Posts Tagged ‘Art’
Laura Kikauka
Project Description: Guided by voices
Guided By Voices: Illuminated Still Lives is a group exhibition of small discrete light emitting artworks. In Guided By Voices light doubles as a material presence and as a trigger for meaning, suggesting purity, knowledge, and the shifting play between light and darkness. The exhibition features works by Tony Matelli (New York), Wyn Geleynse (London), Laura Kikauka (Berlin/Meaford) and Ooma Haru Mooma (London). Guided By Voices is curated by Jason Schiedel and Paul Walde.
Forest City Gallery: September 11 to October 16, 2009
Gallery Hours
Tuesday to Saturday, 12:00pm to 5:00pm.
Opening Reception
September 11, 2009, 7pm to 10pm
Contact:
Jason Schiedel, Director
Forest City Gallery
258 Richmond Street,
London, Ontario,
N6B 2H7
(519)434-5875
forestcitygallery@gmail.com
http://home.golden.net/~fcg/
Artist Biography
Laura Kikauka’s body of work over the past twenty-five years encompasses various mediums including site specific installation, mixed media, electronic sculpture, drawing, photography, video, performance, music, text and costume creations. Kikauka’s installations establish a highly specific visual (and often audio) language that blends the increasingly overlapping worlds of high and low art forms. In general Laura’s ‘excessive aesthetic’ is comparable to urban archeology and addresses issues of consumer culture, and the question of good and bad taste. It also celebrates failure in a humourous and ironic manner.
Kikauka’s work is inspired and derived from decades of on-going collecting of found objects. Employing the formal strategy of meticulously sorting and organizing these objects, as well as modifying or transforming them, she then creates specifically themed and coded installations that transform gallery and exhibition spaces into densely packed, highly detailed installations.
Laura’s categorization speaks of similarities and differences. The Funny Farm studios in rural Meaford and in Berlin are living and working spaces treated as on-going installations that exemplify, through a density of detail her interest in low class consumer culture. It is with a sense of sarcasm and empathy that she explores this reoccurring theme.
In addition to Kikauka’s long term ongoing projects recent solo exhibitions include: Celebration of Failure at SpaceX in Exeter, England, FOR THE LOVE OF GAUD/ Damien’s Worst at gallerie DNA, Berlin, Exactly the Same, but Completely Different at the Power Plant in Toronto, and M.A.N.I.A.C. at MAK (Museum fur angewandte Kunst) in Vienna, Austria. Her performances and studio work have been the subject of numerous texts and group exhibitions, and garnered many accolades including awards from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.
Laura Kikauka lives and works in Berlin, Germany and Meaford, Ontario.
Ooma Haru Mooma
Project Description: Guided by voices
Guided By Voices: Illuminated Still Lives is a group exhibition of small discrete light emitting artworks. In Guided By Voices light doubles as a material presence and as a trigger for meaning, suggesting purity, knowledge, and the shifting play between light and darkness. The exhibition features works by Tony Matelli (New York), Wyn Geleynse (London), Laura Kikauka (Berlin/Meaford) and Ooma Haru Mooma (London). Guided By Voices is curated by Jason Schiedel and Paul Walde.
Forest City Gallery: September 11 to October 16, 2009
Gallery Hours
Tuesday to Saturday, 12:00pm to 5:00pm.
Opening Reception
September 11, 2009, 7pm to 10pm
Contact:
Jason Schiedel, Director
Forest City Gallery
258 Richmond Street,
London, Ontario,
N6B 2H7
(519)434-5875
forestcitygallery@gmail.com
http://home.golden.net/~fcg/
Artist Biography
Ooma Haru Mooma is based in London, Ontario – Guided by Voices is her first public exhibition.
Thinkbox
LOLA Project Description
In response to the vaguely brutalist structure in downtown London, ON, we are proposing a large scale, three panel projection – using the blank surface of the side of the building as our canvas/screen. While the building is tall, the screen treatment (i.e. aspect ratio) will be wide screen –with only a small gap between the three projections. They will resemble three long, horizontal stripes – arranged towards the uppermost section of the structure.
