Fine Arts e-broadcast - September 2013

I would like to extend a warm welcome to new and returning faculty, staff and students. I hope you have had an enjoyable and productive summer.

La Rentrée has gotten off to a busy start. I am pleased to share a few key highlights with you.

Shuffle 2013 – Fri. Sept. 27 at 1 p.m. (starting in EV Atrium)

I invite you to join me on the 6.5 km walk from Sir George Williams to the Loyola campus in support of undergraduate and graduate student bursaries. I have pledged a minimum donation of $250 and $5 for each Fine Arts participating faculty and staff member. I hope you can join me and others in the Faculty to help our students reach their goals. To register and find out about other pledges that will make your commitment grow in value, please visit the Shuffle 2014 web page.

Welcome to new faculty

Please join me in welcoming the following new faculty members holding tenure-track and extended term appointment positions in 2013-14.

• Luigi Allemano (Cinema)
• Mitch Mitchell (Studio Arts)
• Luc Otter (Cinema)
• Nicola Pezolet (Art History)
• MJ Thompson (Art Education)
• Eldad Tsabary (Music)

Learn more about the expertise they bring to Fine Arts.


Welcome also to five post-doctoral fellows: Samuel Gaudreau-Lalande (Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art), Ilona Hongisto (Cinema), Michael Hornblow (Studio Arts), Doug Van Noort (Topological Media Lab) and Eric Weichel (Art History).

Promotion to professor

Seven Faculty of Fine Arts faculty members were promoted to the rank of full professor in June. Congratulations to Lorrie Blair (Art Education), David Elliott (Studio Arts), pk Langshaw (Design and Computation Arts), Richard Lachapelle (Art Education), Louise Lamarre (Cinema), Martin Lefebvre (Cinema) and Janet Werner (Studio Arts). Read more

New videos: Department of Music
New recruitment videos were created for our music programs last spring. Check out what our dedicated faculty, students and alumni had to say about their time at Concordia.

• Electroacoustic Studies
• Major in Music
• Jazz Studies

FOFA Gallery’s La Rentrée

The FOFA Gallery kicked off the fall semester with a singular creative event: 27 students reproduced four wall drawings by Sol LeWitt, an American pioneer of minimalism and conceptual art, under the guidance of artist and long-time LeWitt assistant Anthony Sansotta.

The drawings will be on view at the FOFA Gallery until October 25 and on the second floor of the VA Building through 2015. Current students Alexandra Côté and Candice Davis, and alumna Kyla Chevrier – whose practices echo the conceptual movement LeWitt helped forge – also have work on display at the gallery. For more information, visit the FOFA Gallery website.

Concrete support from realtor

The Faculty of Fine Arts has been recognized as a leading producer of creative talent in Canada by First Capital Realty. The company has established a sculpture contest and award for graduate students at the university.

Faculty news and events

Erin Manning (Cinema/Studio Arts) is the lead researcher on a project that recently received $2.95 million from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The project – Immediations – will explore how arts-based research creates new forms of knowledge that cannot be conveyed by the standard written dissertation, and investigate innovative ways of evaluating knowledge produced outside of the mainstream research setting. Read more about Manning and her team’s work.



Anita Sinner (Art Education) recently published a new book entitled Unfolding the Unexpectedness of Uncertainty (SensePublishers, 2013), in which she invites readers to share in the stories of Ruth, Ann and Nathalie as they transition from students to teachers.

Clara Gutsche (Studio Arts) has work on display as part of the Auteur Photography in Quebec exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, on display until November 10, 2013.

A solo exhibition of work by Chih-Chien Wang (Studio Arts) is on view until October 12 at Pierre-Francois Ouellette art contemporain in Toronto.


Cynthia Hammond (Art History) was the plenary speaker for September’s Georgian Pleasures conference at the Holburne Museum, Bath, England (September 12 and 13). Her talk was titled The Gardens will be Illuminated: Gendered and Georgian Pleasures in the Sydney Gardens.

On September 14, Jason Edward Lewis (Design and Computation Arts) will be featured as a speaker at the TEDxMontréal event.

