EXHIBITION CATALOGUE JULY 2017 − AUGUST 2018
ABOUT THE MNG Established by the Alberta College of Art + Design Students’ Association (ACADSA), the student-run Marion Nicoll Gallery (MNG) is a unique forum for showcasing ACAD student work, inspiring experimentation, and stimulating critical dialogue. This unique gallery is modelled after a not-for-profit gallery, and encourages conceptual freedom and diversity. Directed by students, the MNG provides emerging artists and designers with an opportunity to develop experience in curation, arts administration, jurors, and exhibitors. marionnicollgallery.wordpress.com/
OUR THREE LOCATIONS +15 Window Space The +15 Window Space is located in Arts Commons. Fronted completely by glass, the storefront is suited for small-scale installations or exhibitions. As part of the city’s +15 walkway system, the space has a diverse audience, and exhibitions run for a period of two months, and presents the opportunity to show alongside other Calgary artist run centres: Truck, Stride, Alberta Printmakers’, The New Gallery and the Untitled Art Society. LRT Space The LRT Window is located in the ACAD/Jubilee hallway which acts as a main thoroughfare for the public. The space is enclosed, with three large windows facing the hallway. This space is available to students for one month exhibitions, and aims to present work that transforms the environment by presenting the work in an unusual, engaging and professional manner. Main Space Located in the Main Mall at ACAD, the MNG Main Space provides a setting for large scale installations, group shows and individual bodies of work, for a period of two weeks.
CATALOGUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Exhibition Photos by Laura Pritchard Catalogue Layout by Kiah Gutowski
CATALOGUE CONTENTS PG
PG
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MNG Director’s Statement
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Leonard Mostacci – Language
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Ashley Slemming - Finery, Façade
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Janeen Scott – The Hunt
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Toni Cormier - Stare with Odium
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Kyrsten Lofts – Wake Up Sterile Nightmare
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Michal Cabaj - an adiabatic approximation
Laura Pritchard
July 24 – September 29, 2017
August 26 – September 21, 2017
September 4 – 29, 2017
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Alicia Buates McKenzie – Something to be Said September 25 – October 6, 2017
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Michaela Bridgemohan - Duppy October 2 - December 1, 2017
Natalie Stevenson - Rebirth of Venus (variation 1) Kerry Maguire - Ambiguities of the third dimension October. 10 – 20, 2017
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Christina Mathieson - I Carry the Weight of Your Death October 23 – November 3, 2017
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Emilie MacPhail – Reveries
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Signy Holm – Vatnið (For the Lake)
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Jenna Wyatt – Romanticizations and Judgements
February 5 – March 30, 2018 February 19 – March 2, 2018
March 5 – 30, 2018
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Martina Westib – S(ing)k
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Seth Cardinal – Pointing The Finger #2
March 5 – 16, 2018
April 2 – May 25, 2018
90
Collin Brown – Further Reductions
October 30 – November 24, 2017
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Alec Brilling – Δt
Karin Thorsteinsson – 56.257070, -4.747947
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Amy Hein – Gather. Preserve. Repeat.
Jasmine Whiteley-Steel - The past she is haunted, the future is laced
Brandon Giessmann – In Memory, Permanence (Facade) Alexa Bunnell – A memoir for a woman I didn’t know and the man who plays the banjo December 4, 2017 – February 2, 2018
April 2 – 13, 2018
April 2 – 27, 2018
April 16 – 27, 2018
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Riley Thérèse – Baptizing a Ghost
106
Lusine Manukyan – A Toast
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Anna Semenoff - Set
November 28, 2017 – January 2, 2018
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Jaime McDonald – How Far You’ve Come February 5 – March 2, 2018
November 27, 2017 – January 5, 2018
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January 8 – February 2, 2018
February 5 – 16, 2018
October. 2 – 27, 2017
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January 7 – February 2, 2018
May 1 – June 29, 2018
May 29 – July 27, 2018
June 19 – August 17, 2018
