Juried Art Show JURIED ART SHOW
Art + Body: SEE ME HEAR - Jurors 2013 Paul Butler Curator of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg Art Gallery Paul Butler is a multi-disciplinary artist whose focus is on community, collaboration, and artist-run activity. His work was featured in Winnipeg Now, the WAG’s first Centennial exhibition last fall. He was also one of 73 artists who appeared in the My Winnipeg exhibition at La Maison Rouge in Paris in 2011. He was director of The Other Gallery, a nomadic commercial gallery and the founder of the UpperTradingPost.com, a website that facilitates artist trading. Diana Thorneycroft Artist Diana Thorneycroft is a Winnipeg artist who has exhibited various bodies of work across Canada, the United States and Europe, as well as in Moscow, Tokyo and Sydney. She is the recipient of numerous awards including an Assistance to Visual Arts Long-term Grant from the Canada Council, several Senior Arts Grants from the Manitoba Arts Council and a Fleck Fellowship from the Banff Centre for the Arts. Stéphanie Chabot Artist & Artistic Coordinator, Centre des arts actuels Skol Stéphanie Chabot is a multi-disciplinary artist working primarily in painting, sculpture and installation. Her work has been shown in many artist run centers including Montréal’s La Centrale Gallery Powerhouse and Clark Gallery. Her work has also been presented in the United States, Spain, England and Australia. She is a member of the curatorial collective L’Araignée, and has been involved at La Centrale Gallery Powerhouse as both a member of the selection committee, and the interim artistic coordinator. Chabot currently lives and works in Montréal.
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Art + Body: SEE ME HEAR Art + Body: SEE ME HEAR explores the different ways of engaging body senses when one or more senses are interrupted, amplified or gone. The pieces in this exhibition are meant to explore and challenge the relationship between isolation and communication. Art + Body: Juried Art Show is a four-week exhibition presented at the St. Boniface Library from September 15, 2013 to October 10, 2013 where it will be moved to our two-day Art + Body event at the Winnipeg Art Gallery on October 11, 2013.
Art + Body: SEE ME HEAR
Juried Artists
ART + B Alice Crawford Communication, Expressive Hands, Understand 2013 - Fabric collage
Being Deaf silences sounds but on the upside it enriches the visual world. Everything is brighter and details pop out. Spoken language is not superior but a hindrance. ASL using the three dimensional space is a very practical and beautiful way of communicating. The four colourful ASL hands moving around the space communicate ideas, thoughts and emotions. The swatches represent the movement of hands talking in ASL. The bottom blue hands, ASL for “Communicate” move back and forth. The five hands above it are a single motion for “Expressive” moving up from the blue thumb down the closed fist to the open orange hand. The two spread out hands on either side is the sign for “Hands” and the top three hands is the flick motion of “Understand”. The random letters scattered around on the swatches are fragments of written English, a second language for the Deaf. ASL, the first language, has its roots from the French language. Syntaxes and sentence structures are different than written English.
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Cara Mason Disorder 2013 - Oil on canvas
Disorder is a series consisting of three different portraits of women with mental illnesses (Bipolar Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). The paintings depict a moment in which someone suffering from a mental health condition is trying to regain control over their mind. By painting three different illnesses in similar poses I am exploring how despite differing diagnoses, we all break down in the same way. In talking with others with mental illnesses I realized we all reacted very similarly when our illness took control of our body and mind. In that moment communication is nearly impossible and the person suffering has completely withdrawn from the world. Their mind becomes the only place where communication occurs, and that communication tends to be in the form of an inner battle. When posing my subjects I asked them to position themselves the way they do when having a break down. Often, people with mental illness have a default pose they use to comfort themselves and regain control. Despite the differing conditions the subjects all chose a foetal like position where they held themselves and created a barrier between the outside world and their body, cutting off communication and decreasing any sensory distractions. I believe that presenting my subjects in this manner allows the viewer a synthesized understanding of an otherwise private and personal experience. While my piece shows a withdrawal from communication I wish for my pieces to spark a discussion. I feel that the topic of mental health is often avoided and thought of as a scary and ugly thing. I want my art to create a dialogue about the subject, and present it in a beautiful way that contradicts how it is usually looked at.
