Faculty & Instructors

• Associate Professor Donna Szoke’s work include in publication.

  Tuesday, October 17, 2017 | By amcbay

  

  Associate Professor and Visual Arts Department Chair Donna Szoke’s work is discussed in the on-line journal New Media Caucus in an article by Lisa Moren, Professor of Visual Art and Graduate Program Director of Intermedia + Digital Art, MFA Program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County [UMBC]. Her interactive video installation and all watched over by machines of loving grace is a humorous intervention in the dystopian reality of contemporary dataveillance and societies of control.

  Image courtesy of Tim Nohe.

  Categories: Alumni, Announcements, Current Students, Faculty & Instructors, In the Media, News

• Visa Instructor part of two projects in Windsor, Ontario.

  Monday, October 16, 2017 | By amcbay

  

  Visa Instructor Donna Akrey is part of two collectives with projects being mounted in an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Windsor this fall:

  Downtown/s: Urban Renewals Today for Tomorrow, The 2017 Windsor-Essex Triennial of Contemporary Art.
  Art Gallery of Windsor
  October 21 to January 28, 2018

  (F)NOR
  (L)Herbes Other Rivers
  October 20, 7pm

  In/Terminus Research Colective & the Hamilton Perambulatory Unit (Lee Rodney, Michael Daroch, Taien Ng-Chan & Donna Akrey)
  Reconnaissance, Heart + Soul: the Windsor Armouries
  October 20, 7pm

   

  Categories: Announcements, Current Students, Faculty & Instructors, In the Media, News

• Visa Alumni mounting local exhibition.

  Thursday, September 21, 2017 | By amcbay

  

  Recent Brock Alumni, Katie Mazi & Jenn Judson are mounting an exhibition of their new collaborative photo series, ‘Cooler Than Cool.’ Join the artists at their opening reception this upcoming Saturday Sept. 23 from 7-10PM at the Niagara Artists Centre. There will be good food, drinks, prizes, surprises and prints for sale.

  Reception is September 23rd and the show is on from Sept. 23 – Oct. 13th at NAC.

  Categories: Alumni, Announcements, Current Students, Faculty & Instructors, News

• Assistant Professor Amy Friend exhibits in Provence, France.

  Sunday, August 20, 2017 | By amcbay

  

  Récits Photographiques
  August 24 > September 30, 2017
  Abbaye De Silvacane, La Roque D’Antheron
  Les Terrasses Du Chateau, Lauris
  Provence, France

  https://www.facebook.com/recitsphotographiques/

   

  Categories: Alumni, Announcements, Current Students, Faculty & Instructors, News

• Visa Instructor and students mount exhibition in Buffalo New York.

  Tuesday, June 20, 2017 | By amcbay

  

  Visa Instructor Judy Graham and students Alex Chorny, Sam Goeree and Amber Lee Williams are mounting an exhibition titled Cloth Shells at 1045 Elmwood Gallery for the Arts in Buffalo, New York.

  July 1 > July 31
  Reception: Saturday, July 15th, 2 > 4pm

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

• New Visual Arts Department student award announced.

  Friday, May 26, 2017 | By amcbay

  

  The “Regent Student Living Award” is selected by the VISA Faculty and presented to the Visual Arts Major with the highest overall standing in 1st or 2nd year with at least 5 full credits completed. The award is graciously donated by Regent Student Living (an all-inclusive student residence located downtown St. Catharines) and presented in May or June after the completion of the academic year.

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

• Brock prof earns prestigious fellowship

  Wednesday, April 26, 2017 | By Nikki Prudden

  

  (Source: The Brock News, Wednesday, April 26, 2017 | by Alison Innes. Photo caption: “Visual Arts associate professor Keri Cronin. Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals”)

  The animal advocacy movement has a rich visual history, and for her ongoing contributions to the movement, Brock University art historian Keri Cronin has been made a Fellow with the prestigious Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics.
  

  The Visual Arts associate professor is particularly interested in the ways those working for animal advocacy in previous eras used images in campaigns.

