal Art Program. He writes: “I first started consciously making art in my early teens, after picking up a rock, I began carving it, after awhile I had carved a little bird. I realized that I could take transform,ideas, thoughts & images in my mind , into real physical objects, and then use objects, marks, ephemera to convey these into something that could be reinterpreted by others in their minds.”
Jerry Evans, a St John’s College of Trades and Technology and NSCAD graduate, was born in Grand Falls, Newfoundland. Jerry earned his ‘chop’, an embossed symbol signifying his experience as a master printmaker, in 1992. Evans has printed for many artists including Anne Meredith Barry, Christopher Pratt, Harold Klunder and Otis Tamasauskas. He writes: “My personal history is a part of the fabric of the history of Newfoundland that includes in its annals the first point of contact, the extinction of a distinct culture, that of the Beothuk, assimilation and recently a degree of recognition of the Native peoples in the region. I believe that artists create images that deal with their identity and my own work reflects a new understanding of who I am. The images that I use serve to reinforce identity for myself, my family and for others in a similar position whose heritage has been denied to them.”
Gerald Gloade, a Mi’kmaq artist from Millbrook, Nova Scotia, started his career 25 years ago working as a Graphic Designer for the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources. Today he works for the Nova Scotia Office of Aboriginal Affairs on the Mi’kmawey Debert Project. Gerald’s stories and interpretations of the Glooscap legends have captured many audiences. Raised by his grandmother, who owned and operated a Micmac Basket Shop on the old Highway No. 2, Gerald is inspired by her fortitude as well as the close relationship that he shared with her.
Snapshot was initially organised and funded by the Khyber Centre for the Arts in Halifax, www.khyber.ca, and was made possible by grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Province of Nova Scotia. It is sponsored by the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Friends United, and Ulnooweg Development Group Inc.
Frannie Francis, Ursula Johnson, Dozay Christmas, Charles Doucette, Gerald Gloade and Jerry Evans.
Francine (Frannie) Francis is a Mi’kmaq artist from the Metepenagiag First Nation in New Brunswick. In her latest series of paintings, Frannie draws inspiration from the porcupine quillwork baskets that are a part of her heritage. She writes: “The laying down of a quill, and the laying down of layer upon layer of paint to create the textured effect in the simplistic forms of dragonflies, turtles and basket covers, the dragonflies symbolizing change and regeneration, the turtles symbolizing heaven and earth, perseverance and Mother Earth”
Ursula Johnson is a Mi’kmaq artist from Eskasoni First Nation and an alumnus of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Her work ranges in styles and techniques, including video, photography, mixed media, performance, installation and traditional Aboriginal art forms Her current work fuses Mi’kmaq basketry and contemporary fine art in her interpretation of the “Urban Aboriginal” and the urgency of cultural preservation. She writes: “Mi'kmaw basketry has had an extensive journey from: Functional Form to "Indian" Craft to Fine Art to Artifact to Archive. My contemporary practice includes creating non-functional forms that reference the traditional techniques that members of my family and other community members have passed on to me. I refer to these non-functional forms as O'pltek (It’s not right) Baskets which are created for the Archive.”
Dozay Christmas has spent much of her life cultivating her passion for art. Growing up in Western New Brunswick on the Tobique Reserve, Dozay is the middle child of a large family. At eighteen, she left the banks of the Tobique to pursue a formal education at NSCAD. Her intention had initially been to pursue a career in education. It was not until her third year at NSCAD, with encouragement from several important individuals that Dozay decided to switch to the fine arts program and pursue a full-time career as an artist.. Dozay has exhibited her art at galleries across the Maritimes, Ontario and the United States She writes: “In this body of work, I want to express how Glooscap/Kluskap has influenced me, to keep pursuing his history in Wabanaki culture. I have seen and read his personality as a strong role model and hero. His stories and lessons are very similar, from Newfoundland to Northern Maine. I truly believe that he has returned to inspire our people to live strong and proud. The people of the Wabanaki have always believed that he will return, to help and inspire us.“
Charles Doucette is a resident of the Chapel Island Indian Reservation in Cape Breton, He graduated from NSCAD in 1987. Charles works in multiple media, including sculpture, painting, goldsmithing, installations and poetry. Charles works conceptually, with an idea determining the method and medium of the resulting piece. He was one of seven Mi’kmaq artists selected by the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games for the Aboriginal Art Program. He writes: “I first started consciously making art in my early teens, after picking up a rock, I began carving it, after awhile I had carved a little bird. I realized that I could take transform,ideas, thoughts & images in my mind , into real physical objects, and then use objects, marks, ephemera to convey these into something that could be reinterpreted by others in their minds.”
Jerry Evans, a St John’s College of Trades and Technology and NSCAD graduate, was born in Grand Falls, Newfoundland. Jerry earned his ‘chop’, an embossed symbol signifying his experience as a master printmaker, in 1992. Evans has printed for many artists including Anne Meredith Barry, Christopher Pratt, Harold Klunder and Otis Tamasauskas. He writes: “My personal history is a part of the fabric of the history of Newfoundland that includes in its annals the first point of contact, the extinction of a distinct culture, that of the Beothuk, assimilation and recently a degree of recognition of the Native peoples in the region. I believe that artists create images that deal with their identity and my own work reflects a new understanding of who I am. The images that I use serve to reinforce identity for myself, my family and for others in a similar position whose heritage has been denied to them.”
Gerald Gloade, a Mi’kmaq artist from Millbrook, Nova Scotia, started his career 25 years ago working as a Graphic Designer for the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources. Today he works for the Nova Scotia Office of Aboriginal Affairs on the Mi’kmawey Debert Project. Gerald’s stories and interpretations of the Glooscap legends have captured many audiences. Raised by his grandmother, who owned and operated a Micmac Basket Shop on the old Highway No. 2, Gerald is inspired by her fortitude as well as the close relationship that he shared with her.
Snapshot was initially organised and funded by the Khyber Centre for the Arts in Halifax, www.khyber.ca, and was made possible by grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Province of Nova Scotia. It is sponsored by the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Friends United, and Ulnooweg Development Group Inc.