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MNG DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT “What do artists know? is not the proper question to ask. My argument is that the verb “to know” leads us in wrong directions, away from artistic practice and away from the artwork. I propose to recast this question as, How do artists think?” — Janneke Wesseling, How Do Artists Think 1 How do artists think? This question, posed by Janneke Wesseling, is a good one. However, I suspect that it wouldn’t be long before most reading this text came to decide that artists think through the art object. After all, that’s the form that our ruminations ultimately occupy. But if so, does this position art and art-making as thinking? I’m landing on this question because I believe (Western) art often falls out of thinking and into subservience. By this I mean that some artists seem to find rumination insufficient reason for art-making and insist that art should serve a higher and often identifiable social cause (be it religion, previously, or research, activism and ethics, today). While people’s thirst for creating meaning that can be quickly identified and deemed as such might simply appear the result of the Zeitgeist, this seems to be an enduring theme. And while ethics does provide valid material for making and thinking, do the ethics serve the art or does the art serve the ethics? If the art need always serve a higher cause, why make art in the first place? What does art do? In my opinion, art evokes. It whispers, insinuates, becomes. In an article titled “Digging”, Jeremiah Day recalls a visit to Berlin during which a friend of his was uncovering the ruins of a stairwell long buried beneath the Berlin Wall. Day’s friend, Smith, digs with the hope that what he finds might contribute to a sculptural work he is planning. Day wonders if his friend has any idea what he’s uncovered, “if it was a home, or an office, and if it was bombed or just burned down.” 2 Smith replies, “He has plans to go to the state archive to find out that kind of information, but he keeps delaying the visit.” Day writes that his friend “prefers to sustain the period of this kind of discovery, through digging, attending to the soil and ash, in which a different kind of information is possible, one that is not axiomatic or verifiable.” Smith avoids framing his work as being in the service of history, instead seeking meaning in digging, leveraging layers of history to cultivate a meaning that’s perhaps too nuanced to name. Smith isn’t digging for meaning – he’s digging the meaning. Similarly, while art helps us come to various, often murky, personal, and inconclusive moments of meaning, (the “coming” being often more compelling than the “meaning” itself) art ultimately doesn’t tell – it merely unearths the buried. Like Smith’s digging, art takes the shape of a question, unzipping the present and offering a place “where the past and future are both at stake.” 3 An exquisite corpse in the time-scheme of clouds, art is continuously becoming.
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Art reorders. Art doesn’t lie down – instead it dances, consistently stepping just outside our expectations of what it should be. It asks us to collage, to curiously engage in meaning-making by rethinking what it was we thought we knew. While I don’t think art need always act on behalf of rebellion, rebellion is inherent in art. Art is protest against more imperious modes of knowing that compel us to know without asking questions. Art doesn’t tell us what to think. Instead, art asks us to perceive. Art rethinks. Art affects. A vernacular of intimate impressions, impressions on bodies, on minds, on itself, art asks in a language of whispers. Art becomes a “secret knowledge.” 4 Ultimately, we spend time experiencing art not because we want it to tell us how to enact social change or to fill us with certainty - we look to art because we are curious. Art is known to provoke pleasure, surprises, catharsis, and questions and we are curious as to what these might be and how they will feel as we try them on subjectively. Day writes of his friend: By not knowing the “truth,” Smith’s act can become a kind of “fiction,” − back to the root of that word, a shaping of circumstance, the transformation that gives art its own status, claims, and questions. Perhaps Smith’s decision not to go to the archive (yet) is like what Friedrich Nietzsche called the choice of a “limited horizon,” in which not all questions have to be faced, in which one does not need to be responsible to all perspectives, to preserve the space of “becoming.” 5 Art doesn’t aver or explain. It merely becomes. - Laura
Pritchard
Notes and Bibliography
1. Wesseling, Janneke. “How Do Artists Think?” In What Do Artists Know, edited by James Elkins, 206. Vol. III. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania University Press, 2012. 2. Day, Jeremiah. “Digging.” In Art as a Thinking Process: Visual Form of Knowledge Production, edited by Mara Ambrozic and Angela Vettese, 66. Venice: Sternberg Press, 2013. 3. Willis, Gary. “What’s Art Got To Do With It?” In What Do Artists Know, edited by James Elkins, 165. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania University Press, 2012. 4. Vettese, Angela. “How Do We Teach Art?” In Art as a Thinking Process: Visual Form of Knowledge Production, edited by Mara Ambrozic and Angela Vettese, 15. Venice: Sternberg Press, 2013. 5. Day, Jeremiah. “Digging.” In Art as a Thinking Process: Visual Form of Knowledge Production, edited by Mara Ambrozic and Angela Vettese, 66. Venice: Sternberg Press, 2013.
