Articles tagged with: Derek Knight

  • Rodman Hall hosts Visual Arts honours exhibitions

    Thursday, April 05, 2018 | By

    The opening reception for the first instalment of the honours exhibitions on Friday, March 23 drew a large crowd on the third floor of the Rodman Hall Art Centre.

    The opening reception for the first instalment of the honours exhibitions on Friday, March 23 drew a large crowd to the Rodman Hall Art Centre. Photo: Danny Custodio.

    Graduating students from the Honours Studio course (VISA 4F06) have been busy all semester creating their pieces for the two-part Brock University Department of Visual Arts Honours Exhibition. Students were mentored by Rodman Hall Art Centre gallery staff and Visual Arts Professors Donna Szoke, Shawn Serfas, Derek Knight, and Donna Akrey.

    The first instalment of the honours exhibition: Just Resting My Eyes is currently on display at the Rodman Hall Art Centre (109 St. Paul Crescent). The current exhibition features work from students: Denise Apostolatos, Victoria Morinello, Jill Newman, Jacob Primeau, and Aaron Thompson.

    These honours exhibitions are vital to students’ education in the Brock Visual Arts program because “the nature, purpose and intended outcome of Honours Studio is that once the students graduate from the art program, they become practicing artists. Art making, as a practice of research-creation, is inherently experiential learning” says Szoke.

    The collaboration with the professional team of the Rodman Hall Art Centre is a essential learning experience for Brock Visual Arts students. Akrey says the Rodman Hall staff’s “consultation with each student teaches them the importance of the entire process of art making and exhibiting, and the importance of their individual work in a collaborative event.” Serfas adds that the importance of having Rodman Hall embedded into the Bachelor of Arts program is that “it gives our students a distinctive experiential learning opportunity.”

    Knight says that the audience can expect to see “broad cultural themes with emphasis on the impact of mass media, environmental or social issues” throughout the work created by these honours students in this two-part exhibit.

    The second instalment, Turnin’ This Car Around, is set to be exhibited from Saturday, April 14 to Sunday, April 29, with the opening reception on Friday, April 13 from 7 to 9 p.m. This upcoming exhibit will feature pieces by Rachel Dove, Lauren Mucciarone, Victoria Reid, Brittany Thomas-Clapp, and Lorraine Zandvliet.

    For more information about Rodman Hall Art Centre and their programs see brocku.ca/rodman-hall

    see the article by John Law in the St.Catharines Standard: Brock’s top art students gather for one last show

    see the video report by Stephen Parr for YourTV Niagara

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  • HOT TALKS 2017-2018: Professor Derek Knight speaks at Rodman Hall, November 09

    Sunday, November 05, 2017 | By

    Geoffrey Farmer, “A Way Out of the Mirror”, 2017, Canada Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale. Image courtesy of Derek Knight.

    HOT TALKS

    Artist Talks and Gallery Conversations at the Rodman Hall Art Centre
    Admission by donation ($5 suggested); Members and Students Free
    Sponsored by Partridge Wealth Management/RBC Dominion Securities Inc., St. Catharines

    November 09: Professor Derek Knight,
    Department of Visual Arts, Brock University

    “Art Confidential: Trends and Obsession(s) in Recent Art”

    Thursday, November 9, 7 pm
    2017 saw the confluence of the Whitney Biennial, Münster Sculpture Project, Kassel’s Documenta 14, and the Venice Biennale. Derek Knight, Associate Professor, Visual Arts, Brock University discusses the pros and emerging cons of the international blockbuster exhibition as well as his top picks, from Pierre Huyghe to Phyllida Barlow to Geoffrey Farmer.

    Rodman Hall Art Centre, 109 St Paul Crescent, St Catharines, ON L2S 1M3

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  • Teutloff loved art — and how it looked on Brock’s campus

    Monday, August 28, 2017 | By

    Pathfinder: In 1990, The Path of Possibilities was installed at Brock, the first sculpture of what would become the Teutloff Collection.

    This article was originally published by Kevin Cavanagh in the Brock News on Friday, August 25, 2017.

    Lutz Teutloff made his mark on Brock University’s landscape like few others have ever done.

    The philanthropist and art collector died in Germany this month at the age of 79, leaving a remarkable legacy that included populating the Brock campus with major pieces of contemporary sculpture that today are landmarks as familiar as the Schmon Tower.