  “It’s really important to think about the relationships that exist between images and animal ethics because representations of animals shape how we think about them, how we treat them,” says Cronin, who is also a Faculty Affiliate in Brock’s Social Justice and Equity Studies graduate program and a founding member of the Social Justice Research Institute. “Images can have real-world consequences for actual flesh-and-blood animals.”

  “My work asks people to consider what happens if we think about these images as part of the larger cultural narrative about how we treat animals, how we decide what counts as ‘cruel’ or ‘humane’ treatments and how those ideas shift over time.”

  Cronin’s research has lead her to archives across North America and the U.K. in search of material such as leaflets and handbills, which often have not been catalogued or preserved in the same way as material on other topics.

  The Visual Arts professor has published several books on visual culture and activism and has recently curated an exhibit, “Be Kind: The Visual History of Humane Education” for The Animal Museum.

  She has also launched a new multimedia project with Jo-Anne McArther of We Animals called Unbound: Women on the Front Lines of Animal Advocacy.

  Cronin’s forthcoming book, Do Not Refuse to Look at These Pictures: Visual Culture and Animal Advocacy 1870-1914, is due out this year and she hopes it sparks conversation and awareness about the visual culture of early animal advocacy.

  The Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, now comprised of more 100 international scholars, draws together academics from the humanities and sciences, including subjects as diverse as philosophy, theology, law, biology, history, social sciences, literature and politics.

  Membership is by invitation only and only a small portion of those nominated are eventually selected. The lengthy and painstaking selection process recognizes those have made outstanding contributions to the field of animal ethics.

  Cronin is the second Brock professor to join the Centre; Sociology professor Lauren Corman is an Associate Fellow in recognition of her interdisciplinary work on animal rights, posthumanism, feminist, critical race, labour, and environmental theories and practices.

  Tags: animal advocacy, art history, Keri Cronin, Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, Social Justice and Equity Studies, Social Justice Research Institute
  Categories: Faculty & Instructors, In the Media, News

• Visual Arts Department Monitor positions for FW 2017/2018

  Tuesday, April 25, 2017 | By amcbay

  

  Positions: Visual Arts Student Monitors for Fall/Winter terms 2017/2018
  Qualifications: Positions available for third and fourth-year VISA majors only.

  Duties include: Monitoring and cleanup duties of the area you are assigned, perform other related duties as assigned by your supervisor (No work during Fall term and Winter term reading weeks).
  Compensation: $12.00/hour

  Deadline for applications: Wednesday, May 31, 2017

  To apply for any of these positions please communicate only from your Brock student email account and send a resume and cover letter indicating your major, year of study, relevant qualifications and any related volunteer or paid positions along with a detailed schedule of the days/times you are available to work to: [email protected]
  Please note that all communication must be through your Brock student email accounts and that only the applicants selected will be contacted. If you are successful, you will be assigned monitor duties to an area that the monitor hiring committee feels you are best suited for.

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

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

  Thursday, April 20, 2017 | By Nikki Prudden

  

  (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.

  Tags: Brock University, Buffalo, Buffalo  River, Catherine Parayre, derek knight, Exhibition, Lauren Regier, Post-Industrial Ephemera: Soundings Gestures and Poetics, Rodman Hall Art Centre, Silo-City, St. Catharines, State University of New York, SUNY
  Categories: Announcements, Faculty & Instructors, In the Media, News

• Visa Instructor exhibition: DEAD DAD Donna Akrey & Yvette Poorter.

  Monday, April 10, 2017 | By amcbay

  

  Donna Akrey and Yvette Poorter are a collaborative duo that have been making/continue to make work together when they can since the 1990s (or since they jumped off a cliff into Muskoka water at age 17). Their work is multi-media and often involves easily found and/or scavenged materials. They are interested in getting lost while realizing the rarity of such a thing. So they make work to get lost in. Poorter and Akrey have been collecting stories and images from people who have a dead dad. They use these snippets of other people’s memories, as fuel to create a morphing landscape installation. Yes, the exhibition is about dads—dead dads at that—but it is also a rumination on memory and the size and viscosity of memory. A vague longing.

  Categories: Current Students, Faculty & Instructors, News