Fine Arts Faculty Biennial
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Fine Arts Faculty Biennial
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February 13 – March 6, 2014
Reproduction on cover: detail of an installation by Naomi London entitled Sorting the rem-knits by colour / After Shyrl, 2010–2013 Photo: Paul Litherland
Warren G. Flowers Art Gallery Dawson College 4001 de Maisonneuve West Montreal, Canada H3Z 1A4
Foreword By offering a variety of activities and projects in different areas and programs of studies, Dawson teachers demonstrate that they are deeply committed to their students and their knowledge capacities. However, it may not be as easy to grasp teachers’ commitment and their respective approach whether intellectual or artistic, or both at the same time. In some areas, their commitment is reflected in highly specialized scientific and philosophical research, while in others, it is evident in the form of creative writing or theatrical performance. In Visual Arts, their commitment is expressed in this Biennale event that reminds us that teachers are first class artists and that we should all be proud that they are part of Dawson. The creative force that shapes these multimedia 2D and 3D artworks is the same that drives teachers and the work they do in educating and training their students. I invite you to enjoy and appreciate these artworks and to be inspired by what you will discover and contemplate. You may be a student of one or more of these artists, a colleague perhaps, or an art enthusiast, either way, I encourage you to experience the wonder of this body of works. Welcome to the Fine Arts Biennale 11 and congratulations to the teachers for their generous initiative! Richard Filion Director General Dawson College January 2014
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Avant-propos En offrant toutes sortes d’activités et de projets dans différentes disciplines et programmes d’études, les professeurs du Collège Dawson démontrent leur profond engagement envers leurs étudiants et envers leurs capacités d’apprendre. Ce qui est plus difficilement discernable, c’est l’engagement des professeurs dans une démarche professionnelle distincte, que celle-ci soit intellectuelle ou artistique, ou les deux à la fois. Dans certaines disciplines, cela se reflète dans des activités de recherche scientifique et philosophique de haut niveau. Dans d’autres secteurs, cela revêt la forme de création littéraire ou de performance dramatique. Dans le domaine des arts visuels, cela s’exprime dans cet événement qu’est la 11e Biennale, laquelle nous rappelle que les professeurs de ce programme sont toujours des artistes de grand calibre et que nous devons être fiers de leur appartenance à Dawson. Que leur médium artistique soit la toile, le tissu, la photographie ou le métal, la force créatrice qui se révèle dans ces œuvres artistiques est la même que celle qui inspire le travail d’éducation et de formation auquel se consacrent ces professeurs dans le cadre de leur prestation auprès de leurs étudiants. Je vous invite à apprécier ces œuvres d’art et à vous laisser inspirer par ce que vous allez découvrir et contempler. Que vous soyez un étudiant d’un de ces artistes, que vous soyez un collègue ou simplement un amateur d’art, laissez-vous impressionner, voire émerveiller, par les œuvres de cette exposition. Bienvenue donc à cette 11e Biennale et félicitations aux professeurs pour cette généreuse initiative. Richard Filion Directeur général Collège Dawson Janvier 2014
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Introduction
Claude Arseneault (see statement on page 41) Paysage BrisĂŠ, 2012 Etching, aquatint and chine collĂŠ 61 cm x 80 cm
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The Fine Arts Department celebrates more than thirty years of teaching excellence. Celebration this year comes in part by way of the 11th Fine Arts Faculty Biennial exhibition and catalogue publication. Since the introduction of this event 22 years ago, each cohort of students has viewed the work of their instructors who are practicing artists, committed to visual research and art production. This biennial provides Dawson College and the wider community with an opportunity to view and experience the private art practice of Fine Arts faculty, part of the collective pedagogic experience that is Dawson College. It is with bittersweet pride that we dedicate this edition of the Biennial to the late Dr. Anna Carlevaris. Anna taught Art History at Dawson for over 15 years, while also teaching at Concordia University, where she earned her PhD. Anna was a respected colleague, a mentor and a dear friend who passed away in December of 2012, at the tender age of 58. We honour her gentle spirit, her humour, and her abundant energy. Anna is very much missed. Naomi London Chairperson Fine Arts Department, Dawson College January 2014
Le département des arts plastiques célèbre plus de trente ans d’excellence en enseignement. La onzième biennale des professeurs fait partie intégrante de cette célébration. Depuis l’instauration de cette exposition il y a vingt-deux ans, chaque cohorte d’étudiants a eu l’opportunité de voir le travail de ses enseignants qui sont des artistes actifs dans le milieu, dévoués à la recherche et à la production en arts visuels. Cette biennale offre au Collège Dawson et à la communauté l’opportunité de voir et de découvrir la production personnelle des membres du département des arts visuels, ce qui constitue une partie de l’expérience pédagogique collective du Collège Dawson. C’est avec une fierté pleine de tristesse que nous dédions cette édition de la biennale à la défunte Dr. Anna Carlevaris. Anna a enseigné l’histoire de l’art au Collège Dawson pendant plus de quinze ans, tout en enseignant à l’université Concordia, où elle a obtenu un doctorat. Anna a été une collègue respectée, un mentor et une amie chère qui est décédée prématurément à l’age de 58 ans, en décembre 2012. Nous voulons honorer son esprit sensible, son sens de l’humour, et son énergie abondante. Anna nous manque beaucoup. Naomi London Coordinatrice Département des arts plastiques, Collège Dawson Janvier 2014
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Catherine Young Bates Enthusiasm for life carries more paint to my works than brushes or other tools! It means being positive about life and art, and comes from having a vision of the world that would be better to live in than the world I simply adjust to every day. Faith in art, and in its intellectual and moral dignity, is my survival belief. There’s a long list of solo and group exhibits, national and international, but the best ones are yet to come!