David Kehrer Valise of Helen Betty. Plead, Shrouded, Iskotew, Clear 2012 - Mixed media on board
This is a sculptural piece comprised of four paintings. Two double sided paintings are brought together to form a valise. While two paintings are on the outside of the valise, the other two are inside. The paint is present, and we are unable to see it all. The valise may be turned inside out, revealing the hidden paintings while obscuring the ones that were seen. And so on. Close your ears. Is a picture that cannot be seen like a sound that cannot be heard? Words, written, spoken that connect, connote, and emit. Plead, Shrouded, Iskotew, Clear. Image in a sound. A sound in an image. Imagine. Helen Betty, a young woman, a visitor, an aspiring teacher. Is her voice lost, to our collective malfunction, to a culture of misogyny and racism? We are able to sense herself resounding.
Diane Dreidger Masters 2011 - Watercolour
These painting are part of a larger series of paintings about chronic illness and disability where I am painting myself into the “Master’s” paintings. The “Master’s” are artists with disabilities with whom I feel an affinity, such as Frida Kahlo, Maud Lewis, Claude Monet, and Vincent Van Gogh. Self-Portrait as the Bluebird of Happiness in a Maud Lewis Painting I painted myself into a typical Maud Lewis bluebird painting to show my affinity with her vision of a bright and happy world. Lewis (1903-1970) was a Nova Scotia folk artist with disabilities who colorfully painted flowers, landscapes and animals on canvas and on everyday objects like dustpans and the walls of her home. Crucifixion (After Frida Kahlo’s Broken Column) The Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), is well known for her self-portraits which address her life with disability head on. I have painted myself into her Broken Column painting, as this painting best describes my own experience of chronic pain with fibromyalgia. In fact, doctors have speculated that Kahlo may have also had fibromyalgia. This painting portrays the pain points well known to those with this disability. Self-Portrait with Skeleton (After Frida Kahlo’s Self-Portrait with Parrot) In this painting, I show affinity with Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), the Mexican artist with disability, who experienced chronic pain, fatigue and loss of mobility. She painted a parrot to show life in her original painting. I have painted a skeleton here to portray my pondering of pain, chronic illness and its relationship to mortality.
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JURIED Marie LeBlanc Red Dress 2013 - Digital photograph
My multiple disabilities allow me to see things from a different perspective, one which I choose to communicate through the lens of the camera. This is how I, as someone who encounters barriers at every turn, see the world; the camera is my eye and my guide to what I see, feel, hear and remember. Without my disabilities I may not have discovered photography. I use the camera to see where I have been, and where I am going. It serves as my memory bank, creating a visual record as to what I have done during a day. My disabilities prevent me from remembering things and the visual distortions I experience are getting worse. Therefore, I use the ‘eye’ of the camera to capture the shadows and reflections that define the physical world around me. Often, no one notices this play of dark and light and the ephemeral images superimposed on shimmering glass or mirror surfaces until I point them out. I create and photograph layers of reflected images on windows, including my own reflection. The resulting image is beautiful but it is a distorted reality; it is my fractured reality. It situates and keeps me in the present moment. The camera is my eye….looking in front of me, behind me and through me, appreciating what I see, feel, and believe. Taking pictures brings out my inner child; I can play with what I see, wherever I am. Taking pictures helps me in many ways to improve my life. I like to grab the viewers’ attention to inspire them and sometimes, to create conflict or joy or emotions not yet recognized. This allows them to transform their perception of themselves, others and the world, creating new awareness and ideas on what they see. This may spark them to create a change or belief; to do something that they thought they could not do before. Everyone’s perception of what they see and the emotions each picture creates is different. Red Dress: Superimposing my image onto this formal gown represents for me my inner beauty in a world that often seems chaotic and confusing.