ARC Exhibitions 2012
"Traps" 28th October – 25th November

“Traps” Cecil Day
Opening on Sunday 28th October between 2 and 4pm. Artist talk 2:30pm. Free admission, refreshments will be served.
ARTsPLACE presents Cecil Day: Traps by Port Maitland, Nova Scotia artist Cecil Day.
In Traps (2008-2010), Cecil Day returns to a familiar theme: the natural world and our interaction with it. She explores our precarious relationship with nature through the subject of trapping in this suite of etchings that illustrate, to scale, traditional traps – conibears, box traps, snares, leg irons – alongside their related quarry.
Working in close dialogue with avid trappers, the artist researched each item – how they work, their construction, their history – and the corresponding animal – lobster, eel, weasel, mink, bobcat, bear, rabbit. Day’s interest here lies not in trapping itself, whether in condoning or condemning it, rather she looks to this activity by means of its tools as a vehicle by which to examine the evolving face of our connection to and understanding of nature. The traps serve as a symbol of this relationship.
In finding beauty in these objects and working with them, Day respectfully documents a fading lifestyle, one that is reliant upon a true awareness of the land and knowledge of the patterns and habits of the creatures that reside within it for survival.
Cecil Day: Traps is organized by the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.
Cecil Day grew up in Portland, Maine. She received a BA in painting at Indiana University, Bloomington, IN (1960) and an MFA in painting from Washington University, St. Louis, MO (1973). Day moved to St. John’s, NF in 1979 and began printmaking at St. Michael’s Printshop. Notable exhibitions include: Tidelines, At the Sign of the Whale Gallery, Yarmouth, NS (2007), Journey in the North Atlantic, Craft Council Gallery, St. John’s, NL (2005), and Dark Forest, which travelled to Acadia University, Wolfville, NS, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, NS, and University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB (1994-1996). She has served as artist-in-residence at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, France through Washington University, St. Louis, MO (1995) and two others awarded to her by the Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador: Gros Morne National Park, Woody Point, NL (1999) and Rockwell Kent House, Brigus, NL (2006). Day’s work is held in a range of private and public collections including the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Memorial University, Acadia University, Canada Council Art Bank, National Library of Canada, and Harvard University.
Opening on Sunday 28th October between 2 and 4pm. Artist talk 2:30pm. Free admission, refreshments will be served.
ARTsPLACE presents Cecil Day: Traps by Port Maitland, Nova Scotia artist Cecil Day.
In Traps (2008-2010), Cecil Day returns to a familiar theme: the natural world and our interaction with it. She explores our precarious relationship with nature through the subject of trapping in this suite of etchings that illustrate, to scale, traditional traps – conibears, box traps, snares, leg irons – alongside their related quarry.
Working in close dialogue with avid trappers, the artist researched each item – how they work, their construction, their history – and the corresponding animal – lobster, eel, weasel, mink, bobcat, bear, rabbit. Day’s interest here lies not in trapping itself, whether in condoning or condemning it, rather she looks to this activity by means of its tools as a vehicle by which to examine the evolving face of our connection to and understanding of nature. The traps serve as a symbol of this relationship.
In finding beauty in these objects and working with them, Day respectfully documents a fading lifestyle, one that is reliant upon a true awareness of the land and knowledge of the patterns and habits of the creatures that reside within it for survival.
Cecil Day: Traps is organized by the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.
Cecil Day grew up in Portland, Maine. She received a BA in painting at Indiana University, Bloomington, IN (1960) and an MFA in painting from Washington University, St. Louis, MO (1973). Day moved to St. John’s, NF in 1979 and began printmaking at St. Michael’s Printshop. Notable exhibitions include: Tidelines, At the Sign of the Whale Gallery, Yarmouth, NS (2007), Journey in the North Atlantic, Craft Council Gallery, St. John’s, NL (2005), and Dark Forest, which travelled to Acadia University, Wolfville, NS, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, NS, and University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB (1994-1996). She has served as artist-in-residence at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, France through Washington University, St. Louis, MO (1995) and two others awarded to her by the Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador: Gros Morne National Park, Woody Point, NL (1999) and Rockwell Kent House, Brigus, NL (2006). Day’s work is held in a range of private and public collections including the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Memorial University, Acadia University, Canada Council Art Bank, National Library of Canada, and Harvard University.
"Within our Grasp" 9th September - 14th October

Opening reception September 9th, 2-4pm, artist talk approx. 2:30pm
Installation / part residency
ARTsPLACE Artist-run Centre will be hosting an exhibition by Ontario based artist, Marianne Kyryluk, opening September 9th and running to the 7th October.
“Within Our Grasp” is an evolving sculptural installation inspired by the ideas of connectivity, community and social interaction. To create her work, Kyryluk invites community members to have their left hand and forearm cast, the cast is then sculpted and woven with jute fibre. Each cast hand is attached to the next; the participant choosing how their hand will hold another. The finished piece is then added to the existing sculpture as it hangs in the gallery.
Kyryluk explains “The practice of working with models has become a crucial element of my installments. When using the technique of plaster mould making, I marvel at the simplistic power it gives me to capture the replica of an actual living body at that exact moment in time.”
The artist will be in Annapolis Royal for approximately 2 weeks to carry out the casting process, there will be an opportunity for community members to participate in the sculpture through a draw at the opening on the 9th September.
Marianne Kyryluk describes herself as a permanent fixture at Lakehead University’s Visual Arts Building in Thunder Bay, Ontario. She attained her HBFA in 2009 and continues to exhibit in solo and group shows throughout Canada.
Installation / part residency
ARTsPLACE Artist-run Centre will be hosting an exhibition by Ontario based artist, Marianne Kyryluk, opening September 9th and running to the 7th October.
“Within Our Grasp” is an evolving sculptural installation inspired by the ideas of connectivity, community and social interaction. To create her work, Kyryluk invites community members to have their left hand and forearm cast, the cast is then sculpted and woven with jute fibre. Each cast hand is attached to the next; the participant choosing how their hand will hold another. The finished piece is then added to the existing sculpture as it hangs in the gallery.
Kyryluk explains “The practice of working with models has become a crucial element of my installments. When using the technique of plaster mould making, I marvel at the simplistic power it gives me to capture the replica of an actual living body at that exact moment in time.”