Icarus XVII, 2013 Pastel on paper 112 cm x 76 cm
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Lois Eames-Valliant
This picture is part of a collection of places I have photographed for a series I call Time Stamp. For me, this image conjures visions of past times and of lives lived. Here, concrete and the enduring fern attest to the human presence and the intersection between the real and the imaginary. Lois Eames-Valliant is an Art Historian. She completed a BFA and MA at Concordia University, Montreal. She is the author of several art related essays and has curated a number of art exhibitions.
Stairs, 2012 St. Mary, Jamaica Digital image 10 cm x 15 cm
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Anna Carlevaris (1954–2012) The following are selected excerpts from recent writings by the late Dr. Carlevaris, produced for projects related to Dawson College and the Fine Arts Faculty. Each of these texts reveals Anna’s interest in making connections: artwork that invites viewer participation (essay on the work of Naomi London); students reflecting on each other’s worlds across the cultural divide of Canada and China (the Two Worlds exchange exhibition); the meeting of the commonplace and the impossible (essay on the work of Frank Mulvey); the relationships between past, present and future at Dawson College (the Transforming Futures exhibition) and monumentality implicit in the miniature (essay on the work of Marcia Massa).
other’s portrait without the opportunity of using a visual reference. They didn’t have much information to work with, only a short text penned by their overseas partner. It described a few of their physical features, hobbies, an aspiration or two. But these young artists rose up to the challenge. Employing their creativity, skills, and empathic intuition, they imagined what they could not see. Here we have images not of physical facts, but of the intangible qualities of personality and individual spirit, signposts of our common humanity.
Essay on the work of Naomi London, 2010 (excerpt)
Foreword to the book Voyage: The Charcoal Drawings of Frank Mulvey, 2012 (excerpt)
Often working with materials and objects that are synthetic or commercial in nature – plastics, toys, felt and decorative textiles – she creates art that revels in colour, texture, and pattern. Central to London’s process is a willingness to depart from a purely aesthetic approach that constitutes the viewer as a passive observer. Instead, her art coaxes viewers out of their isolation; it negotiates common ground and accommodates participation.
(visit http://space.dawsoncollege.qc.ca/exhibits/summary/two_ worlds_exhibition)
Mulvey is something like The Magician in the cryptic card game known as Tarot. The artist’s sleight of hand makes impossible things happen, not with a magic wand but with an artist’s charcoal stick. From the blank sheet of paper, he elicits worlds of his own making inhabited by figures that at first glance seem quite ordinary. But then, because of an incongruous detail or distorted perspective, we realize that this is not a mirror image of our world but its mysterious other.
(visit http://www.naomilondon.com/about/essay.php) (visit http://www.blurb.com/books/3324765-voyage)
Introduction to The Two Worlds Exhibition – An Exploration of Personal Identity, 2011 (excerpt) The Two Worlds project is the result of a virtual dialogue between two schools separated by over 10, 000 kilometers of land, water, and sky. Cities, mountains, the silent depths of oceans, fill the vastness of geographic distance between Suzhou and Montreal. The entire northern hemisphere, to be precise. How to bridge the gap? This is the challenge two groups of art students faced when they were asked to draw each
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Essay entitled Small Objects to accompany the work of Marcia Massa for the 2013 exhibition In Passing, written in 2012 (excerpt) Massa’s art reminds us that our knowledge of the world is bound to our perceptual relationship to it, and that we may develop this understanding through discrete, but profound encounters with unassuming objects. Her art willfully recreates primal phenomenological experiences that shape our consciousness and
inner lives, particularly those that suggest fundamental qualities like inside and outside, roundness, and smallness. As Gaston Bachelard has written on the notion of the miniature, the artist’s small-scaled works enchant us because we imagine a quiet monumentality locked within them. Massa’s small forms draw us close and because of this we welcome them as invitations to intimacy. (visit http://marciamassa.com/about.html)
Exhibition catalogue essay entitled Remembering the Future for the exhibition Transforming Futures, 2012 (three excerpts) The theme of the present exhibition takes its inspiration from a little known event that took place at Dawson College in 1972. In October of that year, the college invited a special guest speaker named Buckminster Fuller. Fuller had become a well-known name in Montreal because of the geodesic dome he designed for the American pavilion at Expo ‘67. By the time of his visit, the dome was already a landmark symbolizing the arrival of Montreal on the world stage. Fuller was also recognized as one of the leading spokespersons for the then burgeoning environmental movement. The catchphrase “doing more with less,” which had become synonymous with his name and his ideas, was adopted for the title of an exhibition held at Dawson in celebration of his visit. The current exhibition, Transforming Futures, pays a modest tribute to the historically defining moment of Fuller’s visit to Dawson College.
experimentation, and whole-systems thinking. There was no better example of this thinking than his concept of the World Game, a problem-solving challenge in which global issues were approached from a “doing more with less” perspective. Playing World Game was one of a number of activities that week at Dawson. Time has indeed moved on. Looking back over forty years the question remains as to whether the philosophy of “doing more with less” became part of the legacy that earlier generation of Dawson College bequest to the following generations of teachers and students. Transforming Futures does not attempt to answer this question but instead offers a window onto the imagination of some of our current students and staff who were asked to reflect on the city of the future. Drawing from a variety of programs and departments, the exhibition offers an interdisciplinary view of the city of tomorrow and the life we envision for our communities and ourselves. To paraphrase the words of one of the key participants of “Fuller Week”, teacher Henry Strub, “it’s a small but heroic effort.” 1 Poetic, witty, thoughtful, the images and objects on display reveal the future as a place of unbound invention and extraordinary possibility. (visit http://space.dawsoncollege.qc.ca/exhibits/summary/transforming_futures) 1
R. Buckminster Fuller papers, M1090. Dept. of Special Collections,
Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, Calif.