    Lutz Teutloff in 1990: He saw Brock’s campus as an ideal place to display public sculptures.

    The Teutloff Collection is 12 art pieces that made their way to Brock during the 1990s, works owned by Teutloff but created by such international artists as Ilan Averbuch, Buky Schawrtz, Pit Kroke, Fabrizio Plessi, Grimsby resident Reinhard Reitzenstein and others.

    The artwork’s destiny for Brock can be traced to a campus tour that Teutloff had with then-president Terry White in 1988. Teutloff, who had homes in Germany and in Niagara-on-the-Lake, thought the campus’s natural setting was an excellent showcase for strong artwork. They worked out a plan in which Teutloff and his wife Hannelore would loan sculptures that the young University could put on public display.

    The first piece arrived in 1990, when Averbuch’s The Path of Possibilities was installed in front of Schmon Tower. In 2015 it was moved to its present site near the busy pedestrian mall between Cairns Research Complex and Chown D Block.

    Other pieces followed, two of the most high-profile being Kroke’s Gran Golar, placed in the traffic circle of University Road East; and Averbuch’s She Wolf, the huge copper sculpture that resides in Isaac Brock Circle, and which has enjoyed a special status with many students over the years.

    In 1997, Hannelore Teutloff told Brock’s Collections Coordinator, Lesley Bell, that the idea for the Brock collection started in 1987, when her husband acquired Path of Possibilities at the Chicago Art Fair.

    The sculpture Gran Golar welcomes campus visitors at the Glenridge Avenue entrance.

    “He was fascinated by the expression of this work,” said Hannelore, “but had no place for the work at that time. That same year he met former President Terry White who toured him through the Brock campus. Lutz was fascinated from the power and engagement behind Brock, and the different nations of the students impressed him. So Lutz asked Terry White and later, (White’s successor) President David Atkinson …. who was thrilled to bring Ilan’s work in front of the Schmon Tower. So it started – very pragmatic.”

    The Teutloffs chose works specifically for a student audience, and when Lutz Teutloff received an Honorary Doctorate from Brock in 2003, he told the Convocation audience that Path of Possibilities “signals the possibilities open to you who are studying here, the opportunities and privilege you should make the most of.”

    Visual Arts Associate Professor Derek Knight worked with Teutloff to produce the 2002 catalogue The Teutloff Collection at Brock University: Nature, Spirit, Matter, available in Brock’s James. A Gibson Library.

    “It was Mr. Teutloff’s penchant for sculpture that drew him to Brock,” said Knight.  “He saw the potential of the University environs, its broad green spaces and pedestrian concourses, as an ideal context in which to display a collection of public sculpture. To the University’s credit, it was a willing partner in bringing a dozen unique works of contemporary art to Niagara. It is a cultural legacy that Mr. Teutloff intended us to enjoy in perpetuity.”

    Born in Berlin in 1938, Teutloff had been a successful fashion entrepreneur, enabling him to pursue his passion for art. He eventually left fashion behind, accumulated pieces by artists and photographers around the world, and opened galleries in Cologne and in the German town of Bielefeld-Theesen.

    In reporting Teutloff’s death this summer, the website Neue Westfalische noted that (translated from German), “In his ‘second home’ Canada, he donated 12 sculptures from renowned artists to Brock University, Ontario.”

    The Brock sculptures were originally installed on loan, but in 2008 the University began a process to acquire the works permanently. They now belong to Brock.

     

    The artists, works and current locations for the complete Teutloff Collection are:

    Ilan Averbuch:

    • She Wolf (1991) — Isaac Brock Circle
    • The Path of Possibilities (1988) — East pedestrian mall
    • The Endless March (1991) — on extended loan off campus
    • Bleeding Harp (1989) — Thistle West corridor

    Reinhard Buxel:

    • Das Tor [The Gate] (1989) — Isaac Brock Blvd N.

    Pit Kroke:

    • Gran Golar (1987) — traffic circle, University Rd. E.