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Ron Dini I SEE...
2013 - Pencil crayon on paper
Doing art makes everything go away. All my life I avoided aesthetic decision making, or so I thought. I didn’t even have the language to say that until sometime in 2008. When I took my first art class in 2007, it was because I desperately needed something that would be good for my soul. A friend recommended an art course in the Leisure Guide. I had no idea how perfectly doing art could make everything go away the way that it does. I’ve always been a pretty technical, practical kind of guy. Doing my art makes me happy, most of the time. Sometimes a piece causes me stress and anxiety. Then it’s done. Few things make me as happy as those magic moments when I am working on a piece, put one more touch on the paper and suddenly--- it’s DONE!!! One of the things that I most like about my art is that it sometimes also makes everything go away for someone else. When I see someone stop for a contemplative moment while looking at one of my pieces art, that’s a beautiful thing. If one of my pieces makes everything go away for a while then that’s great. I’m happy for you. That makes me happy.
Shonnah Reid The Ears 2013 - Collage
The Ears represent the voices I heard when I was not diagnosed yet and not on medicine. Since this show is See Me Hear....the little characters inside the ear... can represent that they are blocking sound or those voices.
Susan Aydan Abbott Flower Girls 2012 - Acrylic and oil
My work is very self-exploratory. I think of painting as a form of therapy, the release of my pent-up demons. It is nothing more than a personal purging, selfish and raw. All my experiences influence my art. I am fascinated with colour and texture, using these elements to develop ideas in my paintings and convey emotion. I try to capture movement with my brushstrokes because I want my paintings to come to life. To be honest, there is a darkness underlying all of my work. I twist some pieces to explore it while I ‘fluff up’ others to avoid it. I find the upbeat paintings easier to create while the more serious turns can be very traumatic, but both are cathartic. As a person who suffers from bipolar disorder, my mood directly dictates the direction my art takes. It really mirrors my frame of mind. When my focus is inward, I instinctively use heavier, slower strokes you can see on the canvas. When I’m focused outside myself, the strokes are faster, thinner, lighter. Flower Girls echoes my rapid cycling, when I whirl between heavy despair and fevered zeal, the light and the dark battle while my senses are interrupted, amplified and gone at various times. It is happy fringed by sadness.
ART
Yvette Cenerini To hear birds sing 2013 - Digital Print
I sometimes find myself surfing You Tube videos of individuals hearing for the very first time with cochlear implants. It seems as though hearing is instantaneously turned ON. The sudden shock and emotional reaction moves me to believe in miracles. These interest me because there is a boy I know, named Jonah, who listens this way. But they interest me mostly because I am aware that that particular moment is the result of past and future years of hard work, periods of crisis, strength, sorrow, and much determination. What makes it all worthwhile, is that with his implant, he has been granted access to sound information. This piece is inspired by Jonah’s journey in the hearing world. Like my wheelchair, Jonah’s device is a technological tool that assists him in his activities of daily living. I imagine that he may, as I do, begrudge the need for such a tool, yet be unable to imagine his life without it. Such devices become extensions of our bodies, they are part of us. Providing a sense of freedom, they are our most valuable possessions. Disability bears creativity. There is always more than one way of completing a task, of achieving a goal, of experiencing the gift a songbird brings.
SHOW
Arts & Disability Network Manitoba would like to thank the following sponsors:
Special Thank You also goes to:
Artists Emporium, City of Winnipeg, Plug In ICA, St. Boniface Library, University of Manitoba School of Art, Winnipeg Art Gallery
About Arts & Disability Network Manitoba Arts & Disability Network Manitoba is a regional not-for-profit organization dedicated to the full inclusion of artists and audiences with disabilities into all facets of the arts community. Our mandate is to facilitate a network of artists and stakeholders from both the arts and disability communities that supports artists with disabilities in achieving individual artistic excellence, promotes higher visibility of these artists within all disciplines and promotes policies and practices intended to make the arts more accessible to all Manitobans.
www.adnm.ca