The weeklong exhibition, L’Austerité Joyeuse, Doing More with Less, introduced Fuller’s concepts to Dawson students in a way that was both tangible and engaging. “Fuller Week” was a festival of sorts that put into action Fuller’s belief that innovation relied on a collaborative and interdisciplinary approach that valued creativity,
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Giuseppe Di Leo
Study for Thorn on my Side, 2012 Ink on paper 21 cm x 30 cm
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My preoccupation with the human figure as a subject and source for my drawings continues to be a compelling force. In situating young people within a prosaic context I create a space to question how we relate to the influx of distractions that are at once unsettlingly profane and suspiciously sacred. As a means to achieve this, I make references to iconic art historical images where a dialogue is conveniently set up between elements from the natural world and domestic paraphernalia in order to situate and engage the figure. Innocuous at first glance, the combined effect of these features tends to elicit a suspicious state where disorder and carnival enthusiasm clash and a volatile scenario is further observed. It is within this sphere of absurd theatrics, I raise questions about the threat of the pre-mature loss of innocence. Can an analogy be drawn between youth and redemption? What role do we have in empowering this balance? Or, do we continue to be unresponsive towards the futility of imposed social values that are overtly short sighted and divisive? Important exhibition projects have included various solo and group exhibitions, at Waddington and Gorce, Montréal; Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ont.; Musée d’Art Contemporain des Laurentides, Qué.; Musée du Québec; Justina Barnicke Gallery, University of Toronto; Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa, Palermo, Italy; Kalenarte, Casacalenda, Italy; Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University; Museo de las Bellas Artes, Guadalajara, Mexico; and St. Thomas Elgin Public Art Centre, Ont. Giuseppe teaches in the Fine Arts Programs at Concordia University and Dawson College in Montreal, where he is also the Director / Curator of the Warren G. Flowers Art Gallery.
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Rachel Echenberg
I use performance art to explore the shifting personal, social and political space of the individual. My art practice focuses on the limits and vulnerabilities of the human body by primarily using my own live presence to highlight intimate and uncontrollable situations.
At Home, 2012 Performance Photo: Henry Chan
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Rachel Echenberg is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice includes performance, video and installation/ sculpture. She holds a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax (1993) and an MA in Visual Performance from Dartington College of Arts in the UK (2004). Since 1992 Echenberg’s work has been exhibited, performed and screened throughout Canada as well as internationally in Belgium, Chile, Czech Republic, England, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Morocco, Northern Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Switzerland and the United States.
Beverly Frumkin
Juan L. Gomez-Perales
In placid hours well-pleased we dream Of many a brave unbodied scheme. But form to lend, pulsed life create, What unlike things must meet and mate: A flame to melt—a wind to freeze; Sad patience—joyous energies; Humility—yet pride and scorn; Instinct and study; love and hate; Audacity—reverence. These must mate, And fuse with Jacob’s mystic heart, To wrestle with the angel—Art.
In the language of art we often refer to the “plasticity” of materials. It is with purposeful manipulation of the media that the artwork is ultimately formed. Combining aspects of general relativity with M-theory (a variant of string theory, which requires additional spatial dimensions) the artwork presented in this exhibition manipulates the plasticity of physical space in a close parallel universe. The piece makes use of gravitational spatial distortions (general relativity), caused by placed concentrations of mass, and their combined effect on a parallel 3-brane (3-dimensional universe), where the distortion generating massive elements would be invisible. Since the graviton particle is a closed string (a boson in string theory) and not bound to any brane (short for membrane, functionally like a dimension), it is free to cross the bulk (the higher dimensional space between branes) and interact with other brane worlds while the open strings associated with the various collections of massive particles (fermions) are locked to our universe (our 3-brane). The result would be that of subtle, orchestrated, spatial distortions without the presence of the massive components that caused them (dark matter?). It should be clarified that what is presented in the gallery space is not the artwork itself, but rather that which is forming the artwork, existing (in theory) in a parallel universe, and thereby invisible to us.
Melville, Herman. “Art.” Poetry X. Ed. Jough Dempsey. 4 Sep 2006.
Beverly Frumkin is an art historian. She completed her BA and MA (Art History) at McGill University. She is a certified guide at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and has given many public lectures on various topics.
Gwen Baddeley “The quasi-cinematic representation of art in slides, and especially the photography of art replicated in books, allows for an intimate experience of repeated beholding and cognition. Our collective art-historical imagination is to a great extent the product of photography, and yet the ubiquitous photography of art and architecture has traditionally been received as if it were an invisible vehicle.”
Juan L. Gomez-Perales is an interdisciplinary artist whose current work relates to his interest in contemporary issues of theoretical physics and cosmology.
Bergstein, Mary. Mirrors of Memory: Freud, Photography, and the History of Art. London: Cornell University Press, 2010.
Gwen Baddeley is an art historian and art educator. She completed her BA at McGill University and earned her MA in Art History at Concordia University. Aside from teaching Art History at Dawson, Gwen is an art educator at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
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Antonietta Grassi
The Unraveling, 2013 Acrylic and ink on canvas 91.4 cm x 91.4 cm
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My most recent work is rooted in architectural and building references within a personal and emotional space. Having grown up around construction sites, I recall witnessing the many stages and processes of creation and impermanence involved with physical structures. In this body of work, I question the definition of integrity within constructs that have fractures or inconsistencies. On a physical level, this could be the dripping, delicate edge of a sturdy geometric shape; on an emotional level, this could reference the devastation/disruption that a loss or a natural disaster brings. The structures are deliberately skewed and squeezed to suggest compression, instability, and imminent collapse within what appears to be a sense of order, balance, and continuity. How do we rebuild or still maintain a sense of history after something or someone is lost? How is continuity redefined when a fracture is a part of something otherwise whole?
