News

Exhibition: ART BLOCK: BAC on the Block opens Dec .6

Thursday, November 30, 2017 | By dvivian

Work exhibited in last year’s edition of ARTBlock: BAC on the Block exhibition.

Members of the Brock Art Collective will host their third annual ARTBlock: BAC on the Block exhibition beginning Wednesday, Dec. 6 at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts.

The group, comprised of MIWSFPA students, will showcase works completed on 6-inch by 6-inch panels and made with a variety of mediums. Most works will be for sale starting at $40.

The opening reception will be held Wednesday, Dec. 6 from 6 to 9 p.m.
The exhibition, held in the Visual Arts Exhibition Space, runs until Friday, Dec. 22.

Regular visiting hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 1 to 5 p.m.

More information is available on ExperienceBU or Facebook

Tags: ART BLOCK, BAC, Brock Art Collective
Categories: Current Students, Events, Exhibitions, News
Visa Instructor featured in Canadian Art article

Wednesday, November 29, 2017 | By amcbay

Canadian Art has reviewed a recent exhibition that features the work of Visa Sessional Instructor Donna Akrey. Click HERE to read the article.

Categories: Alumni, Announcements, Current Students, Faculty & Instructors, News
Colour Constructs at Rodman Hall/Constructions en couleurs à Rodman Hall

Monday, November 20, 2017 | By dtemprile

Pictured is a view of the exhibition Material Girls at Rodman Hall Art Centre. (source: RHAC)

In fall 2017, Rodman Hall invites visitors to experience the exhibition Material Girls, which brings together Canadian and international female artists from across artistic disciplines and cultural backgrounds. Giving particular attention to the colourfulness and jubilance of this exhibition, in Colour Constructs, students in Visual Arts, Studies in Arts and Culture, and French Studies explore the materiality of colours in their own diverse ways. Student works are complemented by graffiti art by Niagara-based artist Mat Vizbulis, a classroom guest during the semester. Curators Catherine Parayre and Shawn Serfas. /

A l’automne 2017, Rodman Hall invite ses visiteurs à découvrir l’exposition Material Girls, qui regroupe des artistes femmes du Canada et d’ailleurs, dont les pratiques artistiques et l’environnement culturel diffèrent. En s’inspirant des couleurs et de la gaieté de cette exposition, des étudiants-e-s en Arts visuels, Arts et cultures et Etudes en français explorent dans Constructions en couleurs la matérialité des coloris par le biais d’approches variées. Les graffitis de l’artiste Mat Vizbulis, établi dans la région du Niagara, complètent les oeuvres des étudiant-e-s. Commissaires: Catherine Parayre et Shawn Serfas.

Article from the Brock News: Bilingual exhibition to shed light on Material Girls
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2017 | by Darien Temprile

A new Rodman Hall exhibition aims to help visitors experience Material Girls in a new way.

Geo, a piece created by third-year Visual Arts student Lilliana Pagliaro, will be featured in the Colour Constructs/Constructions en couleurs exhibition opening at Rodman Hall Thursday, Nov. 30.

Colour Constructs/Constructions en couleurs, opening at the downtown St. Catharines art centre Thursday, Nov. 30, features works by students in Brock’s Visual Arts (VISA), Studies in Arts and Culture (STAC) and French Studies (FREN) programs.

The exhibition, curated by Brock Professors Catherine Parayre and Shawn Serfas, initiates a sophisticated dialogue with Material Girls, an ongoing exhibition that opened at Rodman Hall Sept. 14.

Material Girls is a large-scale group exhibition of work by Canadian and international emerging, mid-career and senior female artists from different artistic disciplines and cultures. Curated by a team from the Dunlop Art Gallery, a unit of the Regina Public Library, it explores material process and notions of excess as they relate to the feminized body, gendered space and capitalist desire.

For Colour Constructs, students reacted to words, colours and visuals directly related to Material Girls.

STAC students contributed nine texts based on words and expressions found in the curatorial statement of Material Girls; FREN students provided eight written fragments in French, describing colours from Material Girls; and VISA students, in their own paintings, reference the vividness of artwork presented in Material Girls.

