Articles by author: Brock University

  • New art exhibition the product of student collaboration

    Quality Family Time (and Space), a piece by Brock alumna Emily Andrews (BA ’11), is part of the new Erasures exhibit that will run from April 2 to 27 in the VISA Art Gallery and Student Exhibition Space at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts. An opening reception is set for Thursday, April 4 from 5 to 8 p.m.


    (From The Brock News, March 27, 2019 | By: Jaquelyn Bezaire)

    While they’re known for correcting errors, erasures are signs of progress and an expanding imagination.

    Students in Brock’s Visual Arts (VISA) and Studies in Arts and Culture (STAC) programs will explore this theme in a new collaborative art exhibit on view from Tuesday, April 2 to Saturday, April 27.

    The exhibit, Erasures, will be open to the public in the VISA Art Gallery and Student Exhibition Space at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts (MIWSFPA) in downtown St. Catharines.

    An opening reception will be held in the gallery on Thursday, April 4, from 5 to 8 p.m.

    Led by Shawn Serfas, Associate Professor of Visual Arts, and Catherine Parayre, Director of the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture, students enrolled in VISA 4P03/4P04 and STAC 3P01 worked together to create a show that features paintings and text that thematize different types of erasures.

    The work ranges from the exploration of scenes lacking important elements, simplified adaptations of existing artworks and abstracted forms of figurative objects.

    Short written statements commenting on well-known recent artworks accompany the paintings to provide further context.

    Serfas and Parayre frequently bring students from different backgrounds together to collaborate on creative endeavours.

    “It has been an enriching learning experience, for both the students and the instructors,” Parayre said of working with the students on Erasures.

    The exhibition evokes transformations and process, an important theme in both Serfas’ senior studio courses and Parayre’s Media Transformations in the Creative Arts course.

    Whether in visual expressions or in texts, Parayre added, erasures are invitations to scrutinize, read and interpret, which is exactly what the public is encouraged to do at the upcoming exhibition.

    Erasures runs from April 2 to 27 in the VISA Art Gallery and Student Exhibition Space at the MIWSFPA in downtown St. Catharines. The gallery is open to the public Tuesdays to Saturdays from 1 to 5 p.m.

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    Categories: Current Students, Events, News

  • Community voices expressed through Brock art exhibitions

    Curt Richard, a student in VISA 3M90, surveys the exhibition that he and 52 other students have completed over the course of the semester. Manifestos in a Room is a collaboration between students in French, Visual Arts, and Studies in Art and Culture. It will be on display at Rodman Hall Art Centre until Dec. 30.


    (From The Brock News, Friday, Dec. 7, 2018 | By: Alison Innes)

    Two Brock art exhibitions now on display are working to celebrate and amplify community voices.

    Manifestos in a Room and Sauti za Afrika/African Voices/Voix Africaines were each created to engage with Northern Oracle, an exhibition by Heather Hart currently being featured at Rodman Hall Art Centre.

    Through the exhibition, which includes an indoor rooftop installation, Hart asks visitors what they want to say to the world and advises them to shout it from the rooftop.

    Reflecting on Northern Oracle, 53 students in Visual Arts, Studies in Arts and Culture, and French came together to create their own statements, whether poetic, absurd or political. The expressions — in both English and French — were used to create Manifestos in a Room, on display in Rodman Hall’s Studio Gallery.

    Students worked throughout the fall semester to bring the exhibition, curated by Associate Professor Catherine Parayre and instructor Donna Akrey, to life.

    Jean Ntakirutimana, Chair of the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures, demonstrates the talking drum used to send messages over long distances in Cameroon. With careful training, a person could use the different tones produced by the drum to send messages. The drum is just one of the items on display in Sauti za Afrika/ African Voices/ Voix Africaines, an exhibition celebrating voices of Niagara’s African diaspora community.

    “It really helps to collaborate in one’s art practice,” said Akrey, whose art students were involved in the project.

    “We also did an assembly line production to create some of the work, which was fun and rewarding. I was impressed with how the 3M90 students embraced this project and made sense of it for the viewing public.”

    For the participating French students, the exhibition was a “great opportunity to practice writing constraints for fun,” said Parayre. “Students produced facetious manifestos, writing eloquently on a light-hearted topic. It allowed all of us to put our creative forces together and share a common space.”

    The exhibition includes a visual component as well as a three-minute audio track created by the students.

    Over at Brock’s main campus, the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures (MLLC) is hosting Sauti za Afrika/African Voices/Voix Africaines, an exhibition meant to amplify the voices of the African diaspora in Niagara. Featuring 12 different languages, the exhibition combines modern writing with ancient traditions of communication.

    The display features instruments and figurines used for communication, such as a conch shell, similar to the one used to call for revolution in Haiti, and miniature replicas of Burundi drums used by royalty to communicate with their people.

