Art Collective e-newsletter for Sept. 13, 2006
This note has eight points of news that cover a lot of ground, with lots of links, so take your time. (This note is also on our website whose contents are indexed high up in searches with Google and other search engines):
1) our first meeting Friday from 10 to 1:30 at VA 315
2) Artist Adrian Norvid gives feedback this year
3) Recognition of contributions by Studio Arts chair David Elliott, Fine Arts Student Alliance, Lynn Beavis of Faculty of Fine Arts gallery, artists Holly King, Ed Janzen, Juliana Espana Keller
4) François Morelli’s exciting new shows in Montreal
5) Juliana Espana Keller’s coming workshops on documenting your work with a digital camera, a podcast site she helped create that covers the Montreal art scene, and her show in Portugal
6) Laura St. Pierre’s new website
7) Last but far from least, a detailed look at our newest affiliated member, rising international artist Philomène Longpré.
1) The first session of the collective is Friday, Sept. 15, from 10 a.m. until 1:30 in studio VA-315 of the Visual Arts building, everybody is welcome to stop by as we create some fresh art together and talk about what we want to do this year. Our last season closed with a one-week show at UQAM’s graduate-student CDEx Gallery, where we created a collaborative sculptural and mural landscape for a one-week process show, called Detour. You can see images from this show on our website and read about what we were doing in a unique street-level gallery at the corner of St. Denis and Ste. Catherine Sts., where people joined in, or watched, our collaborative process from the university and from the street.
The Collective wishes to extend a special invitation to artists who came to our special orientation art-making event last week in the Visual Arts building. Members Marisa Hoicka, Joanna Nawarcaj, Cassandra Witteman and Robert Winters led the drawing activity and talked about the collective to people who stopped by. Check out our website at www.theartcollective.net for some background on what we’ve been doing. Some highlights are in the Photos and Images gallery, which are at: http://gallery.theartcollective.net/
2) The Art Collective would also like to welcome Montreal artist and instructor Adrian Norvid who will be providing feedback on what we’re doing this year.
3) The Collective also wishes to thank David Elliott, chair of Concordia University’s high-profile Studio Arts Department, for his help. The collective is in its third year of operates in collaboration with Studio Arts, which generously provides studio space. To read about a David Elliott solo show at Joyce Yahouda Gallery in the Belgo Building, please click here:
http://ctr.concordia.ca/2004-05/oct_21/16/
The Collective also thanks the Fine Arts Student Alliance for its support. FASA’s current president, Ed Janzen, made the first mark at an interactive session that marked the opening of our April Strings exhibition’s in the Visual Arts Building, which also featured individual work by artists in The Collective as well as a curated exhibition of the group’s collaborative work by Montreal artist and instructor Holly King. You can read about a Belgo Building fibres show with work by Ed Janzen by clicking here:
http://ctr.concordia.ca/2004-05/apr_07/11/
You can read about Holly King’s work at: http://ctr.concordia.ca/2004-05/jan_13/08/
The first mark at our large-scale Art Matters Interactive event of March 14 was made by Lynn Beavis, co-ordinator of the new Faculty of Fine Arts Gallery in the new Engineering and Visual Arts building at Concordia University. You can learn about the FOFA Gallery at:
http://fofagallery.concordia.ca/info.html
The first mark at our CDEx show in May 2006 was made by Montreal artist/curator Juliana Espana Keller. Her website is at: http://www.julianaespanakeller.com/
4) Don’t miss the new exciting shows by Montreal artist François Morelli, an adviser to the collective, whose work can be seen on the fifth floor of the Belgo Building, 372 Ste. Catherine St. W., in two galleries: Joyce Yahouda Gallery (516) and Optica (508). Information on these shows is below. You can read more about his work in this story: http://cjournal.concordia.ca/journalarchives/2005-06/jan_26/006067.shtml
François and artist Holly King curated the March 2005 exhibition of collaborative work by the Collective for the Art Matters festival.
5) Julie Keller, the Montreal artist-curator who curated The Art Collective’s innovative Detour show May 13-20, 2006, at UQAM’s CDEx graduate students’ gallery, is presenting a mini-course in documenting your work with a digital camera, Sept. 23 and 30, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Cost is $30, plus materials. Course will be at Atelier Circulaire, 5445 rue de Gaspé, Room 503. For information, call 514-272-8874. You can check out Atelier Circulaire’s programs at: www.atelier-circulaire.qc.ca
Julie, also known as Juliana Espana Keller, had her work featured in a show in Portugal this summer. You can try out your Portuguese at: http://dupond.ci.uc.pt/tagv/evento.asp?evtid=752
Finally, Juliana has helped create, with Paul Litherland, a special podcast project called Swivel, which talks about contemporary art in Montreal. Interviews with artists, viewers, writers, gallerists and generally interesting people all make up the Swivel experience.