Each panel offers a different – but interconnected tableaux. The top panel features a fragmented series of images from a number of 1950’s and 1960’s era Brittanica films that all deal with urban planning and renewal – a popular subject in post corbussier mid century America. These films tend to champion the propensity to tear down the slums and put up new, socially engineered high rises. The large, faceless surfaces of poured concrete and brick are reminders of this brief period of optimism that was quickly replaced by a very long period of urban failures.
The central panel is a series of portraits. The faces look directly into the eyes of the viewer – young and old, they are all lit with the same soft, frontal light – that suggests that they are possibly lit by the glow of a laptop – or perhaps a movie screen. Perhaps this is the reverse shot – revealing the subjective responses to the films that are playing on the screens above and below them.
On the lower panel, we feature a montage of cinematic scenes, entirely constructed with toy train layouts. Snow covered streets and turn of the century buildings glow cheerily and gloomily – falling into an alluring degree of intentionally designed disrepair. Fog rolls in – enveloping our city – and then clearing to reveal the shapes again.
THINKBOX MANDATE
Thinkbox is a self-curating media collective, created to explore technological works and contemporary media in relation to both gallery and commercial distribution networks. Thinkbox reflects the varied interests of its members. As an enterprise, it is centred on the exploration and innovative use of material and technique to produce works that develop complex questions to simplified answers about art, technology, and the nature of multi-media creation.
Many of the strategies employed by the artists involved question preconceived notions of the categorical limitations of music, audio, noise and sound, often in relation to video, film and the moving image. The primary aim of Thinkbox is to promote and advance the new media artist as content provider / cultural producer in the changing art landscape of the new century. The members of the collective are dedicated to the production and dissemination of non-categorical contemporary art creations.
Through the initiative of member artists, Thinkbox intersects with mass culture through gallery installations, performances, festivals, and the release of audio/video products.
Artist Biography
Thinkbox is a loosely structured Windsor based sound and visual art collective.
Current members include:
Christopher Bissonnette, a sound artist and graphic designer whose installations have been exhibited in both Canada and the U.S. Since 1996, Bissonnette’s audio performances have been programmed into many festivals and events, and he has performed live alongside experimentalists such as Scanner (UK) and Thomas Brinkmann (Germany). In September 2002, he participated in The Digidome Festival, in Saskatoon SK. Two full-length CDs of his work have been released by Kranky.
Mark Laliberte, an independent curator, project-based artist and experimental poet currently based in Toronto. Primarily an exhibiting artist, Laliberte’s complex installation works & independent objects have been shown in exhibitions throughout Canada and the U.S. Laliberte is the Managing Editor and Designer of Carousel Magazine.
Christopher McNamara, a Windsor-based video artist, writer and DJ, who teaches new media at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. He and collaborator, artist Dermot Wilson have worked collaboratively under the corporate art moniker Machyderm Inc since 1994, and together they have shown extensively in both Canada and the U.S. (most recently at Mercer Union, Stride Gallery and The Western Front). In October 2002, McNamara exhibited at Stiftung BINZ 39, in Zürich, Switzerland.
Aganetha Dyck
www.gibsongallery.com/artists_pages/dyck/dyckindex.html
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 17, 8pm, Michael Gibson Gallery, 157 Carling Street
Project Description: Collaborating in the darkness
Aganetha Dyck: Collaborating in the Darkness
An exhibition of Hive Scans by Richard & Aganetha Dyck, with new illuminated aluminum bee work signs and drawings by Aganetha Dyck
Michael Gibson Gallery: September 5 to 26, 2009
Gallery Hours
12:00pm to 6:00 pm Tuesday to Saturday
Contact:
Jennie Kraehling, Associate Director
Michael Gibson Gallery
157 Carling Street
London, ON
N6A 1H5
(519) 439-0451
info@gibsongallery.com
www.gibsongallery.com
Artist Statment
“I am a multi media Canadian artist who is interested in language and communication; how knowledge is transported and transcribed between humans and other species. I am interested in inter species communication. I have chosen to sculpt and draw collaboratively with the honeybees for the past 14 years. My research has included the bee’s use of sound, sight, scent, vibration, and dance. I am studying the bee’s use of the earth’s magnetic fields as well as their use of the pheromones (chemicals) they produce to communicate with one another, with other species and possibly with the foliage they pollinate.