In addition to the work of students, the exhibition will include a new large commission by local graffiti artist Mat Vizbulis, who describes his work as ‘genre graffuturism.’

“As the images unfold in layers, we understand that it is truly something unexplainable,” he said. “We are then daring to define things.”

Earlier this year, Vizbulis led Brock students in experiential learning about graffiti and its role in both high art and popular culture.

The opening reception of Colour Constructs/Constructions en couleurs takes place Thursday, Nov. 30 at 5 p.m. at Rodman Hall Art Centre, 109 St. Paul Cres. The exhibition will continue until March 4.

Material Girls continues at Rodman Hall until Dec. 30.

Admission to Rodman Hall Art Centre is free, although donations are accepted. For more information in French or English, visit ExperienceBU.

UPDATE:

French student Amandine Faivre, right,
speaks about her poetry with French Professor Renee-Claude Breitenstein at the opening of Colour Constructs Thursday, Nov. 30. Curated by Professors Catherine Parayre and Shawn Serfas, the exhibition is a collaboration by students in Studies in Arts and Culture, Visual Arts and French Studies. Student artwork is complemented by work by local graffiti artist Mat Vizbulis, who worked with STAC and VISA students over the course of the semester. Colour Constructs is on at Rodman Hall Art Centre until March 4.
Exhibition: Thursday Nov. 30, 2017 – Sunday Mar. 4, 2018

Opening Reception: Thursday Nov. 30, 2017 at 5:00pm

GALLERY HOURS:
Tuesday, Wednesday & Friday: 10 am to 5 pm
Thursday: 10 am to 9 pm
Saturday & Sunday: 12 pm to 5 pm
Closed Mondays, statutory and University holidays

Free community event however donations accepted (suggested $5).

Tags: 15 Artists’ Common, Arts, Brock University, Catherine Parayre, Exhibit, Exhibition, french, French studies, marilyn i. walker school of fine and performing arts, material girls, MIWSFPA, Rodman Hall, Rodman Hall Art Centre, Shawn Serfas, stac, visa
Categories: Current Students, Events, Exhibitions
Exhibition: Permanent Vacation

Friday, November 10, 2017 | By dvivian

This exhibition will showcase a select group of recent Brock University Alumni: Katie Mazi, Jenn Judson, Matt Caldwell, Alex Muresan, Jessica Wright and Ben Mosher. As these emerging artists expand ideas and develop new work, they continue to recognize the value of the St. Catharines arts community and the impact it has on their practice. It was here at Brock University that their first investigations began and it was at Rodman Hall (2014/2015 & 2015/2016) that their first professional group exhibitions came to fruition. These artists will exhibit new and exciting work they have been producing as they navigate and emerge into the art communities locally and beyond the region. The exhibition will be curated by Asta McCann Brock alumni (Studies in Arts and Culture).

Additionally, Alumni music students: Grace Snippe and Kurt Dunn will be performing for the night of the reception.

Exhibition: Saturday, November 4, 2017 to Friday, December 1, 2017

regular visiting hours for the Exhibition Space are Tuesday through Saturday from 1-5 p.m
for additional times see: gallery webpage gallery facebook page

see the YourTV Cogeco video

Opening Reception: Friday, November 10, 2017, 7:00 – 10:00 p.m.

Location: Visa Gallery, Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, Brock University

A free community event.

Tags: alumni, Exhibition, Permanent Vacation
Categories: Alumni, Events, Exhibitions, News
HOT TALKS 2017-2018: Professor Derek Knight speaks at Rodman Hall, November 09

Thursday, November 09, 2017 | By dvivian

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

Tags: derek knight, hot talks, Rodman Hall
Categories: Current Students, Events, Faculty & Instructors, News
Visa Instructor part of panel discussion at Sur Gallery.

Monday, November 06, 2017 | By amcbay

Visa Instructor Irene Loughlin will participate in a panel discussion on the work of Guatemalan artist Regina Galindo on Friday, November 17, 7-9PM. Galindo’s performance Diverting Rivers investigates the impact of Canadian Mining Companies and takes place Thursday, November 16, 7:30-8:30PM. Both events take place at Sur Gallery, 100-39 Queens Quay East, Toronto (East of Yonge Street).