The artist will be in Annapolis Royal for approximately 2 weeks to carry out the casting process, there will be an opportunity for community members to participate in the sculpture through a draw at the opening on the 9th September.
Marianne Kyryluk describes herself as a permanent fixture at Lakehead University’s Visual Arts Building in Thunder Bay, Ontario. She attained her HBFA in 2009 and continues to exhibit in solo and group shows throughout Canada.
Twyla Exner "Post Desktop" 29th July - 2nd September
(image: Post Desktop - installation detail, Twila Exner, fabric, stuffing, foam, wood, wires, variable dimensions)

Twyla Exner Post Desktop imagines circuit components as anthropomorphisized individuals who have broken free from their circuit boards and are exploring new environments.
Artist Statement
I am interested in exploring the emotional and material impact of electronic technology on individual consciousness and experience and the various ways in which it infiltrates or permeates and configures actual space. Psychologically and as concrete objects, technologies are portable companions and fixed appendages in our homes that provide a physical connection between the self and the expanse of digitized information and communication networks. Yet regardless of the material attachment to these electronic companions it is not the objects themselves that are irresistibly alluring, but rather the more intangible connections they enable. We are all aware of the steady transposition of once precious, now abandoned technology, unemotionally replaced with advanced, more attractive multi-tasking tools. As they are expelled, they become deemed only as problematic waste: the materials that comprise them built to last while unyielding impetus dooms the object to obsolescence. However, there is something compelling about the actual substance of electronic refuse. It exists as evidence of the need for actual resources as a prerequisite for digitized environments. This same intangible space prides itself as a release from materiality. But the bits and bytes of the digital landscape still require atoms and molecules, and remain based on a physical system of wires and electrical infrastructure.
As a discipline that concerns itself with image, material, form and space, art provides an opportunity to explore the physical substances that contain the means to the ends of the digital “landscape”. Instead of exploring connections between individuals, objects and the digiscape through functional electronic technologies as a new media artist, I work with low-tech methods and draw from historical techniques to manipulate obsolete electronic materials. Just as many artists throughout history have harvested clay from the Earth, stone from a quarry or collected pigments to mix paints, I gather materials that are representative of my surroundings. Post-consumer telephone wires and electronic components provide the raw materials for my artworks. The processes of weaving, drawing and sewing provide new life through the human touch and incline these mechanisms toward technomorphism. The use of the multiple and organic forms that reference bodily organs, plants, bacteria, animals and molecules give independence to the creations, implying that they are reproducing, growing and creating a new home of the transformable space of the gallery. Softness liberates the exacting structures of the components and plays with the idea that the work of art can come to life and might somehow interact with its viewers. The reality of their touch and texture provides a counterpoint to the virtual, bodiless world of video images and endless digital files.http://twylaexner.com/section/113821_Post_Desktop.html
Artist Statement
I am interested in exploring the emotional and material impact of electronic technology on individual consciousness and experience and the various ways in which it infiltrates or permeates and configures actual space. Psychologically and as concrete objects, technologies are portable companions and fixed appendages in our homes that provide a physical connection between the self and the expanse of digitized information and communication networks. Yet regardless of the material attachment to these electronic companions it is not the objects themselves that are irresistibly alluring, but rather the more intangible connections they enable. We are all aware of the steady transposition of once precious, now abandoned technology, unemotionally replaced with advanced, more attractive multi-tasking tools. As they are expelled, they become deemed only as problematic waste: the materials that comprise them built to last while unyielding impetus dooms the object to obsolescence. However, there is something compelling about the actual substance of electronic refuse. It exists as evidence of the need for actual resources as a prerequisite for digitized environments. This same intangible space prides itself as a release from materiality. But the bits and bytes of the digital landscape still require atoms and molecules, and remain based on a physical system of wires and electrical infrastructure.
As a discipline that concerns itself with image, material, form and space, art provides an opportunity to explore the physical substances that contain the means to the ends of the digital “landscape”. Instead of exploring connections between individuals, objects and the digiscape through functional electronic technologies as a new media artist, I work with low-tech methods and draw from historical techniques to manipulate obsolete electronic materials. Just as many artists throughout history have harvested clay from the Earth, stone from a quarry or collected pigments to mix paints, I gather materials that are representative of my surroundings. Post-consumer telephone wires and electronic components provide the raw materials for my artworks. The processes of weaving, drawing and sewing provide new life through the human touch and incline these mechanisms toward technomorphism. The use of the multiple and organic forms that reference bodily organs, plants, bacteria, animals and molecules give independence to the creations, implying that they are reproducing, growing and creating a new home of the transformable space of the gallery. Softness liberates the exacting structures of the components and plays with the idea that the work of art can come to life and might somehow interact with its viewers. The reality of their touch and texture provides a counterpoint to the virtual, bodiless world of video images and endless digital files.http://twylaexner.com/section/113821_Post_Desktop.html
Jose Luis Torres "Que nos rodea - around us" 17th June - 22nd July
Site-specific Sculpture

Installation - indoor/outdoor site-specific artist residency
Opening reception & meet the artist, Sunday June 17th , 1-3pm
ARTsPLACE Artist-run Centre will be hosting an exhibition by Quebec based artist, José Luis Torres, opening June 17th at 2pm. As an artist-in-residence, Jose Luis will be arriving in Annapolis Royal ahead of time to start working on his sculptural piece, using materials gathered from the community.
Torres’ work, which mostly touches sculpture, tends to frequently involve architecture. He often utilises construction and demolition scrap to create his pieces. The work moves between sculptural and architectural forms often featuring many sub-spaces, in which one can move about or interact with. He is interested in the way we occupy space, by modifying the area, by overhauling it. “With my work, I am looking to stimulate the relationship that is established between the installation location, the piece itself and the individual interacting with it.”
José Luis Torres expose à Annapolis Royal (English version below)
Jusqu’au 21 juillet, le centre d’artistes autogéré ARTsPLACE d’Annapolis Royal en Nouvelle-Écosse présente l’exposition Ce qui nous entoure du sculpteur José Luis Torres.