    Also included is an intricately carved cow horn used to call people to come and hear the chief speak in certain regions of Africa, said Department Chair and Associate Professor Jean Ntakirutimana.

    Ntakirutimana worked with members of Niagara’s African diaspora and Sofifran (Solidarité des femmes et familles immigrantes francophones du Niagara) to collect people’s hopes, dreams and concerns to include in the display. Members have also loaned their personal objects for the exhibition.

    The display is a precursor to an event by the same name coming up in February. Co-hosted by Sofifran, MLLC and Studies in Arts and Culture, the event will be held at Rodman Hall and will also engage with Northern Oracle.

    Sauti za Afrika/African Voices/Voix Africaines is a part of the Museum in the Hallway project, curated by Parayre. Located in the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures (Mackenzie Chown A-block), the project features rotating monthly displays.

    Both African Voices and Manifestos in A Room will be on display until the end of December. Northern Oracle will be at Rodman Hall until March 3.

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    Categories: Current Students, Events, Faculty & Instructors, News

  • Public French-language tour to be held at Rodman Hall

    Associate Professor Peter Vietgen and teacher candidates from Brock University’s Faculty of Education explore the Northern Oracle exhibition by Heather Hart at Rodman Hall Art Centre.


    (From The Brock News, Wednesday November 14)

    A public tour will lead French-speaking art enthusiasts through the exhibitions of Rodman Hall Art Centre on Saturday, Nov. 17.

    Catherine Parayre, Associate Professor in Brock’s Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures, and Director of the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture, will lead the French-language tour and related discussion while moving through the historic St. Catharines building.

    The event, Maisons de l’art: Conversations en français et visite des expositions, begins at 2 p.m.

    Current Rodman Hall exhibitions include Up Close and In Motion: Selected Works from the Permanent Collection, curated by Emma German, and Northern Oracle by artist Heather Hart.

    Northern Oracle features a rooftop installation rising from the gallery floor and mixed media drawings. The work considers ideas of Black history, access to home ownership and the significance of having a place to call home. Gallery visitors are invited to interact with the installation by accessing the rooftop and its floor-level attic space.

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    Categories: Current Students, Events, Faculty & Instructors, News

  • Orientation activities planned for first-year STAC Students

    As a new student in the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture, you are invited to The New Student Welcome and Academic Orientation as your official welcome to Brock University on September 4! The orientation begins at 8 a.m. in the Ian Beddis Gym, where you’ll hear from President Gervan Fearon and enjoy an inspirational keynote to begin your day and kick-start your term. Afterwards, you are welcome to connect with your faculty and upper year student mentors to receive important information about academic supports and resources. Then, go check out the vendor and welcome fair, take a campus tour and to locate your classes, and get an orientation to the Brock Library. * Don’t forget to register for this orientation at Experience BU.

    You are invited to then attend the Faculty of Humanities orientation session, beginning at 10:00 a.m. in the Sean O’Sullivan Theatre on Brock’s main campus.

     


    FIRST-YEAR MIWSFPA MIXER AND LUNCH
    OPEN TO STUDENTS IN ALL DEPARTMENTS AT THE MIWSFPA

    SEPTEMBER 4

    12 TO 1:30 P.M.

    MIWSFPA LOBBY

    DOWNTOWN ST. CATHARINES

    15 ARTISTS’ COMMON


    There will also be a special orientation planned for STAC students specifically, taking place that same day:

    STAC ORIENTATION

    Sept. 4:  2 to 6 p.m.
    Marilyn I Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts Room 334
    15 Artists’ Common

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    Categories: Announcements, Current Students, Events, News

  • A Sublime Vernacular – The Landscape Paintings of Levine Flexhaug

    A Sublime Vernacular
    The Landscape Paintings of Levine Flexhaug

    January 28 to March 12, 2017

    Curated by Nancy Tousley and Peter White
    Organized and circulated by the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie, Grande Prairie, Alberta

    Opening Reception: Saturday, February 11, 3 pm
    HOT TALK: Saturday, February 11, 2 pm. Wayne Morgan and Sharilyn J. Ingram, “Making Art for the Market: Flexhaug in Context”

    Rodman Hall Art Centre, 109 St. Paul Crescent, St. Catharines
    Admission to the gallery is by donation ($5 suggested)

    A Sublime Vernacular offers the first overview of the extraordinary career of Levine Flexhaug (1918-1974), an itinerant painter who sold thousands of variations of essentially the same landscape painting in national parks, resorts, department stores and bars across western Canada from the late 1930s through the early 1960s. Whatever its variation, a Flexhaug image represents a Western icon, a silent unspoiled Eden that encapsulates the conventions of sublime landscape painting in a kind of painter’s shorthand, and offers a point of entry for consideration of significant critical questions ranging from issues of taste, originality versus repetition in art, the appeal of landscape and its iconography.