    Fabrizio Plessi:

    • La Stanza della Parole (1992) — Academic South corridor

    Reinhard Reitzenstein:

    Buky Schwartz:

    Unterbezirks Dada:

    • Fin de Siècle (1994-97) — University Rd E

     

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  • Brock, SUNY art show set to open in Buffalo’s Silo City

    Thursday, April 20, 2017 | By

    (Source: The Brock News, Thursday, April 20, 2017 | by Maryanne Firth. Photo caption: “Buffalo’s Silo City will play host to a joint art exhibition including the work of students and faculty from Brock University and the State University of New York at Buffalo. (Photo: Derek Knight)”)

    Brock University and the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo have joined forces to showcase artists on both sides of the border while also highlighting a landmark area on the Buffalo River.

    After two years of planning, Post-Industrial Ephemera: Soundings, Gestures, and Poetics will open Saturday, April 22 at Buffalo’s Silo City — an industrial space filled with repurposed grain elevators and other structures built in the first half of the 20th century.

    Several silos will play host to the free art exhibition until Saturday, April 29.

    The exhibition’s opening reception will run from 2 to 5 p.m. and includes, in addition to the artwork of both Brock and SUNY students and faculty, performances by the Harmonia Chamber Singers, Reinhard Reitzenstein, Lauren Regier, Continuous Monument, Catherine Parayre and Jim Watkins.

    Parayre, event co-curator and an associate professor in Brock’s Studies in Arts and Culture as well as Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures, said the event developed from like minds coming together through networking opportunities at Brock’s Rodman Hall Art Centre.

    It was co-curator Reinhard Reitzenstein, an associate professor of sculpture at SUNY-Buffalo, that introduced Parayre to Silo City, the inspiration for the showcase.

    “Everyone is mesmerized because the structures there are stunning,” Parayre said of the area that is filled with buildings worn by weather and time.

    The event, she said, is to encourage people to “reflect on the notion of dispersal.”

    “Silos are built to maintain large networks of commodity exchange for human and animal sustenance. Here, however, the workers are gone; the buildings are exposed to inclement weather; the projects we bring with us will disappear, be dispersed or displaced.”

    Silo City, she said, invites visitors to “become more perceptive to the transience of human endeavours.”

    The exhibition is an opportunity to reflect on the aging structures, their history and nature’s efforts to reclaim the partially vacant space, she said.

    Participating artists come from various disciplines including sculpture, arts, comparative literature, English studies, visual arts, studies in arts and culture, and French studies.

    The showcase features an array of installations, neon signs, readings, paintings, prints, videos and sculptures.

    Brock provided funding for the project through a longstanding research agreement in place between the two institutions, in addition to funding provided through Brock’s Dean of Humanities office.

    “We’re very grateful for Brock’s support,” Parayre said.

    Parking for the event is available onsite and guests are advised to dress warmly as temperatures within the silos remain brisk.

    More information on participating artists and performance schedules for the opening reception is available online.

    A one-day symposium held to relive the exhibition is scheduled to take place in September at Rodman Hall Art Centre in St. Catharines.

    see recent news about the published catalogue

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  • Post-Industrial Ephemera: Soundings, Gestures and Poetics

    Tuesday, April 04, 2017 | By

    Photo credit: Derek Knight

    Post-Industrial Ephemera: Soundings, Gestures and Poetics
    Silo-City welcomes you to an exhibition featuring artists on both sides of the Niagara River

    April 22 – 29, 2017
    105 Silo-City Row, Buffalo, NY 14203, U.S.
    Opening Reception: Saturday, April 22 from 2 – 5 pm
    http://www.silo.city
    Click here for directions
    Free community event

     

    Buffalo, New York and St. Catharines, Ontario are neighboring cities separated by a river and a border, but they also nurture a strong sense of regional togetherness and cultural kinship. Colleagues in Sculpture, Arts, Comparative Literature, English Studies, Visual Arts, Studies in Arts and Culture, and French Studies at SUNY on the U.S. side and Brock University on the Canadian side will share a common space at Silo-City, Buffalo between April 22 – 29. Coming from different places and practices, we wish to foster interdisciplinarity.

    Together, we want to reflect on the notion of dispersal. A concrete monument, an overwhelming structure, Silo-City is also a crucible of ephemeralities – sounds dissipating as they echo up the walls, the wind blowing through hollow buildings, the decay of objects deposited in the empty halls, the temporary presence of others, productive resonances of creative experiences. Is Silo-City a memorial? Silos are built to maintain large networks of commodity exchange for human and animal sustenance. Here, however, the workers are gone; the buildings are exposed to inclement weather; the projects we bring with us will disappear, be dispersed or displaced. Silo-City, despite its imposing constructions, invites visitors to become more perceptive to the transience of human endeavours.