“My research has included residencies in The Netherlands: To research the Bees and flowers of The Netherlands; The Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Britain: To sculpt in the park under the direction of 2 beekeepers and their feral bee swarms, and at Passages Centre d’art Contemporain, Troyes, France: to visit the ancient bee walls of France, to meet with Dr. Yves Le Conte, scientist in Avignon, France and to work for 3 months in a studio in Troyes, France. “The bee work can take years to complete due to a short summer bee-keeping season of 7 – 9 weeks a year. I spend the rest of the year researching, traveling, and preparing work for the next bee-keeping season.”
Artist Biography
Born in Marquette, Manitoba in 1937, Aganetha Dyck’s work has been exhibited in galleries and museums across Canada and in England, France and the Netherlands. Her work can be found in the collections of such prestigious museums as the National Gallery of Canada, the Glenbow Museum, the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Britain.
Aganetha Dyck is known for her transformation of commonplace objects such as shoes, buttons and figurines into things which are simultaneously metaphysical, delicate and sometime humorous. She shows us that the “exotic” can be found in the most mundane and everyday of things, if one examines them with an open mind. In one sense, she doesn’t transform an object as much as she liberates objects from familiar contexts, thus imbuing them with greater meaning. Her work is about ideas and thoughts, yet it always remains accessible and alluring to the viewer.
Dyck won the Governor General’s Award in Visual Arts and the Manitoba Arts Council Arts Award of Distinction in 2007.
Gordon Monahan
Project Description: Two Pianos Talking to Each Other
Several long piano strings are connected to two pianos standing approximately 100 feet apart. Audio signals are fed into the long piano strings using vibrating coils attached to the wires. The piano string vibrations are amplified by contact to the piano soundboards. The sounds heard coming from the pianos, which originated as audio signals, are amplified entirely acoustically by the piano soundboards and strings, so that we are able to listen to audio recordings without using loudspeakers.
Artist Biography
Gordon Monahan’s works for piano, loudspeakers, video, kinetic sculpture, and computer-controlled sound environments span various genres from avant-garde concert music to multi-media installation and sound art. As a composer and sound artist, he juxtaposes the quantitative and qualitative aspects of natural acoustical phenomena with elements of media technology, environment, architecture, popular culture, and live performance.
Since 1978, Monahan has performed and exhibited at numerous performance spaces, galleries, and festivals. Recent activity includes: Bilbao International Film Festival ‘Zinebi 49′, Bilbao, Spain (performance with Txuspo Poyo, video)Western Front, Vancouver (installation)Royal Conservatory of Music and Open Space, Victoria, BC (installation and performance) Macdonald Stewart Art Gallery, Guelph (solo exhibition) Voxxx Galerie, Chemnitz (solo exhibition) Galerija Kapelica, Ljubliana, Slovenia (solo exhibition) Ars Electronica, Linz (performance) Taktlos Festival, Bern, Switzerland (performance), Klangraum Krems, Krems, Austria (performance)
Nicholas Longstaff
Project Description
ShadowD is an interactive generative art projection-based installation which encourages play, as participants move, dance and laugh as they lead, and then follow each other and their shadows. Shadows are transformed into colours that reflect back onto the faces of the participants and onlookers, bringing the whole room alive with light and dark shapes. ShadowD grew out of Longstaff’s interest and research into the ancient folkloric character of the Trickster. There are rules governing its behaviour, but the rules seem to change the longer you play with it, making the whole experience get richer as you spend more in the installation.
Artist Statement
SHADOWS have danced through my artworks and theatre pieces for years. From my early workings-out of how silhouettes could be painted to express character, to my experiments with shadow theatre, to the darker issues on which I like to shed light through my music and storytelling, shadows have become just as important to me as the sun.