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  • Abstract/Abstracted: “This is not a tree”

    December 3, 2016 – February 12, 2017
    Opening reception: Thursday, December 8, 2016 from 6 – 7:30 pm
    Gallery hours: Tuesday – Friday from 10 am – 5 pm; Saturday & Sunday from 12 pm – 5 pm; closed Mondays.
    Rodman Hall Art Centre, 109 St. Paul Crescent, St. Catharines, ON L2S 1M3

    Reflecting on the exhibition A Painter’s Country: Canadian Landscape Paintings Selected from the Permanent Collection (curator: Stuart Reid) presented at Rodman Hall during the summer of 2016, Abstract/Abstracted: ‘This is not a tree’ presents works by Karel Appel, Frederick S. Coburn, Hans Hartung, Kazuo Nakamura, Carl Schaeffer, and Tony Tascona. Put together, these artworks, also from Rodman Hall’s permanent collection, explore a different problematic. How much abstraction is there in representation? In turn, to what extent is an abstract work abstract? Abstract/Abstracted highlights, but also questions the contrasts between abstract and figurative art. 
Brock University students in “Intermediate Painting” respond with selected artworks, while students in “Interpretive and Critical Writing in the Arts” provide critical texts that explore these questions.

    The catalogue will appear in the 2017 issue of ti< A Journal of Text-and-Image Criticism/Creation… Un journal de critique/création texte-et-image. https://brock.scholarsportal.info/journals/ti

    Curators: Catherine Parayre and Shawn Serfas

    Free community event

    Featured image: Emily Donaldson

     

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  • 3D-Printed Synthetic Theatre

    February 28 – March 4, 2017

    Thistle display case, Brock University library
    1812 Sir Isaac Brock Way, St. Catharines

    Reflecting on the practice of Synthetic Theatre in the 1920s, students in STAC 2P94 (“Embodied Text: Art Beyond the Artifact”) translate physical movements into 3D prints and write accompanying mini-scripts. The result is the still representation of a performance.

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  • Radio documentary by STAC prof goes national

    (Source: The Brock NewsFriday, December 09, 2016)

    A Brock Radio program about francophone women in Niagara has been selected for national distribution, and will be heard next week on stations across Canada.

    CFBU 103.7 FM host Catherine Parayre — an associate professor in Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures, as well as in Studies in Arts and Culture  —  produced the 28-minute segment for the national broadcast celebrating Rendez-vous de la Francophonie, an annual celebration of Canada’s membership in the Francophonie, which promotes the French language and its cultural expressions. The 2017 celebration takes place March 6-27 in communities across Canada.

    Parayre’s documentary has already aired on CFBU, and can be heard online at www.cfbu.ca/listen.php

    The program introduces listeners to five francophone women in Niagara whom Parayre interviewed last autumn:

    • Lucie Huot speaks about the historic presence of francophones in Niagara.
    • Fété Ngira-Batware Kimpiobi and Nafée Faigou, both from the Association of Francophone Immigrant Women of Niagara (SOFIFRAN) speak about their immigration to Canada, what they have left in their native countries and what they like in Niagara.
    • Rachel Hélène Amran, an artist from Montréal, shares her efforts for a successful integration as a francophone artist.
    • Clamenç Prades relates her experiences since she first arrived from Austria.

    For a list of national stations carrying the broadcast next week, go to http://www.ncra.ca/rvf

    La Francophonie is an international organization representing countries and regions where French is the first or customary language and/or where a significant proportion of the population are Francophones and/or where there is a notable affiliation with French culture. Canada is one of its 57 member states.  The head of the organization is former Canadian Governor General, Michaëlle Jean.

    The project is funded by La Fondation canadienne pour le dialogue des cultures, and in partnership with the NCRA through Canadian Heritage.

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  • Plan your future now! Ontario Universities’ Fair is September 23-25, 2016

    Plan your future now! If you’re thinking about attending Brock University and any of the four programs of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, don’t miss the Ontario Universities’ Fair!

    The OUF is September 23-25, 2016, at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre and admission is free.

    You can talk personally with students, professors and senior university reps, get answers about programs, admission requirements, student life and much more. Don’t miss out on the largest educational fair in Canada!

    Check out the Facebook event page or go to the Ontario Universities’ Fair website.

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    Categories: Future Students, News

  • Visa and STAC students exhibit in Austria

    entwurf3-ausstellungStudents in the Brock University Intermediate Painting and Interpretive and Critical Writing in the Arts courses, under the tutelage of Professors Catherine Parayre and Shawn Serfas, have mounted an exhibition at the University of Innsbruck, Austria.

    Visual Appropriations and Rewritings
    June 1 – 30, 2016
    University of Innsbruck, Austria
    Click here for more information.

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    Categories: Events, News, STAC Courses