    We will plant colourful seedpods, install a neon sign in tribute to the Buffalo river that flows by Silo-City, crush words out of their discourse, scatter mourning songs for long gone lives, bring images, noise and stories from other places. We will capture the brilliance of a moment.

    A follow-up one-day symposium at Rodman Hall Art Centre, St. Catharines will document and revive the exhibition on September 16, 2017.

    The opening will include performances by Harmonia Chamber Singers, Reinhard Reitzenstein, Lauren Regier, Continuous Monument, Catherine Parayre and Jim Watkins 

    Curators: Catherine Parayre, Reinhard Reitzenstein

    Click here to download the performance program.

    For more images and information, please visit the exhibition website.

     

    Participating artists: 

    ArtIndustria+
    Untitled (neon sign)

    ArtIndustria+ was formed in 1995 by Derek Knight and Franc Petric, two Canadian artists who reside in the Niagara region. Motivated by the desire to work collaboratively, they have developed projects over the years with a focus on art, research and technology. Underlining their concerns with the dialectical relationship between ecology and industry, their conceptual models combine installation techniques and situational aesthetics to further examine the artist’s role in post-industrial society.

    Continuous Monument
    Silo Sessions at the American (noise/drone performance)

    Continuous Monument is an affiliation of interdisciplinary culture-makers working among design, text, architecture and sound fields. Born from the ashes of a contaminated political landscape, Continuous Monument gathers to spatialize sound and signal in temporary, site specific soundscape improvisations. Monument will perform at The American in Silo City as an acoustic inhabitation; live ghosts active in remnant industrial anatomy.

    Akasya Crosier
    Likeness (typeface study)

    Akasya Crosier is a multifaceted artist based in Western New York. She is currently a senior at UB studying Studio Art and Communication. In her artwork, she focuses on effective communication skills, idealized spaces, and bright imagery.

    Catherine Parayre (assisted by Josh Dawson, SUNY and Paul Savoie, Brock U)
    Ingrained Words (14 posters: assembled fragments from texts by 33 writers)

    Catherine works in Arts and Culture, and in Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Brock University. She is particularly interested in contemporary Occitan literature, as well as the co-presence of literatures and visual arts. She includes her four languages in her creative work.

    Catherine Parayre and Jim Watkins
    The Silo-Minder (recording, reading)

    Jim Watkins lives in Silo-City and is our silo-minder/keeper. His passion for the arts and for Silo-City is central to our cross-border project.

    Lauren Regier
    Where I stand is fair and square (performance/grass seed & dirt)

    Lauren Regier is Honours graduate from Brock University’s Visual Arts program, and is an emerging artist based in the Niagara Region. Much of her work is inspired by the notion of functionality and relationships between the industrial world and the natural realm. Interested in the experiential nature of contemporary art, her practice includes photography, installation, performance, drawing and video.

    Reinhard Reitzenstein
    ArbreTreeBaum (vocal piece in 5 languages)

    Reitzenstein has held over 100 solo exhibitions and over 300 group exhibitions globally, and has completed over 25 public and private art commissions. His work is represented in more than 50 public and corporate collections internationally. Reitzenstein has been Director of the Sculpture Program at, SUNY, Buffalo since 2000. He is represented by the Olga Korper Gallery in Toronto.

    Casey Ridings
    Untitled Emotion (acrylic paint)

    Casey Ridings is currently a Graphic Design student at the University at Buffalo. She is intrigued by the geometric nature of organic patterns; through a spontaneous and intuitive process she creates intricate paintings and drawings inspired by the exploration of her experiences and emotions.

    Cody Schriever
    Vanity Case / Skeletons of Perception (painting/sculpture)

    Cody Schriever is a student in the University at Buffalo art department. His paintings and sculptures deal with human nature, and the structures of its self-perception. By combining various styles of painting and modes of expression he creates a complex narrative of the global condition.

    Shawn Serfas
    Alloyed (acrylic)

    Shawn is an Assistant Professor in the Visual Arts Department, Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts at Brock University. His research interests include contemporary painting, drawing and printmaking practices concerning relational abstraction, environmental aesthetics, religion, the landscape as well as issues bordering abstraction and representation.

