News

  • Upcoming exhibition at Rodman Hall: Donna Akrey’s “Also Also”

    Thursday, February 09, 2017 | By

    (Source: Rodman Hall Art Centre)

    DONNA AKREY
    Also Also

    Curated by Marcie Bronson

    February 11 to April 30, 2017

    Opening Reception: Saturday, February 11, 3 pm

    HOT TALK: Thursday, March 2, 7 pm
    Donna Akrey in conversation with Marcie Bronson

    Donna Akrey is interested in how habit shapes the way we experience and engage with the world around us. Rooted in her astute observation of patterns of communication and consumption, her work humorously intervenes to raise discussion about social and environmental issues, often responding directly to a particular site or community. Using common, surplus, and discarded materials to construct sculptures and installations that she describes as “ruminations on the spectacle of the unspectacular”, Akrey draws attention to the futility of the notion of “the ultimate” and the richness in the space between intention and result. Akrey explains: “I imagine the absurd as real, because sometimes the real is so absurd.” Alongside selected works from the last 15 years of her practice, this exhibition presents a site-specific outdoor installation created in collaboration with neighbourhood residents.

    Donna Akrey, Middle Ground, 2016, mirror, wood, foam, casters.

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    Categories: Events, Exhibitions, Faculty & Instructors, News

  • ATTENTION FUTURE STUDENTS: Portfolio submission deadline extended!

    Tuesday, February 07, 2017 | By

    We are extending our portfolio submission deadline! Initially listed as February 8, 2017, we are now accepting portfolios until March 1, 2017!

    Need more information on submission guidelines and where to send your portfolio? See the submission instructions on our Admissions and Portfolio Requirements page.

    (Pictured above: Jessica Wright stands with her pieces as part of the #trynottocryinpublic exhibition, 2016. Image: Danny Custodio.)

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    Categories: Current Students, Future Students, News

  • Brock Talks: “Finding Photographs” by VISA Professor Amy Friend

    Tuesday, February 07, 2017 | By

    “Finding Photographs” by Brock Visual Arts Professor Amy Friend
    The process artists undertake in their studio practice involve various amounts of experimentation and discovery. Professor Amy Friend, Department of Visual Arts, will present behind-the-scenes aspects of studio practices by several photographic artists working with found photographs and highlight the complex navigation and issues related to the specific act of ‘finding photographs.’

    Wednesday, February 15, 7 – 10 pm
    St. Catharines Public Library
    54 Church Street, St. Catharines

    For more information, connect with us on our Facebook event page.

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    Categories: Events, Faculty & Instructors, News

  • The Contemporary Body: A Photo-Based Exhibit

    Wednesday, January 25, 2017 | By

    February 4 – 28, 2017
    Opening Reception: Saturday, February 4, 2017, 7 – 10 pm
    Mahtay Café and Lounge, 241 St. Paul Street, St. Catharines

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    Categories: Events, Exhibitions

  • VISA instructor Amy Friend featured on MoMA Instagram!

    Tuesday, January 24, 2017 | By

    VISA instructor Amy Friend’s piece, “Hands on Water”, is featured today on the Instagram page of the Museum of Modern Art as part of their MoMA R&D Salon 19: Modern Death. Have a look! Congratulations, Amy!

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  • Dropped Threads

    Friday, January 20, 2017 | By

    VISA 3F99 Independent Study
    February 9 – March 10, 2017
    Opening Reception: Thursday, February 9 from 6 – 9 pm

    A Fibre Arts installation created from community donations – come out and be a part of the opening reception and see how the donations have been recycled!

    The opening will be held in the Art Gallery in the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts on Feb 9th from 6 – 9 pm. The exhibition will be installed until March 10th, 2017. Gallery Hours: Tues. – Sat. from 1 – 5 pm

    Want more information? Connect with us at our Facebook event page.

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    Categories: Events, Exhibitions

  • Lauren Regier’s Bioart piece Aroma Illius Laqueo.

    Wednesday, January 18, 2017 | By

    (Source: The Brock News, Wednesday, January 18, 2017 | by . Photo: Lauren Regier (BA ’14) works on her photographs in studio.)

    Three classes into her first Brock University art course with Professor Keri Cronin, Lauren Regier (BA ’14) knew she wanted to study art full time.

    She has since continued to nurture her passion for art and recently launched a photography exhibit at Malcolm Gear Studio in Welland.

    Regier called her connection with Brock and the local arts community, as well as an artist residency she took following graduation, critical to her artistic development.

    It was her professors at the University who explained the residency process and shared their professional experiences to help guide her in an appropriate direction.