The Drawing Lab Dessin (DLD), a new research unit founded by Luanne Martineau, François Morelli, Eric Simon and Patrick Traer (Studio Arts) and dedicated to action and discussion around contemporary drawing practices, kicks off their fall programming with D3, contemporary drawing exhibition at the MFA Gallery on September 16. Read more about DLD.

As part of the Lens of the Family series, Evergon (Studio Arts) will take part in a discussion examining ageing parents, adult children and art at the St. James United Church on September 22 and 29.

On October 5, Guylaine Dionne (Cinema) will participate in the 2013 edition of the LatinArte event as a guest film director. LatinArte is also taking place at Concordia this year.

Nicola Pezolet (Art History) will be speaking at the Max and Iris Stern International Symposium on October 5 and 6 the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. His talk will be on the roles of abstract murals in industrial/corporate/public spaces in France and in Quebec in the 1950s, and will also address the work of a number of specific critics.

Call for submissions

• The deadline to submit a proposal for the June 2014 Encuentro – part conference, part festival – at Concordia is September 25. Read more.

• Congrès de l’Association francophone pour le savoir  (Acfas), which will be held at Concordia in May 2014, is accepting proposals for conference sessions until November 4 and for individual presentations until November 25. Learn more.

Student and alumni news

Mark Clintberg, Art History PhD candidate, is one of the shortlisted candidates (Prairies/North finalist), for the 2013 Sobey Art Award, one of Canada's pre-eminent prizes for contemporary art. The winner will be announced on October 9.

All three of the 2013 recipients of Hnatyshyn Foundation's Charles Pachter Prize for Emerging Canadian Artists – current student Marlène Renaud-B., and alumnae Andréanne Godin, MFA 09, and Kim Kielhofner, BFA 07 – are from the Department of Studio Arts. The Hnatyshyn Foundation also named theatre performance student Sarah Marchard as one of eight emerging performing artists.

Recent Studio Arts graduate Laura Rokas-Bérubé, BFA 13, was named the Quebec regional winner of the 2013 BMO 1st Art! Invitational Student Art Competition for her piece, Life's a Beach.

Amélie Proulx, BFA 06, is nominated for the RBC Emerging Artist award and the $10,000 grand prix. The winner will be decided by the public – visit the Gardiner Museum website to cast your vote.

Alumnus Kim Nguyen, BFA 97, director of the highly acclaimed film Rebelle, has been invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the influential organization whose members select the Oscar winners every year.

Alternative rock group Metric, which features Concordia alumna Emily Haines, BFA 97 as lead singer, has been shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize. The 2013 Polaris laureate will be named on September 23.

John Zeppetelli, BFA 84, was named as director and chief curator of the Musée d'art Contemporain de Montréal.


Fine Arts in the news

Lynn Hughes, co-founder of the Centre for Technoculture, Art and Games (TAG), appeared on Radio-Canada’s La sphère with Matthieu Dugal in late June to discuss the Critical Hit program. She also appeared on Radio-Canada International with Adrien Lachance and CIBL's Animer Montréal.  An article about the program was also featured in The Globe and Mail.

The FOFA Gallery’s FREE | TRADE exhibition was featured on Blouin Art Info.

Erin Manning’s SenseLab and the August’s Three Mile Meal event was covered in The Gazette (August 21) and in Rover Arts (August 30).


Upcoming events

• Conversations in Contemporary Art presents Christopher Kulendran Thomas in conversation with Helen Kaplinsky (Sept. 26) and Chih-Chien Wang (October 10).
• The Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture presents Dean Spade (Seattle University School of Law) on September 27.


• The Hexagram-Concordia Distinguished Speaker Series kicks off on September 27 with a lecture Renée Green entitled Other Planes of There.

• The launch of the new Studio 7 season is on September 27. Check out what last year’s participating artists, curators and technicians had to say.

• Concordia will co-host the Canadian Association of Fine Arts Deans annual conference in October with McGill University and Université du Québec à Montréal. The October 3 keynote address with Georgina Born, whose research encompasses ethnographic and theoretical writings on music, media and cultural production, is open to the public.
• Speaking of Photography presents Mois de la photo guest curator Paul Wombell (October 4).
• The 2013-14 Design speaker series launches with Albena Yaneva (co-sponsored with LEAP and Université de Montréal) on October 10. Visit the Design and Computation Arts website for more information.