Québec. Her solo exhibitions include the Scar Calendar (1996) at the Helen Pitt Gallery in Vancouver, Le projet cicatrices at Galerie Liliane Rodriguez (1997), Wave (1998) at Artcore Gallery in Toronto, Painting dot com (1999) and Babble and other coded language (2002) at Liliane Rodriguez, Mots Perdus (2005) at Galerie Esthesio in Quebec City, Langscapes (2009) at the Warren G. Flowers Gallery in Montreal, and Rococo at the McClure Gallery in Montreal (2011). In 2013, she participated in the LA Art Show, the Palm Springs Art Fair, and This is Water exhibition at the Vermont Institute of Contemporary Art. Her work can be found in La Collection Prêt D’oeuvres d’Arts du Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec (2000, 2002, 2005, 2012 Acquisitions), as well as private and corporate collections. She has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards including the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des Arts et letters du Québec.
I challenge the modernist constructs of geometric abstract painting with a process-oriented approach that validates drawing and painting equally. Despite their formal geometric and architectural references, very little is planned and much is left to chance. The tensions between chaos and order, and spillage and containment are in constant play in these works as I attempt to balance precision and logic with intuitively arrived at imagery. Antonietta Grassi holds a BFA from Concordia University in Montreal, an MFA from L’Université du Québec a Montreal and a Diploma in Design form Ryerson University. She has had numerous solo and group exhibitions across Canada, the Unites States, and Europe. She has participated in notable shows on contemporary abstract painting such as Peinture Peinture organized by Galerie Rene Blouin and Liliane Rodriguez in Montreal, Peintures de genres: L’ actualité de la peinture abstraite au Québec in Lyon, France, Drawing Now at the Boston Center for the Arts, Hommage to Yves Gaucher at the Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery, L’Abstraction: une maniere de voir, at the Musée du
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Harlan Johnson
Paintings bring one to revisit past places, and the anachronistic contemplation of traces. They bring to light formerly famous features. Centuries and moments unfold in a moment's glance. Maps line out a horizon's advance, telling forgotten futures.
Harlan Johnson spent his early years in Halifax, N.S., residing for a time in Ontario before arriving in Montreal in 1976. At Concordia University he studied with formidable colourists John Fox and Guido Molinari. Today, Johnson continues to explore how chroma changes the resonance and context of images. Early work grew from the documentation and illustration of natural history, blurring the boundaries of figuration and abstraction. Subsequent paintings have investigated themes of landscape, ecology, maps, cultural memory and forgetfulness.
Sable, 2012 Acrylic on canvas 134 cm x 164 cm
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Lise-Hélène Larin
My goal is to expand on photography using the virtual camera in my 3D software. I create unusual architectures for perception to be renewed and questioned while the body attempts to make sense of it all. I also want to create new emotional conditions in viewing my films: I show my digiscapes in installations using anamorphosis to heighten a sense of loss that stimulates the imagination. My reality is the imagination. Lise-Hélène Larin received her PhD in 2011 at Université du Québec à Montréal. She teaches drawing and sculpture at Concordia University and Dawson College. Early in her career, Larin did 2D animation at the National Film Board of Canada and for the French TV Network of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) for which she received many prizes.
installations investigate interactivity using anamorphosis, a play on perception where the body must move around the piece to find the ultimate point of view and to read the (moving) image in a meaningful way. Since 2002, Larin's 3D work was selected three times at Siggraph, the prestigious annual international conference on computer graphics and interactivity. Her work was part of a travelling show all over Europe and the United States. She recently showed her films at the Sony Centre in Berlin as well as in Belgium and the USA.
Larin is a multidisciplinary artist whose tactile sculptures turned virtual. She now creates non-figurative 3D animated films that question sculpture, painting, photography as well as 3D animation. She received a prize of excellence for her research in 3D animation. Her Tout voir 1, 2012 Still from 3D animation printed on Durachrome UV 600 cm x 750 cm
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Julianna Joos This Jacquard weaving pays homage to human folly. It is about dreams to escape our destinies. Appropriations of known artworks like etchings by Goya are incorporated into photographs and drawn elements. The digital process used in the creation of the image enables this permeability; the artwork is however hand woven using linen threads. Julianna Joos has been teaching at Dawson College since 1998. She has an MA ès arts, concentration creation from Université du Québec à Montréal. She is a professional multidisciplinary artist working in traditional techniques of printmaking and weaving, but also digital processes; she likes to break the boundaries between fine arts and crafts, between traditional techniques and digital processes. She has won international awards: Premio Acqui (Acqui Terme, Italy, 2005) and Voir Grand (Montréal, 2002). She has held over twenty solos exhibitions and her works have been accepted in more than one hundred juried exhibitions around the world in Canada, Europe, United States, Japan and Australia.
À l’aventure, 2013 Jacquard weaving, linen 110 cm x 70 cm
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Shelley Reeves
Having chosen the style labeled realism some two decades ago I have been reflecting upon what is the nature of visual reality ever since. I can never stop looking at the wonders of light, colour, form and all the shifting elements of what occurs before my eyes. How to render that in paint and to transmit even a small fraction of the beauty and emotion attached to what I see has been my goal. Portraits focus upon many things – that soul pinning gaze between two individuals, the viewer, the painted subject; to think upon what is a resemblance on both an interior and exterior reading and to capture that seems to me to be
an alchemy of sorts, a magical distillation from an inert material, paint, into a new reality, painting. Diploma from the Alberta College of Art, BFA from Concordia University and Mâitrise en Arts Visuel from Université du Québec à Montréal. Represented in private collections in Europe (France, Switzerland and England) and museum and private collections in North America.