Réalisée lors d’une résidence de montage de cinq jours, l’installation est en fait une vague géante qui traverse l’espace d’exposition pour terminer sa course à l’extérieur, à la faveur d’une fenêtre. La sculpture imposante est constituée de bois trouvé sur place : rebuts de construction offerts par les résidants intrigués ou encore rejetés par la mer. La mer et son action sur le paysage d’Annapolis Royal sont d’ailleurs au centre de la réflexion ayant mené à l’œuvre.
En effet, fidèle à sa démarche consacrée, l’artiste nomade a imaginé son œuvre en fonction de la configuration de l’espace d’exposition mais également par rapport au contexte géographique du lieu. Au profit du voyage en voiture et en bateau effectué entre son lieu de résidence et la ville côtière de Nouvelle-Écosse, Torres s’est nourri de ses observations des paysages de mer et de côtes qu’il a croisés. Annapolis Royal étant littéralement agressée pas l’action des vagues qui sculptent et grugent ses côtes abruptes, l’artiste a voulu incarner cette force et cette particularité locale dans son œuvre.
En outre, par son dialogue entre l’espace intérieur et extérieur, Ce qui nous entoure provoque un mouvement dans l’espace. Les passants intrigués par la sculpture aperçue de l’extérieur pénètrent dans la galerie et suivent l’ondulation qui conduit leur regard à nouveau vers l’extérieur. Pour l’artiste, l’œuvre renvoie un reflet de la société, soit un amalgame d’essais et d’erreurs, d’accidents et d’intentions, d’ordre et de chaos. Torres y remporte une nouvelle fois le pari de la capacité d’évocation des matériaux, quels qu’ils soient et quelle que soit leur provenance. L’installation affirme également que l’architecture est un dispositif relationnel, un medium d’expérimentation.
José Luis Torres est né en Argentine. Il est diplômé de l’école supérieure des beaux-arts Figueroa-Alcorta en enseignement des arts plastiques. Il est également détenteur d’une maîtrise en sculpture et d’un baccalauréat en architecture. Il vit et travaille au Québec depuis 2003. L’exposition Ce qui nous entoure a bénéficié du soutien du Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, du Conseil des arts du Canada et de la Ville de Montmagny.
-30-
José Luis Torres exhibit at Annapolis Royal
ARTsPLACE at the Annapolis Royal in Nova Scotia is presenting the Ce qui nous entoure - Around us exhibit by José Luis Torres up until July 21st.
Completed over a five-day installation period, the piece is a giant wave that moves across the exhibit space and finishes outside, by way of a window. The imposing sculpture is made from wood collected in the area: remnants from construction projects offered to the artist by locals who were intrigued by the project or driftwood washed up on shore. The ocean and its effect on the Annapolis Royal landscape are the heart of the artist’s inspiration for the piece.
True as ever to his creative process, Torres imagined his sculpture in function with the configuration of the exhibit space and also in regards to the geographical context of the exhibit location. During his trip by car and by boat between his residence and Nova Scotia , the sea and the shoreline that he observed inspired Torres. Annapolis Royal has literally been sculpted and scraped away by the waves hitting the shore – the artist wanted to recreate the power he saw in that in his piece.
Furthermore, via the dialogue that he has created between the indoor and outdoor spaces, Torres’ exhibit provokes movement in the space. Visitors that are intrigued by the sculpture that they see outdoors move in to the gallery and follow the wave that then brings them around to looking outside again. For Torres, the piece sends certain reflections back to society, an amalgam of trials and errors, accidents and intentions, order and chaos. Torres is able to give new life to the materials that he uses, whatever they are and where ever they came from. The installation also affirms that architecture is an experimental medium.
José Luis Torres was born in Argentina. He has a diploma from the Figueroa-Alcorta Art School in fine arts and teaching. In addition, he has a Master’s in sculpture and a BA in architecture. He has been living and working in Quebec since 2003. The exhibit Ce qui nous entoure was produced with support from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Canada Council for the Arts and the City of Montmagny .
-30-
Source : Geneviève Caron | Tintamarre communication créative | 418 234-6806
José Luis Torres : http://www.joseluistorres.ca/
Opening reception & meet the artist, Sunday June 17th , 1-3pm
ARTsPLACE Artist-run Centre will be hosting an exhibition by Quebec based artist, José Luis Torres, opening June 17th at 2pm. As an artist-in-residence, Jose Luis will be arriving in Annapolis Royal ahead of time to start working on his sculptural piece, using materials gathered from the community.
Torres’ work, which mostly touches sculpture, tends to frequently involve architecture. He often utilises construction and demolition scrap to create his pieces. The work moves between sculptural and architectural forms often featuring many sub-spaces, in which one can move about or interact with. He is interested in the way we occupy space, by modifying the area, by overhauling it. “With my work, I am looking to stimulate the relationship that is established between the installation location, the piece itself and the individual interacting with it.”
José Luis Torres expose à Annapolis Royal (English version below)
Jusqu’au 21 juillet, le centre d’artistes autogéré ARTsPLACE d’Annapolis Royal en Nouvelle-Écosse présente l’exposition Ce qui nous entoure du sculpteur José Luis Torres.
Réalisée lors d’une résidence de montage de cinq jours, l’installation est en fait une vague géante qui traverse l’espace d’exposition pour terminer sa course à l’extérieur, à la faveur d’une fenêtre. La sculpture imposante est constituée de bois trouvé sur place : rebuts de construction offerts par les résidants intrigués ou encore rejetés par la mer. La mer et son action sur le paysage d’Annapolis Royal sont d’ailleurs au centre de la réflexion ayant mené à l’œuvre.
En effet, fidèle à sa démarche consacrée, l’artiste nomade a imaginé son œuvre en fonction de la configuration de l’espace d’exposition mais également par rapport au contexte géographique du lieu. Au profit du voyage en voiture et en bateau effectué entre son lieu de résidence et la ville côtière de Nouvelle-Écosse, Torres s’est nourri de ses observations des paysages de mer et de côtes qu’il a croisés. Annapolis Royal étant littéralement agressée pas l’action des vagues qui sculptent et grugent ses côtes abruptes, l’artiste a voulu incarner cette force et cette particularité locale dans son œuvre.
