Research workshop

RESEARCH WORKSHOP : MFA GALLERY
workshop leaders:  Devon Knowles and Luanne Martineau

Participants:

Beth Frey | Brendan Flanagan | Colleen Heslin
Hideki Kawashima | Kerri-Lynn Reeves |Kristin Nelson
Nathaniel Hurtubise | Sandra Smirle | Sheena Hoszko
Travis McEwen | Yannick Desranleau | Candice Davies

The Deskilling and Reskilling of Artistic Production research workshop will focus specifically on how contemporary artists are revisiting the skill of making as a place from which to critique or react to the post-digital age of software-specific art and design, consumerism, condensed time, and globalism. Can subjective forms of expression be reconciled with capitalist methods of production? What is the place of skilled artisanal production in a technological society? There is a limited history of “artistic disinterest” in the modernist tradition within craftsmanship, and artisanal skill has long been intrinsic to cultural displays of money, class, social status, ancestral pedigree, and associated privilege. Pulling together practicing artists and art theorists to discuss these most pressing questions within the forums of a seminar-workshop and lecture panel series, The Deskilling and Reskilling of Artistic Production will be a multi-dimensional research environment for evaluating and discussing this profound shift in the understanding of contemporary artistic production. Within this vibrant context, the workshop further presses these issues in a form of occupation of the MFA gallery, wherein the traditional site for display becomes the active and shared site of production, whether of thought or of making.  Its outcomes, unlike most sites of labour, are not pre-determined.

Devon Knowles maintains a materially centered practice that assesses historical and contemporary models of production and how these form material language. She utilizes this language to establish an intimacy directly between the physical material, its use, and its history. It is from within this blended configuration that her practice engages, and where the conscious act of making becomes conceptually productive.

Knowles received her MFA from the University of Victoria in 2008 and holds a BA from the University of Guelph.  Her work has been included in numerous exhibitions including Vancouver Art Gallery (Vancouver, BC), Western Front (Vancouver, BC), Or Gallery (Vancouver, BC), Mercer Union (Toronto, ON), HQ (Brooklyn, NY), Space 1026 (Philadelphia, PA), S.A.I.R (Jyderup, Denmark) and Night Gallery (Los Angeles, CA). In 2014 she will be launching her first artist book, participating in the Artist-in-Residence program Mecklenburg Inspiriet, Külungsborn, Germany and will complete her first public art commission in Burnaby, BC.

Luanne Martineau is an Associate Professor of Painting + Drawing at Concordia University whose research practice explores the social stratification of artistic production and the “naturalized” fissures between art genres, engaging a long tradition of satire and critique within contemporary art. Interconnecting processes of craft with the suppressed narratives of the artisan within minimalist and post-minimalist “deskilled” materiality, Martineau’s research pursues the conflation of method, style and ideology within artistic manufacture. Martineau’s work has been exhibited across Canada and internationally, with most recent group exhibitions at the National Gallery of Canada, the Vancouver Art Gallery, The Power Plant, The Banff Centre for the Arts, and the Massachusettes Museum of Contemporary Art. Recent solo exhibitions include the Art Gallery of Windsor, Rodman Hall Arts Centre / Brock University, and the Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal. In 2007 Martineau was the recipient of the Shadbolt Foundation’s VIVA Award for the Visual Arts, and in 2009 represented British Columbia and the Yukon for the Sobey Art Award of Canada.

PARTICIPANTS

Candice Davies : As a material and process based sculptor formerly based in Toronto, Candice Davies earned a B.F.A Spec Honours in Visual Arts from York University and is currently completing her MFA in Sculpture at Concordia University. She has exhibited in Canada and in The United States, most recently at FOFA Gallery, Montreal (2013) The Helen Day Art Center, Vermont (2013), Parisian Laundry, Montreal (2013), Nowhere Gallery, Montreal (2013), O’Born Contemporary, Toronto (2013), Propeller: Centre for the Visual Arts, Toronto (2012), Ontario Crafts Council, Toronto (2012). Recently she completed a residency at Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art ,Winnipeg (2013). Upcoming residences include Vermont Studio Center, Vermont (2014) and a Special Projects Exhibition at Circa Exhibition Center, Montreal (2014).
candicedavies.com

Yannick Desranleau lives and works in Montréal. Since 2000 he collaborates with Chloe Lum on diverse projects spanning the fields of visual arts, music, and experimental graphic design. They have exhibited their installation work in Canada and abroad, notably at The Blackwood Gallery (University of Toronto, 2012), Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal (Québec Triennial 2011), Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna, Austria, 2010), BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art (Gateshead, England, 2009), Peacock Visual Arts (Aberdeen, Scotland, 2009), and Whitechapel Project Space (London, England, 2007). Their work is in many private and public collections, notably the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Until 2012, Lum and Desranleau were part of avant-rock trio AIDS Wolf.
www.seripop.com