Portrait of P., 2013 Oil and wax on board (panel one of a triptych) 50.8 cm x 40.6 cm
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David Hall
Hill, 2010 Oil on canvas 46 cm x 61 cm
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For well over 25 years I have been making landscape paintings. My subjects are predominantly invented locations, starting out as a specific place, but seldom ending up as one. These compositions usually show evidence of a human presence, but rarely if ever do they depict people. Buildings, bridges, roadways and canals are painted and erased several times, leaving behind traces, which hover between abstraction and representation. These modes of painting reinforce the notion that we are looking at a flat surface, containing an illusion of depth. The compositions I create have deep space perspectives and privileged aerial viewpoints, which seem to invite viewers in and at the same time deny them access to these spaces.
and private collections. The artist has exhibited in both public and private art galleries and museums throughout Canada and abroad. Recent exhibitions include Transforming Futures (2012) and Residency (2010) at Warren G. Flowers Gallery, Ateliers portes ouvertes (2011) Centre d'art Clark, L' Anti-Sublime (2010) at maison de la culture du Plateau-Mont Royal, Another Country (2010) Anna Leonowens Gallery, Global Warning: Scenes from a Planet Under Pressure (2009) Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. His past work has focused on painting and drawing and is marked by his interest in fictionalized urban landscapes as subject matter.
My recent series of small canvases is loosely based on images of Monte Cassino, the sixth-century Benedictine abbey in Italy, which for centuries has been a contemplative space but is best known as the site of several ferocious World War Two battles. My approach to the subject is interpretive and contradictory, showing several aspects of the same site under markedly different circumstances. I have based some of the compositions on found images and actual documentary war photographs, whilst others are complete inventions reminiscent of science-fiction films or adventure book illustrations. I view the landscape genre in painting as rich with possibilities, empty space that the artist can fill up or strip away to reflect their interests and passions. David Hall is a Montreal-based painter, born in Vancouver, British Columbia. He received his BFA degree from the Emily Carr College of Art and Design (Vancouver) and his MFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (Halifax, N.S.). David Hall’s paintings are represented in the collections of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, MusÊe National des beaux-arts du QuÊbec, the Canada Council Art Bank, as well as several public
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Andres Manniste
Titanic, 2012 Acrylic on canvas 190 cm x 310 cm
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My recent paintings are based on found photographs that I “bury” with layer on layer of paint. In a way, this is a physical manifestation of my experience with painting, printmaking and media art. I express mental images, as they are experienced, and I know that through a processor thinking itself can be explored, taking shape as virtual memories and metaphors. On the network, I make this circulation itself my medium but in the studio this experience changed the physical scale of my work and made the rendering of particular things irrelevant to me. Although I remain attached to the physical and conceptual activity of painting, I no longer feel that I need to respect the limitations of a frame. After completing an Honours BFA from the University of Manitoba Andres Manniste moved to Quebec City, where he began his art practice. In 1978 after completing a Master's degree at the University of Quebec in Montreal he had his first Montreal exhibition at the Comédie nationale in 1980. With experience in painting, printmaking and new media, he has participated in many solo and group exhibitions over his career and has been the recipient of several grants and awards. His work has been acquired by public collections including the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, the Heritage Collection of the Quebec Archives, Rhizome Artbase at the New Museum in New York City and the Canada Council Art Bank. His most recent solo exhibition was Penthesilia at Maison de la Culture Frontenac in 2011.
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Marcia Massa
The notebook page dates from 1995. The sculpture is a detail from one of my recent sculptures Red Line Tinkering with Cracks. The sketch and the notes recorded in 1995 were triggered by a clay form that I had previously set inside a walnut shell. These explorations remained a memory for over a decade untill they reemerged and were then transformed into the work Red Line Tinkering with Cracks (2006–2009). This work was recently shown in the Warren G. Flowers Art Gallery. Marcia Massa was a teacher for thirty years at Vanier and Dawson Colleges. She creates both threedimensional and two-dimensional artwork. She has a BA from Sir George Williams University and a BFA from Concordia. Art Education was the subject of her Diploma and Masters at McGill University. She also pursued individual part-time studies at the C.G.Jung Institute in Switzerland. Incubation, 2013 Digital image manipulation Variable dimensions
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Maureen McIntyre
“How can another see into me, into my most secret self, without my being able to see in there myself? And without my being able to see him/her in me. And if my secret self, that which can be revealed only to the other, to the wholly other, to (a) God, if you wish, is a secret that I will never reflect on, that I will never know or experience or possess as my own, then what sense is there in saying that it is my secret, or in saying more generally that a secret belongs, that it is proper to or belongs to someone, or to some other who remains someone. It’s perhaps there that we find the secret of secrecy. Namely, that it is not a matter of knowing and it is there for no one. A secret doesn’t belong, it can never be said to be at home or in its place. The question of the self: who am I not in the sense of who am I but rather who is this I that can say who? What is the – I and what becomes of responsibility once the identity of I trembles in secret?” Derrida, Jacques. The Gift of Death. Trans. David Wills. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Educated as an art historian and artist, Maureen has been teaching at Dawson College since 1977. She worked in a curatorial capacity at the MMFA, did architectural research for Quebec’s Ministry of Cultural Affairs, created a history museum for the Grey Nuns of Montreal, worked with collections of the David Stewart Museum and MacDonald Stewart Foundation and was apprenticed to the late Robin Ashton (1923–2010) in art conservation. Her publications are related to architecture in Canada and as an artist she has exhibited in Quebec and Atlantic Canada. To Live To Die, 2009 Photomontage 61 cm x 45.7 cm
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Amanda Beattie
It is a memory that lasts, that feels its own existence, that feels its sense of self and its sense of loss. It is there—specifically there—in that never-ending white globe, that the stillness permeates through to the outer limits of the fog, that the nostalgia seeps into the snow, planting itself into the frozen ground below, and waits. In this sober, somber place, the stillness grows in silence and in solitude, the nostalgia develops roots that are firmly anchored in place. There is no time – past memories and present moments, future thoughts, all exist at once. They are drawn together in a calm, contemplative universe. Everything is there, as it should be. Complete. Quiet. This short text about Patricia Boyer’s photograph was originally published in the exhibition catalogue Équinoxe. Beattie, Amanda, Équinoxe, exhibition catalogue, 23 March – 25 March 2012, Centre St-Ambroise, Montreal, Quebec.