En outre, par son dialogue entre l’espace intérieur et extérieur, Ce qui nous entoure provoque un mouvement dans l’espace. Les passants intrigués par la sculpture aperçue de l’extérieur pénètrent dans la galerie et suivent l’ondulation qui conduit leur regard à nouveau vers l’extérieur. Pour l’artiste, l’œuvre renvoie un reflet de la société, soit un amalgame d’essais et d’erreurs, d’accidents et d’intentions, d’ordre et de chaos. Torres y remporte une nouvelle fois le pari de la capacité d’évocation des matériaux, quels qu’ils soient et quelle que soit leur provenance. L’installation affirme également que l’architecture est un dispositif relationnel, un medium d’expérimentation.
José Luis Torres est né en Argentine. Il est diplômé de l’école supérieure des beaux-arts Figueroa-Alcorta en enseignement des arts plastiques. Il est également détenteur d’une maîtrise en sculpture et d’un baccalauréat en architecture. Il vit et travaille au Québec depuis 2003. L’exposition Ce qui nous entoure a bénéficié du soutien du Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, du Conseil des arts du Canada et de la Ville de Montmagny.
-30-
José Luis Torres exhibit at Annapolis Royal
ARTsPLACE at the Annapolis Royal in Nova Scotia is presenting the Ce qui nous entoure - Around us exhibit by José Luis Torres up until July 21st.
Completed over a five-day installation period, the piece is a giant wave that moves across the exhibit space and finishes outside, by way of a window. The imposing sculpture is made from wood collected in the area: remnants from construction projects offered to the artist by locals who were intrigued by the project or driftwood washed up on shore. The ocean and its effect on the Annapolis Royal landscape are the heart of the artist’s inspiration for the piece.
True as ever to his creative process, Torres imagined his sculpture in function with the configuration of the exhibit space and also in regards to the geographical context of the exhibit location. During his trip by car and by boat between his residence and Nova Scotia , the sea and the shoreline that he observed inspired Torres. Annapolis Royal has literally been sculpted and scraped away by the waves hitting the shore – the artist wanted to recreate the power he saw in that in his piece.
Furthermore, via the dialogue that he has created between the indoor and outdoor spaces, Torres’ exhibit provokes movement in the space. Visitors that are intrigued by the sculpture that they see outdoors move in to the gallery and follow the wave that then brings them around to looking outside again. For Torres, the piece sends certain reflections back to society, an amalgam of trials and errors, accidents and intentions, order and chaos. Torres is able to give new life to the materials that he uses, whatever they are and where ever they came from. The installation also affirms that architecture is an experimental medium.
José Luis Torres was born in Argentina. He has a diploma from the Figueroa-Alcorta Art School in fine arts and teaching. In addition, he has a Master’s in sculpture and a BA in architecture. He has been living and working in Quebec since 2003. The exhibit Ce qui nous entoure was produced with support from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Canada Council for the Arts and the City of Montmagny .
-30-
Source : Geneviève Caron | Tintamarre communication créative | 418 234-6806
José Luis Torres : http://www.joseluistorres.ca/
"Markers and Tracings" Barbara McLean, 13th May - 10th June 2012
(image: Markers III, Barbara Mclean, 2009, oil on canvas, 16" x 12.5")

Artist’s Statement
The works in Markers and Tracings begin my exploration of a human need—deeply felt by individuals and societies—to ‘make a mark’ in time and space. Expressions of this need to leave behind some trace of existence include the mysterious prehistoric cave paintings in Lascaux and Chauvet and the looming silence of standing stone dolmens in Korea: the two primary sources for the paintings/drawings in this exhibition.
I have always loved the simplicity of line, the elegance of form and the mix of drawing and painting in the cave images from Lascaux and Chauvet. Alex Garcia-Rivera in his book A Wounded Innocence cites John Pfieffer’s observation:
cave art is located in utter darkness, far from daylight and twilight zones and living spaces, on wide expanses of wall or doubly hidden inside tiny chambers, caves within caves, secrets within secrets.
Several works in Markers and Tracings are responses to similar sensations of darkness, obscurity and mystery.
My use and application of materials like charcoal and raw powdered ochres intensify my connection with the ‘marks’ and ‘markers’ of the past—and with those who created them. Like the painted walls in the caves, the paintings in Markers and Tracings are multilayered, one image superimposed over another, simultaneously obscuring and revealing each other. As I worked, leaving finger prints or scratchings over and through previously worked drawings, time seemed to collapse. I found myself inhabiting a very different personal space: one that felt overwhelming and totally consuming. Even transcendent.
The huge standing stones I found above ground during the three years that I lived in Korea ( 2003-2006) projected an equally powerful—but very different—sense of ‘being’ scattered, as they were, across the countryside. I wondered at the mass and silent power these dolmens embodied. Their presence felt less personal but equally commanding. In some of my works ‘dolmen’ forms are clearly identifiable. In others their influence is carried by a very conscious choice of colours, textures and materials.
Other pieces in this exhibition are less obviously drawn from those two ancient types of work. They are more connected to the kind of anonymous contemporary scrawls we call graffiti found in public spaces today.
Pieces such as “Centering” and “Dissolving Time” are my own personal notations: influenced by what has gone before, but in a less conscious way.
It would be arrogant to assume that I understand the motivations of the ancients in any real sense. The meanings of their work are still matters of speculation to archaeologists, anthropologists and historians. Yet I know that the works done so long ago and the tracings that I engage in today are both signs and calls to an unknown—and hoped for—‘other’ to locate and witness individual being. The marks I make in Markers and Tracings belong to this cry into the eternal and vast unknown: “I am here, in this place at this time”.
The works in Markers and Tracings begin my exploration of a human need—deeply felt by individuals and societies—to ‘make a mark’ in time and space. Expressions of this need to leave behind some trace of existence include the mysterious prehistoric cave paintings in Lascaux and Chauvet and the looming silence of standing stone dolmens in Korea: the two primary sources for the paintings/drawings in this exhibition.