    With the support of professors Amy Friend, Irene Loughlin and Donna Szoke, Regier opted to participate in the Sointula Art Shed Residency Program near Vancouver Island in March 2016.

    Lauren Regier’s Bioart piece Aroma Illius Laqueo.

    The residency was an important opportunity for her to explore functional and survival properties of plants, humans and animals, and to apply that research into the construction of the plants in her Bioart series.

    The series is a collaboration of science and art that creates new, interesting organisms by meshing together existing bits of plant matter.

    Regier’s work combines plants with industrial products to create strange new prototypes. She documents her creations in black and white photography, hand-tinted with watercolours.

    Regier’s current exhibition, Fantasy Fleur, is an offshoot of her Bioart series.

    “I wanted to break with the notion of idealized beauty — something that is manufactured and very commonplace when it comes to depicting nature, such as floral wallpaper and furniture patterns,” Regier said.

    The Fantasy Fleur photographs feature plants in different stages of their life cycles. They are printed on aluminum; the highly polished surfaces allow for interactive play between the viewer and the work.

    “Similar to species that bloom at specific times of the day, these metallic prints respond to their environments and viewers are forced to physically interact with the work in order to see the image,” Regier said.

    Producing the pieces has been a highlight for Regier over the past year.

    “Meeting wonderful people in the community through Brock University and Rodman Hall has been crucial in developing my practice and providing me a platform to show my photographs,” she said.

    Regier first met Malcolm Gear in her curatorial art class at Brock.

    The artists recently reconnected at a Rodman Hall event at Mahtay Café, which ultimately led to Regier’s exhibition being launched at Malcolm Gear Studio, 464 East Main St. in Welland.

    Her work is on display until Jan. 31.

    Regier’s photography is also available for viewing on her website.

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    Categories: Alumni, In the Media, News

  • ART BLOCK: BAC ON THE BLOCK

    Friday, December 16, 2016 | By

    ART BLOCK showcases the artwork of Brock University students and is hosted by the Brock Art Collective. All artwork has been created on 6″x6” panels in a variety of mediums and will be for sale starting at $40.
    January 10 – February 3, 2017
    Opening Reception: Thursday, January 12, 2017 from 6 – 9 pm
    Art Gallery, Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, 15 Artists’ Common, St. Catharines
    Gallery hours: Tuesday – Saturday from 1 pm – 5 pm
    Free community event

    See a preview of the exhibition courtesy of TVCogeco:

     

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    Categories: Events, Exhibitions

  • Visual Arts professor releases new book on photography

    Friday, December 09, 2016 | By

    9781409437307(Source: The Brock News, Friday, December 9, 2016 | by )

    Professor Linda Steer has been fascinated with photography since she was a little girl looking at her grandmother’s photo albums. Her interest in photography and surrealism has now led to the recent publication of her book, Appropriated Photographs in French Surrealist Periodicals, 1924-1939.

    Steer says understanding the appropriation and recirculation of images is an important part of our media-rich culture.

    “Research on photography is becoming increasingly important as we live more and more of our lives through visual images,” she says.

    Memes are one modern example of how the meaning of an image changes.

    “They are typically photographic images that have been appropriated and altered through the addition of text or juxtaposition with other images. They circulate on social media. That process of adding text and re-circulating changes their meanings,” Steer says.

    The surrealists of the 1920s and 1930s were doing a similar thing in their magazines: taking existing images and juxtaposing them with other images or text. In this process, surrealists turned established images, such as medical images or crime-scene photographs, into works of art with very different meanings from the original photographs.

    It’s important to our image-laden lives to understand this process and what it means, says Steer.

    Her book is structured around four case studies and is the first of its kind on this topic.

    Since art history is an interdisciplinary field, Steer’s analysis engages with histories of psychiatry, psychoanalysis, ethnography, anthropology, literature and poetry, criminology, forensics, politics, religion, and popular culture in late 19th and early 20th century France and beyond.

    While the book is for an academic audience, Steer hopes those interested in photography and art will also find it appealing.

    “I hope that my book gives readers a new way of thinking about the complex relationships between surrealism and photography, and that it allows readers to understand, in a more general way, how photographs work and how they come to have meaning,” Steer concludes.

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

    Thursday, December 01, 2016 | By

    December 3, 2016 – February 12, 2017
    Opening Reception: Thursday 8 December (18:00/19:30)

    Location: Rodman Hall Art Centre,
    109 St Paul Crescent, St. Catharines, ON
    Curators: Catherine Parayre and Shawn Serfas

    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 in 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 A Journal of Text-and-Image Criticism/Creation

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