Amanda Beattie has a DEC from Dawson College, a BA from McGill University, and an MA from Concordia University in Art History. In addition to teaching Art History at Dawson, Amanda works as an Educator at The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and at DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art. She has also worked in the Education Departments at the Centre international d’art contemporain de Montréal, The Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Peggy Guggenheim Collection (Venice, Italy) and La Biennale di Venezia (Venice, Italy), and has worked as a consultant in art and museum education at the Canadian Center for Architecture, CV Ciel Variable, the Association des galleries d’art contemporain, and the Canada Council Art Bank. Quelques arpents de neige, 2008 Photograph 31 cm x 46 cm Photo: Patricia Boyer
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Naomi London
My practice over the past 15 years has been focused on drawing and sculpture, and my interests are not bound by a specific medium. The project that I am including in this Faculty Biennial pays homage to my late mother— Shyrl London. I inherited a rich collection of fabric from my mother, and these solid round forms were entirely made from fabrics from this collection. These balls were made through a slow accumulation of surfaces, layer upon layer. For me they signify a continuation of her presence along with a whisper of joy.
Naomi London earned an MFA from the University of Southern California and a BFA from Concordia University, Montréal. She has exhibited in Canada and the United States, as well as Europe and Japan. Her works can be seen in several public collections including the Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal, the Musée des Beaux Arts de Montréal, the Musée National des Beaux Arts de Québec, the Art Gallery of Hamilton and the Winnipeg Art Gallery. She has been teaching at Dawson College since 2000, and is currently the Chairperson of the Fine Arts department.
Sorting the rem-knits by colour / After Shyrl 2010–2013 Assorted fabric from the estate of Shyrl London, steel dress makers pins Variable dimensions Photo: Paul Litherland
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Frank Mulvey I work in charcoal because carbon, its main ingredient, lends itself to a wide variety of light and dark effects. The generous range of this medium enables me to create convincing illusions of volume and depth. These visual gymnastics are what people refer to when they admire how the subject matter “looks real”. Although there is something seductive in the art of making things appear round or far away, for me the real artistry is intuitively knowing where to tone down and where to illuminate, and how to interweave these qualities in a composition so that the presence of each makes the other more magical and compelling. The interplay of light and shadow on form is what has always most captured my imagination as an artist, and in its embrace a building or a person or any other subject can transcend its own properties and join the dazzling poetry of visual experience. In the drawing Emissaries, I imagined a woman in a dark interior approaching a portal that permits the passage of light and movement from beyond. The butterflies spilling into her shadowy introverted space are emissaries from a radiant and better place. I asked myself how I could convey a sense of boundless possibilities, as she closes her eyes and breathes in this experience. With charcoal and some touches of colour, I tried to answer the question.
Emissaries, 2013 Charcoal, acrylic and chalk pastel on paper 111.8 cm x 76.2 cm (including frame)
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Frank Mulvey is a Montreal figurative artist who reinvents visual experience to explore the human condition. His drawings and paintings explore themes of desire, union, transcendence and transformation. He holds a Masters degree in Fine Arts, and is the author of the art book Voyage, published in 2012 (ISBN 978-1-550169003). He has been a member of the Fine Arts Faculty of Dawson College for 24 years, and also teaches in the Illustration & Design Department. He currently serves as a coordinator for S.P.A.C.E. (Science Participating with Arts and Culture in Education). In 2013, Frank was invited to speak and to present his exhibition The Body Within at the Suzhou Art and Design Technology Institute, Suzhou, Jiangsu, China and at Shanghai Normal University as part of an exchange project organized by the Office of International Development of Dawson College.
Natalie Olanick
I have always engaged in painting as an explorative practice. I have worked with painting to create a dynamic relationship between process and the subject of the work. The boundaries that distinguish the two become intertwined. Meanings oscillate from what the materials are to how they bond with the images painted or applied to them. The stroke of a brush on a surface can declare the beginning of a circuitous path. Painting can bring to the surface the possibility of an array of human emotions. Desire, humour and anger are just a few of the sentiments that can be found in both the act of painting and looking at the work. Painting presents a challenge that requires patience and belated perseverance. Natalie Olanick is a visual artist, who also writes and put together exhibitions that explore contemporary art. She is on the board of articule, centre d'artiste autogĂŠrĂŠ. She has shown her work in various galleries and museums in Canada and the United States. Stock Markets and Hemlines, 2013 Installation at The Womens' Art Resource Center Toronto
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Pohanna Pyne Feinberg
Bring Your Own Chopsticks, 2013 Color print on paper 91.44 x 11.6 cm
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In 2000, I moved to Honolulu, Hawai‘i and settled into a pink one-room studio that stood on stilts—my beloved breezy home in a neighborhood called Kaimuki that rests at the base of the Popolo valley overlooking the Waikiki shores. One night, as I sat watching the sushi chef at Magoro-ya (a local Japanese restaurant) roll one of the most memorable meals of my life, I took notice of the whimsical design on my chopstick wrapper and decided to take the delicate paper with me as a memento. This was the beginning of my chopstick wrapper collection. After over 10 years of carefully carrying chopstick wrappers home with me, my collection includes over 60 distinctly designed wrappers. I am still charmed by the beauty of these artful ephemera that are usually disposed of. This year, I finally decided to research the designers who make these wrappers. In the process, I learned that the fabrication of millions of disposable chopsticks each year results in the devastating destruction of forests across Asia.