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Ashley Slemming
Finery, Façade July 24 – September 29, 2017
+15 Space
Two elegantly dressed Victorian figurines on a paper doily stand poised — “I cannot believe it, the audacity!” one figurine exclaims sharply. The other replies, “Who would do such a thing?” Gossiping and sneering about faux pas fake fine dinnerware, ignorant of their own inauthentic identities as Made in China Victorian figurines, they remain marked by sticker underfoot. Finery, Façade utilizes found objects and embellished paper plates to comment on kitsch, commodity, and mass-produced culturally charged objects. Ashley Slemming is an artist based in her hometown, Calgary Alberta. She recently received a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a major in Print Media in 2017 and is currently focusing her conceptual practice around themes of cultural display, patterns, and repetition.
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“...ignorant of their own inauthentic identities as Made in China Victorian figurines, they remain marked by sticker underfoot.” Ashley Slemming - Finery, Façade
Toni Cormier
Stare with Odium August 26 – September 21, 2017
Main Space
Stare with Odium is a collection of rendered memoirs. These drawing-objects focus on the transitional (and often volatile) ongoing process of deciphering between the truth and untruth of a sexually deviant femme. How much autonomy remains in the sexually deviant femme after her identity is manipulated in order to exist in a sensationalized, patriarchal society? How legitimate is the space between universal truth and personal reality? Affairs and disunity agitate ideas of genuineness while processing feelings of guilt, longing, confusion, indulgence, and defiance, as a way to determine how to resuscitate the self after being smothered. Toni Cormier allows herself to often indulge in decadence. Cormier has an intimate relationship with creation, and often works with materials such as oil, clay, banquet roll, canvas, chalk, and charcoal in order to construct sculptural works varying from dolls to drawings, which can also venture into performative experiences. Cormier is a Calgary based artist, currently attending her fourth year at the Alberta College of Art + Design. ToniCormier.com
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“How much autonomy remains in the sexually deviant femme after her identity is manipulated in order to exist in a sensationalized, patriarchal society?� Toni Cormier - Stare with Odium
Michal Cabaj
an adiabatic approximation September 4 – 29, 2017
LRT Space
an adiabatic approximation explores the notion of a physicality that is transcribed into a dimensional abstraction of the primary elements within a landscape. Through way of a constructed landscape that embodies the unifying elements of metamorphic rock, a celestial formation of bodies through pressure and heat ignite a spontaneous change on an elemental scale. These physical and chemical processes occur so rapidly the transfer of matter or heat from within the system and its surroundings isn’t possible, thus being referred to as an “adiabatic approximation”. Represented through the fusion of precious and semi-precious metals, the landscape investigates the dualities of light and darkness during the dawn of its formation. By isolating these elements into a visual representation of each hue within the image, an idealization of the landscape is made in which an approximation is derived from the physical nature and conceptual means of the image. Michal Cabaj is a recent alumnus of the Alberta College of Art + Design who obtained a BDes in Photography. His work investigates the relationship between light and its intrinsic nature on objects within the human experience. This visual language speaks to the dimensions of his imagery that is bound by the human curiosity and the metaphysics of being. michalcabaj.com
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“Represented through the fusion of precious and semi-precious metals, the landscape investigates the dualities of light and darkness during the dawn of its formation.� Michal Cabaj - an adiabatic approximation
Alicia Buates McKenzie
Something to be Said September 25 – October 6, 2017
Main Space
Something to be Said is the first piece in a body of work heavily influenced by Shakespeare’s Ophelia. Contrasted with experiences in my own life, I subvert the ‘Ophelia archetype’ to highlight the trauma of losing one’s sense of self and the subsequent struggle to regain it. It is both an inquiry into the portrayal of women without agency in popular culture and a personal story of drowning internally (Hamlet 4.5. 4-13). Alicia Buates McKenzie is a biracial Filipino Canadian artist from rural Manitoba. She is currently completing the final year of her BFA at the Alberta College of Art + Design, majoring in Drawing. She has also studied abroad at Falmouth University and her work has been exhibited in both Canada and the UK.