    Lucas Veraldi
    2mp (inkjet prints)

    Lucas is an artist currently residing in Buffalo, NY. His practice examines the different methods of representation that exist within the realm of photography and explores the truth value that a photograph holds as a piece data that showcases life.

    Sophia Yung
    Voyage Voyage 

    Sophia Yung is a Chinese American graphic designer and artist from Brooklyn, NY. Her most recent work involves the analysis of Asian American culture shock, language barriers, mixed martial arts and the role of financial capital in the precarious 21st century.

    Jean Zhu
    bacteria (video)

    Jean Zhu is currently a Media Study student at the University at Buffalo. She is both a photographer and a filmmaker. Her experimental films and straightforward photographs of everyday objects and scenes are noted for their color combination, explicit composition and rich content.

     

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  • Le Corbusier and the Dynamics of Space, Colour and Design: Art and the Rehabilitation of the Unité d’Habitation

    Wednesday, March 16, 2016 | By

    (Source: alliance-francaise.ca)

    Alliance française de Toronto invites you to the lecture of Professor Derek Knight, dedicated to Le Corbusier’s work. On Wednesday, March 16, at 7 pm in the Spadina Theatre. Free entrance.

    Le Corbusier worked particularly in the town planning and the design. He is known to be the inventor of the “Unité d’habitation” (house unit), concept on which he began to work in the 1920s, expression of a theoretical reflection on the collective accommodation. His conception envisages in the same building every community facilities necessities in life: day nursery, laundry, swimming pool, school, businesses, library, places of meeting.

    Derek Knight is an Associate Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at Brock University. He teaches 20th century European and North American art history, Contemporary Art and theory, and contributes to the MA program in Studies in Comparative Literatures and Arts. He is Director of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, in St Catherine.

    The lecture will be held in English.

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  • Director of the MIWSFPA to deliver lecture at Alliance Française

    Monday, March 07, 2016 | By

    Associate Professor of Art History & Studio and Director of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts Derek Knight will be delivering a lecture on the work of Le Corbusier at the Alliance française de Toronto. For more information on this lecture click HERE.

    Wednesday, March 16
    7:00 pm
    Spadina Theatre
    24 spadina road
    M5R 2S7 Toronto, ON
    Canada

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  • First Marilyn I. Walker endowed Chair in Creativity, Imagination and Innovation announced

    Thursday, February 11, 2010 | By

    (Source: The Brock News, Wednesday, February 10, 2010)

    Brock has announced the creation and first recipient of the Marilyn I. Walker Chair in Creativity, Imagination and Innovation.

    The Chair is awarded to the Director of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts for the duration of their term as Director. Derek Knight, the current Director of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, is the first person to hold the position. The endowed Chair supports building the school’s programs, enhancing its facilities and positioning it to be one of the best fine arts schools in North America.

    “Today we are announcing the first privately endowed Chair in the history of Brock,” said President Jack Lightstone. “This Chair represents a major step in the development of our University because it helps us fulfill our blueprint for the future — which includes fostering research and creative activity, expanding graduate and professional programs, enhancing interdisciplinary studies and community engagement. Our goal is to establish endowed chairs in all six faculties at Brock.”

    From left: Jack Lightstone, Marilyn I. Walker, Derek Knight, Rosemary Hale

    Renowned Canadian fibre artist Marilyn I. Walker made the Chair possible with a $15 million gift to the University’s School of Fine and Performing Arts in November 2008 — the largest donation the University has ever received. The gift was endowed in perpetuity to support the future improvement of the School and its programming. This Chair represents the first tangible outcome of this vision.

    “This announcement is about advancing the arts at Brock and in Niagara,” said Rosemary Hale, Dean, Faculty of Humanities. “It is also about enhancing our capacity to play a key role in partnering with our surrounding communities to influence the cultural redevelopment of our region as we work to build a world-class arts facility for our students, faculty, staff and patrons.”

    Funds associated with the Chair will be used to support programming and investments at the School to build up its and University’s reputation in the area of fine and performing arts.

    Derek Knight has worked at Brock since 1985. He teaches courses in 20th century European and North American art history, contemporary art and theory, and contributes to the MA program in Studies in Comparative Literatures and Arts. In addition to his own production of photo-based, conceptual and site-specific art and participation in more than thirty group shows, Knight has developed a profile as an independent curator.

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