Pohanna Pyne Feinberg is an arts educator, exhibition curator, and artist who loves to walk. In addition to teaching art history art Dawson College, She has designed and guided educational programs for DHC/ ART - Education, Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal, Walter Phillips Gallery (The Banff Centre), The Wapikoni Mobile, Vezina High School, Leave Out Violence (LOVE), FOFA Gallery (Concordia University) and La Bibliothèque des Jeunes de Montréal. In 2009, Pohanna created www.Inspire Art.org, a web magazine that she curates with the objective of increasing awareness about community-based art in the Montreal region. In 2011, Pohanna curated the interdisciplinary exhibition titled Interpretashunz — an exploration of the intersections between contemporary art and oral history. She received a Masters degree in Art History from Concordia University in 2011 and her art projects have been presented in Montreal, Toronto, New York and Banff.
“Chopsticks add to a plague of regional deforestation. According to a 2008 United Nations report, 10,800 square miles of Asian forest are disappearing each year, a trend that must be arrested to fight climate change, given the vital role trees play in absorbing carbon dioxide. Activists argue that the disposable chopstick habit could gradually be phased out on an individual basis. Chopstick sets complete with a simple or decorative case are sold at many stores and are easy to put in a purse, knapsack or briefcase, they note.” Nuwer, Rachel. “Disposable Chopsticks Strip Asian Forests.” New York Times. Web. October 24. 2011.
Thus, it my aspiration that one day my collection will become a cultural artifact representing a historical period of culinary globalization that will soon be phased out. Please, bring your own chopsticks.
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Murray MacDonald
Observing the shipping traffic on the nearby St. Laurence River has lead me to work with the image of vessels; their shapes, their scale in the environment, their relentless movement through the water. This has resulted in a series of small sculptural wall pieces dealing with bow forms almost trophy-like in appearance.
untitled, 2013 Pine, mahogany, sheet metal 45 cm x 35 cm x 14 cm
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Murray MacDonald holds degrees from U.B.C., the Vancouver Art School (Emily Carr), and Concordia University. He has exhibited his work in Canada and internationally and has received grants from the Canada Council and the Ministère des Affaires culturelles. His sculptures and installations can be found in several museums, public and private collections.
Al Pringle
The voice of a turtle: a croak of alienation issued from within a vault of defensive armour… a sound highly articulate of emotion – MELANCHOLICUS, CHOLERICUS, and SANGUINICUS. Allan Pringle teaches Art History and Aesthetics.
Voice of a Turtle, 2011 Random garden shot
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Kristi Ropeleski
This piece was created with the intention of proposing connections among the unsettling aspects of the genre of Vanitas painting, the experience of illusion and slapstick humour.
Everything Is Going To Be All Right, 2011 Oil on canvas 91.4 cm x 61 cm
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Kristi Ropeleski is a Montreal based artist. Her paintings have been exhibited internationally over the span of the past 10 years in diverse venues such as The Philoctetes Center for the Study of the Imagination in New York City and at the Museum of Canadian Contemporary Art. She studied at Dawson College, Concordia University and holds a Master’s degree in Visual Arts from York University.
Gilles Morissette
The moment I throw a length of red silk in the wintery white environment of Lac-Saint-Jean, the work is created. In situ—gesture and wind unite. Emanating from the velocity of the wind, the red silk unfurls, silence is interrupted, our perception of the landscape transformed. The moment of ascension carries us to the sky but also connects us to the ground. Sol-Air affirms my own presence in that space, that of my body, of my existence.
Système Sol-Air, 2013 Digital print (Item 8 from a series of 8 images) 18 cm x 27 cm (From an installation measuring 200 cm x 125 cm) Photo: Gilles Morissette
Gilles Morissette has a BFA from the University of Alberta, a Masters in Visual Arts from Concordia University and a Doctorate in Esthétique, sciences et technologies des arts from Université Paris VIII. Morissette has had numerous group and solo exhibitions in Canada, Europe and Japan. His installations and creations can be found in numerous private and public collections. In 2013 he participated in a group exhibition Denis Gougeon: figure at the Chapelle historique du Bon-Pasteur, in Montreal and for the Foundacion DANAE in Gijon, Spain, he participated in the selection and organization of the exhibition Inter-Fluxus. In 2011 he was artist-in-residence at the Fondacion DANAE where he developed Estar Aqui, a permanent work for their future exhibition space. In 2011 he was part of a three person exhibition, Géographie imaginaire at the Maison de la culture Notre-Dame-de-Grâce in Montreal and in 2009, Otter Woman Breathing, a collaborative work with artist Cherie Moses at the White Water Gallery in North Bay, Ontario. 35
Michael Smith
Crush The Sun, 2013 Acrylic on canvas 178 cm x 203 cm
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Interested in illusions of illuminated space, Smith explores how light can be both incidental and instrumental to landscape paintings. Although influenced by the work of artists of the past, the contextualization of the contemporary landscape is continually referenced as a changing and fugitive site of expression. Smith’s work often draws from contemporary digital references of striking elemental incidents and sometimes sites of conflict. The desire to put down traces of thought made manifest in the physicality of light lends an irony to the strong materiality of his paintings – physically wrought paintings emerge out of a series of moments in flux. Michael Smith has lived in Montréal since 1978. He completed his MFA from Concordia University, Montréal in 1983. His paintings have been exhibited across Canada and internationally including a recent catalogue exhibition at the Peel Regional Art Gallery, Ontario. An earlier selection of exhibitions include; The Saidye Bronfman Centre, Montréal; the Appleton Museum, Ocala, Florida; Galerie Damasquine, Brussels and The Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan. Reviews and essays of Smith’s work have appeared in ARTnews, MODERN PAINTERS, Canadian Art and Border Crossings Magazines. His work was also featured in the Established Artists section of the Magenta Foundation’s 2008 book Carte Blanche v.2 Painting, a survey text on the current state of painting in Canada. The Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, The Glenbow Museum, Peel Regional Art Gallery and Rideau Hall are just a few of the museums and institutions that have Smith’s paintings in their permanent collections. Michael Smith is currently represented across Canada in several galleries of contemporary art and in Montreal by Gallery ART45.