I have always loved the simplicity of line, the elegance of form and the mix of drawing and painting in the cave images from Lascaux and Chauvet. Alex Garcia-Rivera in his book A Wounded Innocence cites John Pfieffer’s observation:
cave art is located in utter darkness, far from daylight and twilight zones and living spaces, on wide expanses of wall or doubly hidden inside tiny chambers, caves within caves, secrets within secrets.
Several works in Markers and Tracings are responses to similar sensations of darkness, obscurity and mystery.
My use and application of materials like charcoal and raw powdered ochres intensify my connection with the ‘marks’ and ‘markers’ of the past—and with those who created them. Like the painted walls in the caves, the paintings in Markers and Tracings are multilayered, one image superimposed over another, simultaneously obscuring and revealing each other. As I worked, leaving finger prints or scratchings over and through previously worked drawings, time seemed to collapse. I found myself inhabiting a very different personal space: one that felt overwhelming and totally consuming. Even transcendent.
The huge standing stones I found above ground during the three years that I lived in Korea ( 2003-2006) projected an equally powerful—but very different—sense of ‘being’ scattered, as they were, across the countryside. I wondered at the mass and silent power these dolmens embodied. Their presence felt less personal but equally commanding. In some of my works ‘dolmen’ forms are clearly identifiable. In others their influence is carried by a very conscious choice of colours, textures and materials.
Other pieces in this exhibition are less obviously drawn from those two ancient types of work. They are more connected to the kind of anonymous contemporary scrawls we call graffiti found in public spaces today.
Pieces such as “Centering” and “Dissolving Time” are my own personal notations: influenced by what has gone before, but in a less conscious way.
It would be arrogant to assume that I understand the motivations of the ancients in any real sense. The meanings of their work are still matters of speculation to archaeologists, anthropologists and historians. Yet I know that the works done so long ago and the tracings that I engage in today are both signs and calls to an unknown—and hoped for—‘other’ to locate and witness individual being. The marks I make in Markers and Tracings belong to this cry into the eternal and vast unknown: “I am here, in this place at this time”.
(image: Desolation Row, Daniel Heikalo, 2009)

“Portraits of Tamara – Images of the City” Daniel Heïkalo digital collage
19th February - 25th March 2012
Daniel Heïkalo was born in Montreal’s working class neighbourhood of Centre-Sud in 1954. He is completely self-taught and has been practicing the art of photography since 1965, when he started taking pictures of the old houses on and around the street where he lived, and of the architecture of Old Montreal and Old Québec. His fascination with vernacular architecture has continued unabated to this day, and his work on the destroyed and disappearing architectural heritage of his native city is receiving a lot of attention.
Daniel has had two exhibitions in 2010 at the Écomusée du fier monde, a museum dedicated to the history and architecture of his working class part of the city. The forty-one photos in the shows depict streets and buildings that are either demolished or completely disfigured by careless renovation and misdirected gentrification.
Daniel’s photography has also appeared on a series of postcards of Montreal, and been published in Canadian Geographic, The Montreal Gazette, and The Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation production guide. Daniel’s work that is of a more surreal nature, in the form of collages and digital imaging, has been used on several CDs. His work is also in private collections.
View Daniel's virtual exhibition: http://vimeo.com/37040753
http://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/108215626216498226236/albums/5708645306643807041
19th February - 25th March 2012
Daniel Heïkalo was born in Montreal’s working class neighbourhood of Centre-Sud in 1954. He is completely self-taught and has been practicing the art of photography since 1965, when he started taking pictures of the old houses on and around the street where he lived, and of the architecture of Old Montreal and Old Québec. His fascination with vernacular architecture has continued unabated to this day, and his work on the destroyed and disappearing architectural heritage of his native city is receiving a lot of attention.
Daniel has had two exhibitions in 2010 at the Écomusée du fier monde, a museum dedicated to the history and architecture of his working class part of the city. The forty-one photos in the shows depict streets and buildings that are either demolished or completely disfigured by careless renovation and misdirected gentrification.
Daniel’s photography has also appeared on a series of postcards of Montreal, and been published in Canadian Geographic, The Montreal Gazette, and The Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation production guide. Daniel’s work that is of a more surreal nature, in the form of collages and digital imaging, has been used on several CDs. His work is also in private collections.
View Daniel's virtual exhibition: http://vimeo.com/37040753
http://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/108215626216498226236/albums/5708645306643807041
ARC Exhibitions 2011

"Corniche" Ann Clarke, RCA
18th September to 23rd October 2011
An accomplished artist with over 40 years experience, Ann Clarke, RCA (Royal Canadian Academy of Arts) has been invited to bring her exhibition “Corniche” to ARTsPLACE Gallery and Artist-run Centre in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia.
With the work in this exhibition, Ann Clarke continues to investigate her long-held interest in the dichotomy between flatness and illusion in non-representational painting. Fully engaged by these contrasts, her ambition is to achieve a balance between the tactile painterliness of the atmospheric ground and the hard-edged flat colour and geometry of the embedded illusionistic forms. Inspired by microscopic or fractal images, more often by the purely abstract, this direction employs apparently simple, but deceptively complex, shape and colour relationships.
The challenge of balancing a number of dualities - flatness, texture, illusion, geometry - in each painting is explored in an effort to reward the experience of “looking” and points towards an ongoing renewal in the development of abstract painting.
Born in England, Clarke received her art education at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College, London University. She has lived in Canada since 1968 and since then has had over thirty solo exhibitions. Since 1966 she has shown work in more than ninety group shows in Britain, Canada and the USA. Her work is in public and private collections in Canada, Britain, USA and Australia.
http://www.annclarke.ca/
18th September to 23rd October 2011
An accomplished artist with over 40 years experience, Ann Clarke, RCA (Royal Canadian Academy of Arts) has been invited to bring her exhibition “Corniche” to ARTsPLACE Gallery and Artist-run Centre in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia.
With the work in this exhibition, Ann Clarke continues to investigate her long-held interest in the dichotomy between flatness and illusion in non-representational painting. Fully engaged by these contrasts, her ambition is to achieve a balance between the tactile painterliness of the atmospheric ground and the hard-edged flat colour and geometry of the embedded illusionistic forms. Inspired by microscopic or fractal images, more often by the purely abstract, this direction employs apparently simple, but deceptively complex, shape and colour relationships.