Artist Bioghraphy
Nicholas Longstaff creates music, theatre, video and art installations that grow from collaboration and play. His work as a director, performer, and film composer brought him awards including both the Bravest and Most Daring productions, and Best Original Music. His Kastner Award-winning work “I’s and You’s” mixed video with live performance. ShadowD is a new digital video installation in which you – the participant – are the live performer.
Installations, radio artworks, music and plays by Nicholas travel far – from communities like Petawawa, Ontario, to Chicago, USA including Deep Wireless on Toronto Island for New Adventures in Sound Art’s festival. Now he facilitates, educates and produces across all media. He is an Associate of the Ontario College of Art and Design, and alumnus of the Canadian Film Centre Media Lab.
Robert Youds
www.diazcontemporary.ca/Artists_Youds.html
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 17, 7pm, artLAB, John Labatt Visual Arts building, UWO
Project Description: Jesus Green Tofino Sunset
What if every life had only five episodic markers and everything else occurred in relational links to these events? And what if we called these markers X,Y,Z,A,B? It turns out that X,Y,Z,A,B can be digitally captured and replayed in a continuous repeating six minute cycle. A dull alternating Orange-Rose light of morning followed the darkest Phalo-Blue ever experienced as night. Mid-day is always Turquoise until it changes to afternoon Purple followed by an evening Green.
X: Sleeping took place in two minutes, but it was all you needed. Y: Work required two minutes, but seemed twice as long. Z: Pleasure is more difficult to measure because of occurring in nano time, but it came with such irregular synaptic frequency it most always totaled thirty seconds. A: Gaps here and there where episodes of Mash run non-stop, Curb Your Enthusiasm is much harder to locate, Sonic Youth play another art opening, fifteen seconds. B: Experiences of icebergs the size of your cat, arriving home to dinner, not naming, describing something you had never seen before, faking interest, shaking hands, sounds not music, air, water, love, death… the time separating you from everything else, one minute and fifteen seconds. - Robert Youds, 2009
artLAB: John Labatt Visual Arts Centre, University of Western Ontario: September 17 to September 30, 2009
Gallery Hours
Monday to Friday: 12pm to 6pm
Thursdays: 12pm to 8pm
Contact
Susan Edelstein-Gallery Director
John Labatt Visual Arts Centre
University of Western Ontario
Perth Drive,
London, ON N6A 5B7
(519) 661-2111 x85855
artlab@uwo.ca
Artist Biography
Originally positioned as a painter, by the mid-nineties Victoria-based artist Robert Youds shifted his practice of translating light and colour to what he describes as “light paintings.” His large three-dimensional works, while maintaining a playful edge, absorb the viewer into meditative ruminations. Aglow with colour, they are assemblages on a human scale that take an initial attraction and hold it until it becomes an extended philosophic moment. The artist layers light and matter to create experiments in perception and transparency.
Robert Youds’ recent work includes a combination of light pieces and visually active objects. Youds’ art situates itself beyond the conventions of sculpture and painting, resulting in what he refers to as structures. These built structures utilize architecture, design, and picture vernacular in a way that is intended to complicate the beholders’ subjective experience of the real. The material specificity of his structures opens up into sites for the illusory and poetic which extend beyond the object. This can be evidenced in one of Youds’ new light works, For Everyone a Window, which takes us through a six-minute cycle of shifting colour and time sequences that suggests a much longer durational period.
Victoria-based Robert Youds completed his MFA from York University and he holds a BFA from the University of Victoria. Recent solo shows include: TIME MUST HAVE A STOP or look out your window, at the Ministry of Casual Living; beautifulbeautiful artificial field, at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria; small artificial fields, at the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery; and Our Raum Licht at Diaz Contemporary. Selected group shows include: PAINT: a psychedelic primer, at the Vancouver Art Gallery; Abstract Painting in Canada, at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia; Through the Looking Glass, at Glenbow Museum; and The Shape of Colour: Excursions in Colour Field Art 1950-2005, at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
His work is represented by Diaz Contemporary in Toronto