Brendan Flanagan is a Montreal based painter, whose recent work has used digital tools to trespass into installation and sculpture. He holds a BFA from the Ontario College of Art and Design and is currently working on his thesis for Concordia’s MFA program.  His work has been shown across Canada, as well as in the United States, Germany, and the Netherlands. Most recently he was a finalist for the RBC Painting Prize held at the National Gallery of Canada, and an artist in residence with OCAD University’s Digital Atelier program.
brendanflanagan.ca

After growing up in Nanaimo BC and receiving a BFA at the University of Victoria, Beth Freyspent a number of years living in various regions across the country before arriving in Montreal to begin her MFA in Painting and Drawing at Concordia. Stemming from a drawing practice that now incorporates sculpture and site-specific performance, Frey ties together abjection and grotesque performances of femininity to create new narratives of girlhood. She has shown in galleries across Canada, as well as Chicago, IL and Rabat, Morocco. Frey’s separate illustration practice has graced covers of Shameless magazine and Crow Toes Quarterly, and has been featured in the Huffington Post and E! Talk starring the venerable Ben Mulroney.

Colleen Heslin is a Vancouver and Montreal based artist and independent curator. Heslin is a current MFA Candidate in Painting and Drawing at Concordia University and a recent winner of the 2013 RBC Painting Competition. With a BFA from Emily Carr University in Photography, Heslin’s work explores medium crossovers between painting, sculpture, fibers and photography.  Founder of The Crying Room Projects, an independent project space, Heslin facilitates an ongoing public mural space for emerging artists in Vancouver. Her work and writing have been published and exhibited in Canada, USA, and Europe.

Sheena Hoszko is a Montreal-based sculptor examining materiality as it relates to social justice, public institutions, and power. Having studied at the Emily Carr University of Art + Design, she is now completing an MFA at Concordia University where she received a SSHRC grant for her research. Hoszko’s work has been shown in Argentina, Canada, Germany, and the UK. Her most recent project mapping CBSA Immigration Detention Centres will be shown at Centre Clark (Montreal, September 2014) as well as A Space Gallery (Toronto, January 2015).
sheenahoszko.com

Previously based in Toronto, Nathaniel Hurtubise has studied at NSCAD as well as OCAD, where he completed his BFA. His research oscillates between ancient mythologies and science fiction with a particular focus on anthropomorphism as  a dominant model for interpreting our experiences.  Nominated as a finalist in the 2013 RBC Canadian Painting Competition, his work has been exhibited in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.
nathanielhurtubise.com

Hideki  Kawashima
Hideki lived and worked in Tokyo before coming to Montreal to complete a BFA at Concordia University. He structures his art practice primarily around performance and printmaking. He employs movement and image making as a result of it, in order to make his work as a response to his personal and social circumstances. Central in his work is the idea of transfer in the tradition of print media. Through this process, he aims to create an embodiment of the immaterial – thoughts, memories, emotions and feelings.

Travis McEwen was born in Red Deer Alberta and is currently based in Montreal while working on his MFA at Concordia University. Previously based in Edmonton, he completed a BFA and Diploma of Fine Arts at the University of Alberta and Grant MacEwan College respectively.  Working primarily within the medium of painting he explores themes of otherness, queerness, and gender and how different marginalized communities employ strategies such as re-appropriation within the visual arts as forms of world making.  He has shown work throughout Canada, including Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal and Sackville, NB.

Kristin Nelson
Born in Ajax, Ontario, Kristin Nelson received her BFA in Visual Art from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design (2003) and is currently pursuing an MFA at Concordia University. Through a process of examination and re-contextualization, she transforms mundane subjects into larger social concerns looking to challenge stereotypes through her artistic practice. Since 2006, Kristin has pursued her artistic practice from the comforts of Winnipeg, Manitoba. She has exhibited works across Canada as well as in México. Nelson has served on the board of directors of the Manitoba Craft Council and the Manitoba Printmakers Association.
kristinnelson.ca

Kerri-Lynn Reeves is an interdisciplinary artist and curator originally from Winnipeg, Manitoba. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts – Honours degree from the University of Manitoba and is currently a Master of Fine Arts candidate at Concordia University. She has received awards from the Winnipeg Arts Council, the Manitoba Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts, and participated in residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Deep Bay Cabin in Riding Mountain National Park, and Mildred’s Lane. At the heart of it, her work explores the relationship of the social and the material.

Sandra Smirle is a mixed media artist who uses aerial maps as a starting point to explore how new technologies impact the way we view our world and how we in turn are viewed by these mechanisms designed to navigate our movements. Her work is included in private and corporate collections in Canada, Australia and Europe. Recently, it was selected for inclusion in The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography, published by Princeton Architectural Press. Smirle hails from Toronto and now divides her time between Montréal and Lasqueti Island, B.C. This summer she looks forward to joining the 2014 Arctic Circle Residency Expedition.
 www.sandrasmirle.com