Categories: Current Students, Faculty & Instructors, News
Work of Visual Arts prof featured on Diana Krall tour

Friday, November 03, 2017 | By dtemprile

The artwork of Brock Fine Arts Assistant Professor Amy Friend is being featured on the international tour of renowned Canadian musician Diana Krall.

(Source: The Brock News, Thursday, November 2, 2017 | By: Maryanne Firth)

When the e-mail popped into Amy Friend’s inbox, she was certain it couldn’t be real.

But a feeling inside prompted the Brock Fine Arts assistant professor to respond to the inquiry, which asked about her artwork and whether she’d consider collaborating with renowned Canadian musician Diana Krall.

It was soon after that Friend found herself on the phone with the Grammy Award winner discussing possibilities for her upcoming tour.

Friend’s experimental photography has since helped Krall to set the scene on stage, acting as her backdrop as she captivates crowds in venues across North America and Europe.

Brock University Fine Arts Assistant Professor Amy Friend.

Friend’s work has been featured on the jazz singer’s international tour since June and the partnership is expected to continue through to the summer.

The project, which includes art pieces from three different bodies of work, has been “particularly fulfilling,” Friend said.

She has enjoyed the challenge of working with Krall to find pieces that fit the mood and message of individual songs, while also complementing the title of the tour and Krall’s most recent album, Turn Up the Quiet.

“It’s about trying to respect your own work, while also seeing how you can accommodate a vision that will fit within the repertoire they’re working with,” she said.

Friend is currently working to select new pieces for Krall’s Canadian tour dates, including a Nov. 24 show at Massey Hall in Toronto that she plans to attend.

“I’m looking forward to seeing her perform and to seeing my work filling the stage in a concert hall where I have heard musicians like Johnny Cash, Tom Waits and Nick Cave perform,” she said.

Krall’s latest repertoire will include a cover of Bob Dylan’s Simple Twist of Fate, which Friend is particularly excited to find a piece to accompany.

“Much of my work revolves around ideas of memory, impermanence, history and time,” said Friend, who has worked at Brock for the past decade. “I am less concerned with capturing a ‘concrete’ reality. Instead, I aim to use photography as a medium that offers the possibility of exploring the relationship between what is visible and non-visible.”

Work featured on the tour includes hand-manipulated photographs, pieces featuring floating handkerchiefs once belonging to Friend’s grandparents, and artwork inspired by snippets of film from her childhood.

Over the past few months, Friend and Krall have shared many inspiring conversations about family, creativity and women in the arts.

“She has been so great to work with, you could almost forget her status in the music world,” Friend said.

Krall often emphasized the need to respect Friend’s work and always checks in with the artist to ensure she’s pleased with the end results of each tour stop.

Friend called it “refreshing” to be able to engage with other artists.

“It exposes you to experiences that have commonalities and, at times, interesting variances,” she said. “It’s also wonderful to see how my work found a place to exist far beyond my initial intentions.”

The team responsible for the on-stage initiative also included Judy Jacob, a video and visual content director, and Paul Normandale, a lighting designer, who Friend said “took the project to the next level.”

In addition to her work with the tour, Friend has been busy over the past year with international exhibitions in Spain, Korea, Poland, Portugal and France. She has shows coming up in Boston and Italy and plans to release a new book in the near future.

The artwork of Brock Fine Arts Assistant Professor Amy Friend is being featured on the international tour of renowned Canadian musician Diana Krall.

Tags: Amy Friend, Brock University, canadian musician, diana krall, marilyn i. walker school of fine and performing arts, MIWSFPA, Visual Arts
Categories: Announcements, Faculty & Instructors, In the Media, News
Speaker provides chilling reminder of Canadian slave history

Sunday, October 29, 2017 | By dtemprile

Charmaine Nelson, far right, spoke on Colonial Print Culture and the Limits of Enslaved Resistance on Oct. 19 as part of the Walker Cultural Leader Series. She is pictured here with Department of Visual Arts Professors and event organizers, pictured from left, Keri Cronin, Linda Steer and Amy Friend.