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“It is both an inquiry into the portrayal of women without agency in popular culture and a personal story of drowning internally.� Alicia Buates McKenzie Something to be Said
Michaela Bridgemohan
Duppy October 2 - December 1, 2017
+15 Space
Old skin ’kin ‘kin You na know me’ You na know me’ -Soucouyant, David Chariandy
Duppy engages with the fluidity of identity by drawing on Jamaican mannerisms and symbolism to connect my personal experience with racial erasure and sexism within Alberta. “Soucouyant” a Caribbean folktale of a shape shifting phantom, cocoons herself with sagging flesh that fails to fit her real form underneath. Only when it is dusk, this monstrous feminine busts towards the sky, fooling as a falling star. Duppy uses this tale to physically capture the metamorphosis of living as the ‘other’ while being born into an environment of displacement. Michaela Bridgemohan is a biracial multidisciplinary visual artist in Calgary Alberta Canada. Spoken through secrecy and perseverance, her practice investigates her “coming of age” story in Canada through race, femininity and sexuality. She has also spoke in the Divisions of Discourse Symposium and has been showcased in the Hear/d Residency Waves Through Fog, The Closet Gallery and Jugglers ArtSpace, Brisbane Australia.
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“...Only when it is dusk, this monstrous feminine busts towards the sky, fooling as a falling star.� Michaela Bridgemohan - Duppy
Natalie Stevenson
Rebirth of Venus (variation 1) October 2 – 27, 2017
LRT Space
These images are from a video performance of a modern Venus that is derived from Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus (1480). This reborn Venus is devouring and destroying art historical icons (pomegranate and papaya) that negatively represent females then cleansing herself in milk to reclaim her body. The aggression and power shown in these photos show a new Venus who is not concerned about fulfilling a purpose for others, but solely focuses on her desires and needs. Natalie Stevenson (b. 1995) is a mixed media artist living and working in Calgary, Alberta. Her work focuses on her own femme identity and negotiating the implications around her experiences. She is currently working towards her BFA at the Alberta College of Art + Design with a major in Drawing.
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“...a new Venus who is not concerned about fulfilling a purpose for others, but solely focuses on her desires and needs.� Natalie Stevenson - Rebirth of Venus (variation 1)
Kerry Maguire
Ambiguities of the third dimension October 10 – 20, 2017
Main Space
The plasticky, junky found objects of Ambiguities of the third dimension are discarded items past their prime, rescued as sculptural objects. These found components are at turns obfuscated, elevated and even narrativized as both sculptural work and the subject of five prints. As sculpture, these objects’ material qualities take precedence. But through the process of silkscreening, the objects’ dimensionality is traded in for colour and halftone, and this flattened representation is redistributed through takeaway prints. Both processes are in pursuit of the status, history and future of these things that have come from our consumerism. Kerry Maguire is an artist and musician living in Calgary, Alberta. She is in her final year at the Alberta College of Art + Design, and works mainly with found objects and sculpture.
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“...in pursuit of the status, history and future of these things that have come from our consumerism.� Kerry Maguire - Ambiguities of the third dimension
Christina Mathieson
I Carry the Weight of Your Death October 23 – November 3, 2017
Main Space
I Carry the Weight of Your Death consists of three sculptural installations of large handmade paper that embody handwritten chapters from my ongoing manuscript. Each chapter depicts the separate mindsets, times of existence, and pain associated with the initial, delayed, and suffocating reactions towards grief and loss. The paper has been tampered and activated with water in order to tear words away, obstruct and conceal vulnerable sentences, and create gaps between the interpretation of my writing and the privacy of the now deceased; the past performative act of washing away written words also represents the washing of a dead body. Christina Mathieson is a Canadian artist born and raised in Calgary, Alberta. She is currently completing her final year as a Drawing major in the BFA program at the Alberta College of Art + Design.
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“...tampered and activated with water in order to tear words away, obstruct and conceal vulnerable sentences, and create gaps between the interpretation of my writing and the privacy of the now deceased� Christina Mathieson - I Carry the Weight of Your Death
Jasmine Whiteley-Steel
The past she is haunted, the future is laced October 30 – November 24, 2017
LRT Space
Pallid, frail, the flowers now dried up The gifts they brought echoed your passing, And now remains only memory, Time , And space The hospital brings to mind only empty discomfort, Even though life is also beginning here. Sometimes they leave too soon And as you take your steps forward, looking behind, the images slowly fade, and all that’s left is re-fabricated memory
Jasmine is a Calgarian artist interested in exploring an overall conceptual basis of human vulnerabilities such as sadness, fear, loss, etc. She works in various media and is working with thoughts on materiality to push her work forwards. She has participated on some small juries, shown works on a local basis, and has participated in a couple of small markets with her jewelry.