The challenge of balancing a number of dualities - flatness, texture, illusion, geometry - in each painting is explored in an effort to reward the experience of “looking” and points towards an ongoing renewal in the development of abstract painting.
Born in England, Clarke received her art education at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College, London University. She has lived in Canada since 1968 and since then has had over thirty solo exhibitions. Since 1966 she has shown work in more than ninety group shows in Britain, Canada and the USA. Her work is in public and private collections in Canada, Britain, USA and Australia.
http://www.annclarke.ca/

"Dark Line" A contemporary visual version of the Acadian legend, le Bateau fantome
Lise Robichaud
7th August to 11th September 2011
Acadian artist Lise Robichaud has been invited by ARTsPLACE artist-run centre in Annapolis Royal, to exhibit in their main gallery for five weeks. Her exhibition “Dark Line..”, is a contemporary expression of the Acadian story of the “ghost ship” or “bateau fantôme”. The title refers to the symbolism of a line as a limit, or horizon and also acknowledges the legend in its darkness, as a tale of mystery and mourning. In order to tell the story visually, Lise utilises a variety of different materials; paint, stain, fibre, recycled wood, found objects and paper to name a few. As an installation artist, Lise will create her work on-site leading up to the opening date on Sunday 7th August.
Lise Robichaud is a Professor of Visual Art in Education at the Université de Moncton. As an educator and professional artist Lise is able to explore her interest in the themes of identity, culture, the environment and the conflicts that often arise between them, through her art practice and research. Born in Caraquet, New Brunswick, Lise’s work can be found in collections all over Canada.
Lise Robichaud
7th August to 11th September 2011
Acadian artist Lise Robichaud has been invited by ARTsPLACE artist-run centre in Annapolis Royal, to exhibit in their main gallery for five weeks. Her exhibition “Dark Line..”, is a contemporary expression of the Acadian story of the “ghost ship” or “bateau fantôme”. The title refers to the symbolism of a line as a limit, or horizon and also acknowledges the legend in its darkness, as a tale of mystery and mourning. In order to tell the story visually, Lise utilises a variety of different materials; paint, stain, fibre, recycled wood, found objects and paper to name a few. As an installation artist, Lise will create her work on-site leading up to the opening date on Sunday 7th August.
Lise Robichaud is a Professor of Visual Art in Education at the Université de Moncton. As an educator and professional artist Lise is able to explore her interest in the themes of identity, culture, the environment and the conflicts that often arise between them, through her art practice and research. Born in Caraquet, New Brunswick, Lise’s work can be found in collections all over Canada.

"Ordalie" Anne Marie Michaud
26th June to 31st July 2011
“Ordalie” is an installation project that consists of approximately 2000 drawings of hands, and a video presentation. The artist began the process by drawing her own left hand on a daily basis for almost a year, creating what she describes as a “journal of portraits”. Anne Marie discovered that during this time, she began to feel that it was her hand that was guiding the drawing. Building on this, she set herself intense drawing sessions during which she would draw hands on Buddhist prayer papers with charcoal. What began as observational drawing, evolved into a series of expressive works, as Anne Marie describes “created by memory under the impulsions of my right hand”. The drawings are gestural and expressive, and the hands depicted are sometimes tools, caresses or weapons. The video documents the repetitive and meditative process of one of these drawing sessions.
Anne Marie Michaud completed a Master’s degree in visual arts at Laval University and a BFA at Concordia University. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally. ARTsPLACE would like to invite everyone to the opening reception & talk, refreshments provided. Free admission to the gallery & talk, donations welcome.
26th June to 31st July 2011
“Ordalie” is an installation project that consists of approximately 2000 drawings of hands, and a video presentation. The artist began the process by drawing her own left hand on a daily basis for almost a year, creating what she describes as a “journal of portraits”. Anne Marie discovered that during this time, she began to feel that it was her hand that was guiding the drawing. Building on this, she set herself intense drawing sessions during which she would draw hands on Buddhist prayer papers with charcoal. What began as observational drawing, evolved into a series of expressive works, as Anne Marie describes “created by memory under the impulsions of my right hand”. The drawings are gestural and expressive, and the hands depicted are sometimes tools, caresses or weapons. The video documents the repetitive and meditative process of one of these drawing sessions.
Anne Marie Michaud completed a Master’s degree in visual arts at Laval University and a BFA at Concordia University. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally. ARTsPLACE would like to invite everyone to the opening reception & talk, refreshments provided. Free admission to the gallery & talk, donations welcome.

"Bodily Functions" Gerald Beaulieu
15th May to 19th June 2011
“Bodily Functions” represents an ongoing series of small-scale sculptural works that examines the physical make-up of our bodies as a collection of individual cells, organs and systems. The works are intended as metaphors for our own existence; the essence of our bodies and its workings and processes from respiration to circulation and degeneration to regeneration. Beaulieu has used a number of different materials to realize his concept including silicone, wire, foam, resin and gel, resulting in strange alien-like forms. The work is there to be touched and examined by the observer to give an added dimension to the individual’s experience of the exhibition.
Gerald Beaulieu originally comes from Welland, Ontario. He studied art at the Ontario College of Art and Design, graduating in 1987. In 1988 he moved to Prince Edward Island where he now works and lives with his family. He is primarily a sculptor and installation artist receiving a number of national awards and grants for his work. He has had over 70 solo and group exhibitions across Canada the U.S. and Europe. His work is in numerous public collections including the Beaverbrook Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.
15th May to 19th June 2011
“Bodily Functions” represents an ongoing series of small-scale sculptural works that examines the physical make-up of our bodies as a collection of individual cells, organs and systems. The works are intended as metaphors for our own existence; the essence of our bodies and its workings and processes from respiration to circulation and degeneration to regeneration. Beaulieu has used a number of different materials to realize his concept including silicone, wire, foam, resin and gel, resulting in strange alien-like forms. The work is there to be touched and examined by the observer to give an added dimension to the individual’s experience of the exhibition.