(Source: The Brock News, Thursday, October 26, 2017 | by: Alison Innes)

Charmaine Nelson worked to paint a picture for the audience, one that detailed the experiences of Canadian slaves and the horrors they endured throughout history.

The renowned scholar, known for her groundbreaking contributions in the fields of black Canadian studies, visual culture of slavery, and race and representation, delivered the first 2017-18 public lecture of Brock’s Walker Cultural Leader Series on Oct. 19.

Her address drew more than 150 people who gathered at the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre in downtown St. Catharines to listen to her presentation, Colonial Print Culture and the Limits of Enslaved Resistance: Examining the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth-Century Fugitive Slave Archive in Canada and Jamaica.

A professor of Art History at McGill University, Nelson has published seven books and held a number of prestigious research chairs across North America. She is currently the William Lyon Mackenzie King Visiting Professor of Canadian Studies at Harvard University for 2017-18.

As the first and currently only black professor within the discipline of Art History at a Canadian university, Nelson, through her website, is an advocate for the field of Black Canadian Studies.

Her latest research, which she shared in her talk, attempts to understand the black experience in Canada by examining fugitive slave advertisements for details about the process of creolization in slave minority (temperate) and slave majority (tropical) locations in the British Empire.

Nelson explained how she reconceptualizes fugitive slave ads — once produced by slave owners seeking to recapture their runaways — as portraits of enslaved people. The ads can provide information on a group of people who often leave no record of their own, she said.

These portraits, however, are imperfect, since the subject is an unwilling participant and the depiction is written by the white slave owner. In addition, only slaves considered sufficiently valuable were pursued through advertising.

Fugitive slave ads provided detailed racialized descriptions of enslaved people, including complexion, hairstyle, clothing, language, accents and bodily marks. In some cases, the ads offered rewards for the recapture of a fugitive slave, encouraging white participation in the criminalization of fugitive slaves.

While the ads provide a portrait of enslaved people, they are also a lop-sided truth, Nelson explained. Some owners maligned fugitives with sweeping generalizations about their character, while others detailed specific crimes the enslaved person was alleged to have committed. Such descriptions helped associate blackness with slavery and criminality.

Nelson draws on a variety of archival sources in her research to flesh out these portraits, tracing fugitive slave stories through estate ledgers, bills of sale, poll tax records and workhouse and jail ledgers.

Nelson’s talk also explored the link between print and slave culture. Printed newspaper ads in the 18th and 19th century permitted white slave owners to assert their ownership over long distances.

Although printers facilitated slavery by asserting rights of white people to own slaves, the abolitionist movement eventually used the same fugitive slave ads, with their references to injuries, scars and branding, to show the horror of slavery.

As Nelson pointed out, many Canadians are unaware of Canada’s history of enslaving black and indigenous peoples.

“Slavery is not a black history,” she explained, “but a multi-racial, transatlantic history. Who were the slave owners, the ships’ captains, the printers, the jailers?”

The narrative of the Underground Railway, which Canadians eagerly embrace, spanned a period of about only 30 years, Nelson explained. She went on to challenge listeners to consider why the preceding two centuries of slavery in Canada have been erased from history.

In concluding her talk, Nelson encouraged the audience to change the lens through which they see history. The opportunities in the field of Canadian slavery history are immense, she said, while directing her words to students. Since so few people are studying the black Canadian experience, there are many contributions to be made.

The talk is part of the 2017-18 Walker Cultural Leaders Series, organized by Professors Keri Cronin, Linda Steer and Amy Friend the Department of Visual Arts and funded by the generous legacy of Marilyn I. Walker.

The author, Alison Innes, has assembled her live tweets about the lecture at Storify.

Tags: Amy Friend, Dr. Charmaine A. Nelson, Dr. Charmaine Nelson, FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre, Kari Cronin, Lecture, Linda Steer, marilyn i. walker school of fine and performing arts, MIWSFPA, walker cultural leader series, WCL series
Categories: News
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