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“The hospital brings to mind only empty discomfort, Even though life is also beginning here. Sometimes they leave too soon� Jasmine Whiteley-Steel - The past she is haunted, the future is laced
Karin Thorsteinsson
56.257070,-4.747947 November 27, 2017 – January 5, 2018
LRT Space
56.257070,-4.747947 examines how a person interacts with a space that is larger than comprehension. How we interact with spaces we cannot comprehend due to their scale is an example of the fallacy each of us confronts in our daily existence. 56.257070,-4.747947 aims to alter the viewer’s understanding in the same way in which that of the artist was altered in the presence of an unimaginably large landscape. The work’s medium speaks to the visceral reality of modern craft practice, while the panoramic viewing angles create a piece which requires more than a moment to comprehend. The GPS coordinate grounds the work while also prompting the viewer to inhabit the space as a corporeal figure. Karin Thorsteinsson is an alumnus of the Alberta College of Art + Design (BFA Fibre) and a recent graduate from the Glasgow School of Art (MLitt Fine Art Practice). She was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta and works primarily with brushed on dye and wax resist to create landscape works.
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“The work’s medium speaks to the visceral reality of modern craft practice, while the panoramic viewing angles create a piece which requires more than a moment to comprehend.” Karin Thorsteinsson – 56.257070,-4.747947
Brandon Giessmann
In Memory, Permanence (Facade) November 30, 2017 - January 2, 2018
Main Space
In Memory, Permanence (Facade) is an exploration in mimicking spaces dedicated to loss, reflection, and compassion such as memorials and cemeteries through installation and performance. It references initiatives and work by other artists and activists, as well as historical events and figures, related to gender, sexuality, and trauma. Visual imagery and written language are adopted from various sources to propose discussions on the evolution of ideologies, the process of healing, and the struggle to contribute to conversations surrounding identity when one remains unsure or fearful. Brandon Giessmann is an artist and designer who focuses on the intersections between identity and trauma. Studying Print Media and Illustration at the Alberta College of Art + Design, he hopes to continue his exploration in creating inclusive spaces that enable discussion, vulnerability, and comfort, while reflecting on his own experiences and the ways in which they can be used to promote empathy.
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“... an exploration in mimicking spaces dedicated to loss, reflection, and compassion such as memorials and cemeteries through installation and performance.” Brandon Giessmann – In Memory, Permanence (Facade)
Alexa Bunnell
A memoir for a woman I didn’t know and the man who plays the banjo December 4, 2017 - February 2, 2018
+15 Space
A memoir for a woman I didn’t know and the man who plays the banjo examines the relationship between our physical, tactile environment and the intangible human memory. This work is investigating the dynamic between tactile objects and immaterial sentiment thought. At the time of collection of the objects I was grieving, from a distance, two people. Objects were the closest I could get to the wavering memories I had of these people. It terrified me. The column is made of jars that contain on the surface my intangible memory. The objects are the remnants of these individuals. I am seeking the place where I stand here. Alexa Bunnell is a queer emerging artist and student based in Calgary, Alberta. She works primarily through ceramic methods and processes. She is currently a candidate for a Bachelors of Fine Art in Ceramics at Alberta College of Art + Design.
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“This work is investigating the dynamic between tactile objects and immaterial sentiment thought.” Alexa Bunnell – A memoir for a woman I didn’t know and the man who plays the banjo
Leonard Mostacci
Language January 7 - February 2, 2018
Main Space
The box is a language that has helped to physically shape our entire infrastructure. Over years of evolution, this simple shape has helped us structure and control what we think the meaning of our existence is. All forms of language eventually fit into a widespread structure. Any language we choose to jump on becomes subject to structure, thus giving us a preexisting form and the future manipulation of this. I’m trying to understand how to escape a system through structural form, sound, reflection, and light, which in hindsight creates a system that is acquired through previously subjected practices. My work deals primarily with language and the manipulation and transformation of this through sound, light, illusion, and repetition within constructed forms. I’m trying to establish an understanding of inner and outer time and space as an idea to potentially transcend beyond object and into the metaphysical.