Gerald Beaulieu originally comes from Welland, Ontario. He studied art at the Ontario College of Art and Design, graduating in 1987. In 1988 he moved to Prince Edward Island where he now works and lives with his family. He is primarily a sculptor and installation artist receiving a number of national awards and grants for his work. He has had over 70 solo and group exhibitions across Canada the U.S. and Europe. His work is in numerous public collections including the Beaverbrook Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.

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"Frozen in Time" Nathalie Daoust
3rd April to 8th May 2011
“Frozen in Time” represents a body of work created by Nathalie Daoust during a residency exchange between CALQ (Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec) and the Christoph Merian Foundation in Switzerland. The work will be exhibited at ARTsPLACE gallery for five weeks and consists of a series of black and white pinhole photographs, hand-coloured by the artist, each image set in an ambiguous world where dream and reality clash. These photographs allowed Ms. Daoust to consciously reconstruct a time in her past, piece-by-piece. Filling the gaps in her memory with visual portrayals of fantasy, she depicts a life-like tale, based on real events.
Her concept was driven by the desire to freeze certain moments in time in order to preserve them intact, like works of art, while also giving them the possibility to move, to change position, and redeem themselves, thanks to an unexpected second life offered through art.
Daoust’s objective as an artist is to push the boundaries of photography through experimental methods. While working with new mediums and discovering new darkroom techniques, Daoust explores the indefinable realm between truth, fantasy and the human desire of escapism.
Whether in New York, Tokyo or Berlin, Nathalie Daoust has always asserted a childlike contempt for reality. With a passion for intimacy, this Canadian photographer, born and raised in Montreal, has devoted all of her art to unveiling the secrets hidden beneath the apparent stability of life. Daoust first broke onto the scene in 1997 while photographing the themed rooms of the Carlton Arms Hotel in New York. This project, her first solo exhibition, was then published into a book, New York Hotel Story for more information on the artist, please visit www.daoustnathalie.com
3rd April to 8th May 2011
“Frozen in Time” represents a body of work created by Nathalie Daoust during a residency exchange between CALQ (Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec) and the Christoph Merian Foundation in Switzerland. The work will be exhibited at ARTsPLACE gallery for five weeks and consists of a series of black and white pinhole photographs, hand-coloured by the artist, each image set in an ambiguous world where dream and reality clash. These photographs allowed Ms. Daoust to consciously reconstruct a time in her past, piece-by-piece. Filling the gaps in her memory with visual portrayals of fantasy, she depicts a life-like tale, based on real events.
Her concept was driven by the desire to freeze certain moments in time in order to preserve them intact, like works of art, while also giving them the possibility to move, to change position, and redeem themselves, thanks to an unexpected second life offered through art.
Daoust’s objective as an artist is to push the boundaries of photography through experimental methods. While working with new mediums and discovering new darkroom techniques, Daoust explores the indefinable realm between truth, fantasy and the human desire of escapism.
Whether in New York, Tokyo or Berlin, Nathalie Daoust has always asserted a childlike contempt for reality. With a passion for intimacy, this Canadian photographer, born and raised in Montreal, has devoted all of her art to unveiling the secrets hidden beneath the apparent stability of life. Daoust first broke onto the scene in 1997 while photographing the themed rooms of the Carlton Arms Hotel in New York. This project, her first solo exhibition, was then published into a book, New York Hotel Story for more information on the artist, please visit www.daoustnathalie.com

"Lachesis' Measure" Bonnie Baker
20th February to 27th March 2011
Bonnie Baker studied printmaking at NSCAD University in Halifax, Nova Scotia between 1980 and 82 after which, she focused her attention on a textile based art practice. Her work has been widely exhibited in Canada, the US and the UK and can be found in public and private collections worldwide; including the Art Bank of Nova Scotia, the Royal Bank and ÉCONOMUSÉE® in Montréal. Drawing, however, has always been at the heart of her work and it is this medium that she has chosen to explore in her upcoming exhibition. "Lachesis' Measure" will show Baker's fascination with the everyday object, in this instance, rope. The idea of representing an everyday, commonplace object, in a two-dimensional form saw her asking if our experience of these objects is the same as if they were actually placed in front of us.
"Rope has such rich history of meaning. It is a basic mundane tool universally found in any culture, but as a symbol or a metaphor, it is expansive. The image of rope can be seen as barrier, obstruction, restriction, detainment, separation, exclusion, then again it’s a lifeline, holding things together, connection, link, a measure of linear space and of time. In Western mythology, it is a metaphor for life, spun, measured and cut by the Moirae, the fates; Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos. Cloth spins the thread of life for each of us; Lachesis measures out the length of our lives and thus determines our destiny. Finally, Atropos, with her scissors cuts the thread, ending life. The interesting question is how it is that fragments of ordinary day to day experience can connect to larger questions of our individual existence, our community and our society."
20th February to 27th March 2011
Bonnie Baker studied printmaking at NSCAD University in Halifax, Nova Scotia between 1980 and 82 after which, she focused her attention on a textile based art practice. Her work has been widely exhibited in Canada, the US and the UK and can be found in public and private collections worldwide; including the Art Bank of Nova Scotia, the Royal Bank and ÉCONOMUSÉE® in Montréal. Drawing, however, has always been at the heart of her work and it is this medium that she has chosen to explore in her upcoming exhibition. "Lachesis' Measure" will show Baker's fascination with the everyday object, in this instance, rope. The idea of representing an everyday, commonplace object, in a two-dimensional form saw her asking if our experience of these objects is the same as if they were actually placed in front of us.
"Rope has such rich history of meaning. It is a basic mundane tool universally found in any culture, but as a symbol or a metaphor, it is expansive. The image of rope can be seen as barrier, obstruction, restriction, detainment, separation, exclusion, then again it’s a lifeline, holding things together, connection, link, a measure of linear space and of time. In Western mythology, it is a metaphor for life, spun, measured and cut by the Moirae, the fates; Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos. Cloth spins the thread of life for each of us; Lachesis measures out the length of our lives and thus determines our destiny. Finally, Atropos, with her scissors cuts the thread, ending life. The interesting question is how it is that fragments of ordinary day to day experience can connect to larger questions of our individual existence, our community and our society."