Two-campus art quartet
While Concordia boasts a fine arts faculty with an international reputation, the university is also home to four distinctive galleries that showcase art from campus faculty and students as well as work from around the world.
The Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery
Located in the J. W. McConnell Library Building, 1400 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W.
Gallery director Michèle Thériault says the mandate of the Ellen Art Gallery is twofold: “We try to do two things: we curate contemporary art and we also look at the recent history of contemporary art.” And while the Ellen Art Gallery does occasionally exhibit the work of Concordia faculty, staff or alumni, its mandate is “to investigate contemporary art and curating practices in a critical frame.” Thériault says this season is especially exhilarating, including the current showing of the work of Martha Wilson, the founder and director of Franklin Furnace, a major centre for avant-garde art in New York City. “She is an artist who really explores notions of self and identity in her work. She asked, ‘Who am I as a woman artist?’ She paved the way for a lot of other artists who explored identity in their work, like photographer Cindy Sherman.” The show closes on February 19.
Thériault is also excited about the work of Toronto-based aboriginal artist Kent Monkman, who will mount his show My Treaty Is with the Crown this March and April at the Ellen. “Monkman is a very important up-and-coming First Nations artist. I asked him to propose a project for the gallery. His work offers a critique of the discourse on First Nations people through the lens of queer culture. His landscape installations and videos have gained notoriety for the way he rethinks the concept of civilization, injecting his works with healthy (and much-needed) doses of irony. He has received critical raves from The Guardian, and Canadian Art magazine declared his genre-busting work ‘brilliant.’”
“Obviously, we love it if lots of people come to the gallery,” says Thériault. “But popularity is not a criterion that determines programming. What is important is making the visitor think about various issues in contemporary culture through what they experience at the gallery.”
Faculty of Fine Arts (FOFA) Gallery
Located in the Engineering, Computer Science and Visual Arts Integrated Complex, 1515 St. Catherine St. W.
The FOFA Gallery’s mandate is specifically to showcase work of the faculty, staff, students and alumni of the Faculty of Fine Arts. “We’re a bit of an interlocutor with the other galleries,” says director jake moore. “I see that in a very positive way. Our role is to serve the Faculty of Fine Arts. The Ellen Gallery has a curatorial role and is perhaps more like a museum in that they have a permanent collection. We are street level. We’re mutable, depending on the practice and developments within the Faculty of Fine Arts.”
February 18 to 20 will see the Compulsive Browse Colloquium, a think tank/research working group in which artists will be invited to explore the distinct research cultures that evolve around contemporary artistic practice. Curated by Rebecca Duclos, the colloquium will strive to provide an open forum in which participants can describe in detail their “information-seeking behaviours.” In February and March, the FOFA Gallery will present Domestic Queens, curated by internationally-renowned artist Evergon. The exhibit features the work of four young gay male artists, who will relate their sexuality to their respective domestic spaces. This exhibit will be in parallel with 27 x Doug, by Manitoba artist Larry Glawson, in the main gallery as well as a symposium on the issues raised by the exhibits.
Moore stresses that this year will also mean “moving out of the university more, and making connections with other Montreal groups and artists. We will be coordinating with Nuit Blanche, turning a space outside the gallery into a place for projection. We will also be working with the Edgy Women Festival. This type of relationship between the university-based practices and the multiple vibrant Montreal communities is crucial.”
VAV Gallery
Located in the Visual Arts Building, 1396 René-Lévesque Blvd. W.
The VAV Gallery is a democratically run student exhibit space that consistently showcases the very best works of Concordia student artists.
Gallery co-director Rossanne Clamp says shows included one that dealt with how humans and computers are interrelated. The show drew attention to "the ambiguity of the effects of these new technologies in our lives,” she says. Another show that will open in February is Just Montreal, featuring artistic reflections on living in the city.
The VAV Gallery prides itself on showing the fresh work of young Concordia students, unfiltered and unplugged. Last year’s exhibit of Michael Magnussen’s sketch drawings and pastels of animals and humananimal hybrids was a standout. “The animals in my work are just another way to draw myself,” Magnussen said at the time. “I have always been interested in secret identities and superheroes, and sometimes I want to talk about personal parts of my life, but it’s not always easy to be completely honest. So caribous have been my secret identity, and I think drawing from my memories and then translating them into caribou gives me a chance to step back and understand them on a different level. Kinda like when a therapist does an inkblot test and asks you what you see in the inkblot.”
The VAV Gallery will continue to highlight the unusual and quirky imaginations of Concordia students this year.
Communication Studies Media Gallery
Located in the Communications Studies and Journalism Building, 7141 Sherbrooke St. W.
The Communication Studies Media Gallery is the youngest of Concordia’s four galleries, and the only one on the Loyola Campus. “When Communication Studies moved into the CJ Building six years ago, we had a designated space for a gallery, but it had never been ‘activated,’” explains Department Chair and Gallery Director Rae Staseson. “Our mandate is a very basic one, to showcase professional local, national and international artists working in media.”
Staseson and Communication Studies professor Kim Sawchuk pushed ahead with the opening of the gallery in November of 2009. They wanted to start off with some local talent so their first show was a series of photos by renowned Concordia professor and experimental filmmaker Rick Hancox, an exhibit that generated great interest from the public and press.
As the only gallery on the Loyola Campus, the space is both an attraction and a means to develop collaborations with other media-based projects, like the Mobile Media Gallery. “We want to build momentum and support innovative and smart projects by artists working in a variety of media.”
Their show Marconi’s Ruins features works by Michael Longford and Robert Prenovault. “This was the first guy to transmit messages through early wireless technologies. It’s a landmark, watershed moment, when things really changed. I think it’ll be intriguing for everyone, but very informative for the students to see this exhibit,” says Staseson.
Related links:
• More information on the artists and project
• Department of Communications Studies
• Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery
• FOFA Gallery
• VAV Gallery
• Mobile Media Gallery