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“Over years of evolution, this simple shape has helped us structure and control what we think the meaning of our existence is.” Leonard Mostacci – Language
Janeen Scott
The Hunt January 8 - February 2, 2018
LRT Space
Manifesting religious imagery from my Catholic upbringing positioned against occultism, I design hybrid iconographic narratives that explore memory and sexuality. Conjuring ghostly landscapes of the body, I revisit the depiction of a witch woman who acts as a monstrous interpretation of my identity. I currently analyze the reoccurring image of the unicorn in my life and investigate the Christian significance of the 14th Century Unicorn Tapestries. In these dense tapestries the unicorn is a representation of purity/holiness. The beast is used to illustrate the corruption of man and the importance of an uncorrupted woman. Adopting this visual language my drawings are mysterious and unsettling materializations of my eroticized self-portrait committing acts of violence and humiliation upon the unicorn. They function as allegorical diary entries where I attempt to conjure the intangible sensations of regret, anger and sexual turmoil. Janeen Scott is a Calgarian artist completing her BFA at the Alberta College of Art + Design with a major in Painting. Her practice focuses on the ritualistic nature of drawing and the continuous representation of a witch entity that functions as her self-portrait. She derives material from a constant juxtaposition of her Catholic upbringing and its parallels to occultism and witchcraft.
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“Conjuring ghostly landscapes of the body, I revisit the depiction of a witch woman who acts as a monstrous interpretation of my identity.” Janeen Scott – The Hunt
Kyrsten Lofts
Wake Up Sterile Nightmare February 5 - 16, 2018
Main Space
Through painting I critically examine medical and art historical contexts that have informed a subjective understanding of the body. Using a method of depiction, idealized sculptural bodies are met with synthetic tubes, plastic sheets, and technologies, held together by a metal rod in a tentative structure, ready to break or bend under the weight they carry. This weight is not purely formal, but the weight of anxieties of mortality, and the everlasting heroic battle to fight human expiry. My paintings attempt to memorialize the phrase “as long as humanly possible”, searching for what this statement truly means in light of today’s medical endeavours and the quest of heroic divinity over the corporeal. Kyrsten Lofts is a Canadian interdisciplinary artist whose work aims to de-familiarize predetermined knowledge of the human form and its function. Material research and ideas of restoration, mortality, fragility, familial relationships, and faith drive investigation within her practice. She is currently attending the Alberta College of Art + Design majoring in Painting.
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“This weight is not purely formal, but the weight of anxieties of mortality, and the everlasting heroic battle to fight human expiry. ” Kyrsten Lofts – Wake Up Sterile Nightmare
Jaime McDonald
How Far You’ve Come February 5 - March 2, 2018
LRT Space
Assigned binaries and expectations are the primary focus of this work. With the use of documented performance, textile elements, and a mirror, it demonstrates the struggle of forced routines and expectations placed on gender identities. The way in which the work is installed is to be read from left to right, creating a narrative and questioning those who pass by if they are contributing to the limiting standards of society. By making the issue of body politics into tangible installations when they are often disregarded and invisible, I am able to confront the audience and ask them in an aesthetic way how they resonate or contribute to these politics. Jaime McDonald is a queer MeĚ tis woman working towards her BFA at the Alberta College of Art + Design with a major in Media Arts. Her practice is primarily based around reclaiming and grasping onto her identity in a non-intersectional society. She uses feelings of nostalgia, longing, and confrontation to address the binaries she faces.
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“With the use of documented performance, textile elements, and a mirror, it demonstrates the struggle of forced routines and expectations placed on gender identities.” Jaime McDonald – How Far You’ve Come
Emilie MacPhail
Reveries February 5 - March 30, 2018
+15 Space
Reveries explores Emilie MacPhail’s connection to the natural landscapes that surround her home. Having long felt a deep spiritual connection to these spaces, she uses her experiences within them as an escape, as therapy and for meditation. During these moments, MacPhail has a tendency to collect natural materials as mementoes of these experiences, supplies for her pieces and for inspiration when creating work. She uses a variety of Fibre techniques such as embroidery, weaving and felting to create a collaboration between object and artist. Each piece tells the story of a memory, in a subtle and quiet way. MacPhail is currently attending the Alberta College of Art + Design, to obtain her BFA in Fibre. Much of her work is inspired by the Albertan landscape’s native flora and fauna. She works with Fibre techniques such as weaving, embroidery, felting and silkscreen printing. emilie.macphail@gmail.com www.emiliemacphail.com
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“Having long felt a deep spiritual connection to these spaces, she uses her experiences within them as an escape, as therapy and for meditation. Each piece tells the story of a memory, in a subtle and quiet way.” Emilie MacPhail – Reveries
Signy Holm
Vatniรฐ (For the Lake) February 19 - March 2, 2018
Main Space
Vatniรฐ (For the Lake) is an installation exploring memory and longing and the attempts that one makes to relive the places of the past. Sound recordings that have been isolated become repetitive mantras, yet the distortion of the voices create a distance and a desire for clarity that cannot be attained. Collected artifacts such as beach glass, stones and shells are manipulated through physical and digital interventions. These objects become unfamiliar and skewed from their original state. The viewer is free to move through the installation and to allow the various objects and sounds to inform them, with the evocation of the past in a present space. Signy Holm is in her third year at the Alberta College of Art + Design studying Drawing. She works primarily in performance, new media and sculpture. She is currently the director of HORSE CLUB, a student-run club dedicated to the facilitation of media arts, as well as a member of The Pidgin Collective, a student group focused on writing and critical discourse. Signy Holm lives and works in Calgary, Alberta.