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Lorraine Simms
My explorations in painting are informed by the world around me. My current paintings represent groups of plush animals tied together with animal skulls, bones, and glass eyes. These works foreground the absurd by depicting plush animals as animated, conflicted, emotional beings bound together in impossible relationships. I began this series of paintings to counter the astonishing number of cute and cuddly animal alter egos that currently populate the media. Tendencies to anthropomorphize animals can be seen in advertising, animated films, video games and manga. For me, this alter-world suggests a disembodied relationship to animals and to the natural world, yet other meanings have emerged in the process of working in the studio. The Plushies series is ongoing and comprises large and small paintings on canvas and paper.
Big Head 3, 2011 Oil on canvas 152.5 cm x 122 cm
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Lorraine Simms completed her graduate studies at Concordia University. Her work has been exhibited across Canada and in the United States in private and public galleries, including: Musée du Québec (Québec), Beaverbrook Art Gallery (Frederiction), Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery (Montreal), Musée de Joliette (Joliette), Tom Thomson Gallery (Owen Sound), Galerie McClure (Montréal), Centre d'exposition Expression (Ste. Hyacinthe), A.R.C. Gallery (Chicago), Stride Gallery (Calgary) Division Gallery (Montreal), and Anna Leonowens Gallery (Halifax). Her work has been reviewed in magazines such as; Canadian Art, Border Crossings, and Parachute, and in national and regional newspapers. She has received numerous grants from the Conseil des arts et des letters and the Canada Council.
Lynn Millette
In light of the communication of knowledge through networked codes and a newfound proximity of continents, I began to wonder about the existence of meaning in reality and what it has become. This binary existence, part virtual, part material has made us individually stretched beyond the real. Because of this our culture is better versed in form than in the past where the metaphorical understanding of abstraction had to be understood.
Lynn Millette has participated in several individual and group exhibitions including Ana notes sur notes (2012) at the Chapelle historique du Bon-Pasteur, The Inner Space/The Outer Place at Concordia University (2008), Interior experience (solo) at the McClure Gallery and Sens vécu (solo) at the Maison de la Culture PlateauMont-Royal (2007). Her most recent solo exhibition Les Fenêtres dans l'eau was held at the Maison de la Culture Notre-Dame-de-Grâce in Montreal (2013).
Everything that constitutes our existence in the world has been digitalized—transcribed into code. The notion of all pictures, even famous artworks of the past, described in code perhaps erodes the distinctions that classified them from one another.
Lynn Millette has a BFA (Concordia), an MA ès arts from UQAM and a PhD from Concordia University. Her work is indexed at the Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art and can be found in several private and public collections.
Prélude, 2012 Acrylic on canvas 160 cm x 200 cm
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Claude Arseneault
Histoire de Ciel, 2013 Etching and aquatint 61 cm x 80 cm
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Making art is about searching for and exploring associations between reality and our experience of reality. Photography occupies an important place in my work as it allows me to capture images of chosen places and spaces. Since 2008, my work in print is hybrid, using both traditional and digital techniques. Lately, drawing and broken images have resurged as a means of fragmenting reality into a sequence, breaking away from the static photographic capture. Drawing, encaustic painting and print media on various surfaces are also part of my art practice. A recent interactive work, Nouvel élan, created in 2013 for the exhibition Anagramme d’une chaise (at La Maison de la Culture du Plateau Mont-Royal) engaged the viewer in an experience that transcended a simple appreciation of aesthetic qualities. This is a dimension I would like to explore further. Claude Arseneault completed her undergraduate and graduate degrees at McGill University. Since, she has taken many printmaking workshops and courses on digital imaging. In 2008, she curated the exhibition entitled Book: Artwork, shown at the Warren G. Flowers Art Gallery of Dawson College in Montreal. In 2009– 2010 Claude exhibited in the 14th International Biennial of original prints of Sarcelles and in 2012 her work was selected for the Okanagan Print Triennial and shown at the Kelowna Art Gallery. She received a residency in 2009 from the University of Louisiana, Lafayette where she editioned a print for Marais Press. Her recent work, the result of a collective art project Identités Multiples, was exhibited in 2012 at la Maison de la Culture Plateau-Mont-Royal, and the Warren G. Flowers Gallery. Claude is an artist member on the administrative council of Atelier Graff, and is also a member of Arprim. She is an art teacher at Dawson College, Montreal. Her work is part of the collection of L’institut Canadien de Québec, l’artothèque de la bibliothèque Gabrielle-Roy.
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Acknowledgments Gratitude to all individuals and entities listed below: Director General of Dawson College Richard Filion Fine Arts Chairperson Naomi London Faculty of Fine Arts, Dawson College Exhibition Coordinators David Hall and Frank Mulvey Catalogue creative director and file management Frank Mulvey Graphic Design Catherine Moleski Image source for cover design Naomi London Office of the Director General Donna Varrica Secretary, Visual Arts Helen Wawrzetz Warren G. Flowers Art Gallery Committee Andréa Cole, Don Corman, Simon Davies, Giuseppe Di Leo, Mary Di Liello, Scott Millar, Frank Mulvey, Luc Parent and Michèl Seguin © 2014, Dawson College
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Fine Arts Faculty Biennial (11th : 2014 : Montréal, Québec) Fine Arts Faculty Biennial Eleven / foreword by Director General of Dawson College Richard Filion ; introduction by Fine Arts Chairperson Naomi London. Companion publication to the Fine Arts Faculty Biennial Eleven exhibition held at the Warren G. Flowers Art Gallery, Dawson College, Montréal, Québec, from February 13 to March 6, 2014. Includes bibliographical references. Includes some text in French. ISBN 978-1-55016-444-2 (pbk.) 1. Dawson College. Fine Arts Department—Faculty—Exhibitions. 2. Art, Canadian—21st century—Exhibitions. I. Warren G. Flowers Gallery host, institution II. Title. N6545.6.F48 2014 709.71'07471428 C2013-908045-7
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