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“...move through the installation and to allow the various objects and sounds to inform them, with the evocation of the past in a present space.” Signy Holm – Vatnið (For the Lake)
Jenna Wyatt
Romanticizations and Judgements March 5 - 30, 2018
LRT Space
Through mixed media work, I examine the archive that we create when posting on social media. Using text from my personal social media posts, I create a comparison of thoughts that someone might think in person versus what they would post online. This collection of text pieces on cellophane touches on widespread yet unmentioned issues such as the romanticization of mental illness online, beauty standards for women and how that impacts judgements, and disparities between one’s identity in person and the identities we create online. Jenna Wyatt is a Canadian interdisciplinary artist whose work is questioning the romanticization of mental health issues, set beauty standard for women online as well as identity in real life versus identities we create online. She is currently attending the Alberta College of Art + Design, majoring in Drawing.
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“Using text from my personal social media posts, I create a comparison of thoughts that someone might think in person versus what they would post online.” Jenna Wyatt − Romanticizations and Judgements
Martina Westib
S(ing)k March 5 - 16, 2018
Main Space
Through my work I explore the idea of the reservoir as a repository for matter. With the sink as a metaphor we can think of its form as a container for collected energies that are in varying states of release over time. My works are resonant bodies recording the moment of impact. They absorb instances of directional force and reverberate the dual nature of experience. Caught in cycles and outside of them simultaneously, they are fast and slow, touched and untouched as they retain and let go. Martina is a multi media artist who has been highly impacted by a life of travel, adaptation, and curiosity. Her current practice is an exploration of longing and displacement. She will be graduating from ACAD in 2018, and has been nominated for BMO 1st Art! Prize and the ACAD Board of Governors Graduating Student Award.
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“Caught in cycles and outside of them simultaneously, they are fast and slow, touched and untouched as they retain and let go.” Martina Westib − S(ing)k
Seth Cardinal
Pointing The Finger #2 April 2 - May 25, 2018
+15 Space
This is where it was, and this is what I saw. This is what I see, and this is what’s there now. Pointing The Finger #2 is a way to provide a voice for myself, my family and our land and homes that were destroyed to build the SW Calgary Ring Road AKA Tsuut’ina Trail. Who is in charge and who is responsible? Who do we celebrate and who do we listen to? If I don’t speak up, how can people forget a history they were told never existed? I am a multi-disciplinary artist and experimental musician that grew up on my family’s land in Tsuut’ina. My current practice is influenced by memory, place, trauma and the reconciliation between the three to reveal overwritten truths.
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“Who is in charge and who is responsible? Who do we celebrate and who do we listen to? If I don’t speak up, how can people forget a history they were told never existed?” Seth Cardinal − Pointing The Finger #2
Collin Brown
Further Reductions April 2 - 13, 2018
Main Space
My research and practice are concerned with problems of representation related to disparities between the map and the territory. The map, being an abstraction of site will never contain full fidelity to that which it represents. Further Reductions is an exhibition of sculptures that involve a speculative modeling of space, representations that engender thought concerning dissonance between representation and reality. Collin is an undergraduate in his final year at the Alberta College of Art + Design, he is a nominee for the BMO 1st Art! Prize, and ACAD Board of Governors Graduating Student Award in Sculpture. His studio- based practice is informed by process and material investigations that negotiate ways of looking.
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“The map, being an abstraction of site will never contain full fidelity to that which it represents.” Collin Brown − Further Reductions
Alec Brilling
Δt April 2 - 27, 2018
LRT Space
Designed environments made to increase the flow of information often are created in a manner that promote the information seen fit by those who have designed them while inhibiting the impressions of actions by those who inhabit them. The motives of these spaces, with rigid surfaces made to be wiped clean, should be questioned and how the lasting presence can be incorporated into them. Δt explores how the nonlinear memory of a space can be accessed as well as overwritten by the presence of those passing by and how that presence can be made known to others. Alec Brilling is a student at the Alberta College of Art + Design studying media arts. His practice explores perception and environments, how spaces are occupied and the actions that take place within them. Often making use of sound and light, his works focus on the active presence of participants.
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“Δt explores how the nonlinear memory of a space can be accessed as well as overwritten by the presence of those passing by and how that presence can be made known to others.” Alec Brilling − Δt
Amy Hein
Gather. Preserve. Repeat. April 16 - 27, 2018
Main Space
Gather. Preserve. Repeat. reflects on the cellar spaces and basements of old homes, made for storing foods and preparing for habitation. It is a place meant for safety, family, and storage. In this body of work, jarred natural dyes represent the preserved foods in times of hardship and the memories made from making jarred goods. Painting with natural dyes is a way I disperse memory over a surface and bring attention to the water from the land by using collected snow and rainwater. The emphasis of food and place, which reoccurs through much of my work, preserves the memory of home and my Aboriginal heritage. Amy Hein is a graduate from Sheridan College in Ontario and a forth year Drawing student at ACAD graduating May 2018. She is from a small town in Central Ontario called Omemee. Amy is an active distance runner, children’s art instructor, and illustrator of the children’s story, A Forever Home.
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“...jarred natural dyes represent the preserved foods in times of hardship and the memories made from making jarred goods. Painting with natural dyes is a way I disperse memory over a surface” Amy Hein − Gather. Preserve. Repeat.
Riley Thérèse
Baptizing a Ghost May 1 – June 29, 2018
LRT Space
Baptizing a Ghost examines the aftermath of losing a family member. Using tissue paper left in my religious grandmother’s house after her passing, I sewed together a jacket that fits my form. In preforming a baptism upon myself wearing said jacket, I investigate the rituals that the living preform to comfort themselves in the wake of a death. By exposing the value of vulnerability and the significance of discomfort, I use the gallery as a platform to implicate the viewer in a dialogue pertaining to the hardships experienced by the both of us. Riley Thérèse is a Calgary and San Francisco based artist currently completing their BFA at the Alberta College of Art + Design. Working with personalized experiences, they focus on mental health, gender, family, and sexuality in the creation of unintentional self-portraiture.
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“By exposing the value of vulnerability and the significance of discomfort, I use the gallery as a platform to implicate the viewer in a dialogue pertaining to the hardships experienced by the both of us.” Riley Thérèse – Baptizing a Ghost
Lusine Manukyan
A Toast May 29 – July 27, 2018
+15 Space
A Toast is a series of drawings made with a ballpoint pen on the backs of wallpapers from my grandparents home. The wallpaper scraps are each one of a kind handmade pieces and the imagery is based on abstracted letterforms of the languages I know (Armenian, Russian and English). A Toast acts as a cryptic diary entry by shining a light behind the wallpaper pieces I am able to transport the drawn images to the front, hinting to history lying beneath the surface, reenacting events that took place in that household. Lusine Manukyan is a Calgary based artist and a recent Alberta College of Art + Design graduate. As an immigrant, she’s interested in themes surrounding identity and constructs of cultural identity. By embracing the complexities of her cultural history and national identity she makes work that reference time and patterns of life.
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“A Toast acts as a cryptic diary entry by shining a light behind the wallpaper pieces I am able to transport the drawn images to the front, hinting to history lying beneath the surface, reenacting events that took place in that household.” Lusine Manukyan – A Toast
Anna Semenoff
Set June 19 – August 17, 2018
Main Space
An expanding pattern displays itself through four corresponding entities – Set depends on the relationships inside of itself. The notion of duality is undermined by the internal possibility, the indeterminacy of a system before it materializes. The opposing features lack identity; situated within the realm of comparison, they can be easily rearranged and still provide a similar outcome. The checkered pattern emerges within the confines of limitation and possibility. The pattern depends upon its own internal structure, yet it occupies a single material potential. Imprisoned within its own specificity, Set is one of unlimited versions of itself. It is its order – satisfied within its complacent specificity. Anna Semenoff is a Calgary based artist; she is completing her degree at the Alberta College of Art + Design in Sculpture. Interested in spaces – her installations consider a phenomenological framework – the relationships between things and people regarding our placements. Presented in partnership with Sled Island Music & Arts Festival.
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“Imprisoned within its own specificity, Set is one of unlimited versions of itself. It is its order – satisfied within its complacent specificity.” Anna Semenoff – Set