You can check out Swivel at: http://lux.ca/audio/audiofiles/Podcast/Podcast.html
6) Montreal artist and instructor Laura St. Pierre, whose class included a special class on collaboration last winter led by collective co-ordinator Robert Winters, has a new website: http://laurastpierre.ca/
7) The Art Collective welcomes emerging artist Philomène Longpré as an affiliated member. Philomène, a multimedia artist who specializes in interactive art, has followed the collective’s progress and sent a message for our first Interactive Wall in November 2004. Philomène did her BFA at Concordia, including several exceptional electronic-arts pieces that won awards in Montreal, just completed her two-year MFA from the School of Art Institute of Chicago, in Art and Technology Studies, where she studied after winning the school’s top scholarship, worth about $100,000 U.S. Philomène says the school’s Thesis show was huge, involving 150 MFA students exhibiting on three floors, with more than 10,000 visitors. After graduating, the Chicago school offered her a teaching position, where she is working now. She also has two shows planned in Montreal in early 2007 and will be coming here for those, and expects to attend a special session of the Collective.
Images of her work will be posted on the site shortly as well. To check out her website, go to: www.philox.net
You can read a story about Philomene and her work on the Fine Arts Chapter section of the Concordia University Alumni Association’s website,
http://alumni.concordia.ca/calendar/2004/06/06/002034.shtml
Philomène Longpré is a multimedia artist who is engaged in exploring the intricate interactions between the physical and virtual world. Her artwork juxtaposes robotic video screen, virtual characters, and abstract sound to generate new communication between visitors and their environments.
Currently, she is teaching and pursuing her research at the School of Art Institute of Chicago, developing a network where several virtual characters and their immersive environments will be able to communicate with each other and with the visitors.
Philomène Longpré received a MFA degree in Art and Technology Studies from the School of Art Institute of Chicago. Her graduate studies were funded through two merit-based awards: the Art Institute’s Trustee Scholarship as well as the FQRSC Quebec grant for research in Society and Culture. She also completed a BFA degree specializing in Electronic Art at Concordia University in Montreal Canada awarded with the Alfred Pinsky Medal. Her interactive video systems have been shown at FILE Sao Paulo and Nexus Bangkok.
Her work also has been shown at the 19e International Festival FICFA-New Media Moncton, Digifest Toronto, Promo4.3 Montreal and exhibited in several contemporary art galleries in Canada and the United States. Her Interactive Video Systems received distinctive mentions with the Judith Hamel New Media Award, Hexagram's Prize of Excellence in art and technology, the Stanley Mills Prize Purchase and the 1999 Montreal Merite Culture Prize.
See below for more information about François Morelli’s shows.
Robert Winters
co-ordinator of The Art Collective
robertwinters@videotron.ca
More information about François Morelli’s shows:
The show at Joyce Yahouda’s gallery presents: Faire à sa tête presents François Morelli's recent and earlier drawings and sculptures that have never been shown in Montreal. This exhibition continues his ongoing questioning of one's relationship to one's body.
Beltheads, consisting of puppets created out of recycled belts, were used during the execution of the drawings. As hand puppets, the Beltheads assisted the artist by holding the drawing instrument in their mouths.
Transatlantic Walk 1845-1985 was worn and carried like a backpack during the course of 30 days of walking, from the Berlin wall to Philidelphia, in 1985. This process allowed the artist to take on an entity similar to his own, yet strangely organic and visceral in its appearance.
The show at Optica is described here:
http://www.optica.ca/thismontheng.html
The Optica site has this description of the show
Home Wall Drawing. L’art de manger went through several stages. The process began with the idea of barter: a site-specific work offered in exchange for a home-made meal. From January to June 2004, Morelli was concurrently in residence at the Paris Cité international des arts — the Canada Council for the Arts studio — and at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Art in Limoges. During this period, he proposed creating a stencil mural drawing for those who desired it, in a space of their choice in their home. In exchange, hosts prepared him one of their favorite dishes. Exchanges were set up randomly, by word of mouth and through promotional fliers designed and distributed by the artist in various public spaces.
In Limoges, he continued his work on home space and ornamentation by crafting a set of porcelain table settings. Rarely serving as a motif, ink stamps are still much in use today by manufacturers or craftsmen, who place their signature on the underside of an item for identification purposes. Morelli, however, uses the stamp as decor, ennobling the act of marking a surface and covering it with drawings.
The process is encapsulated in the exhibition at Optica, which includes a “stamp-drawing” frieze print on paper, porcelain plates, and a sculpture. Documenting all twenty-two meals is a CD-Rom, thus including in the installation both the in situ work and the recipes bartered for it.
Home Wall Drawing. L’art de manger posits artistic activity as subject once again, reexamining the status of the art object, and form, both in their reception and in their dissemination. Interested in so-called minor and often marginalized forms of expression, Morelli attempts to give new life to artistic engagement, using ornamentation, dream material, ritual, and the everyday as premise for communication with the other.
The Mural Draw
With the purchase of the Home Wall Drawing CD-Rom for $20, five raffle tickets are provided in view of the draw for a mural produced by the artist.
François Morelli lives and works in Montreal. After completing his bachelor’s degree in 1981, he left his home town and headed for New York, where he stayed until 1991, captivated by new art forms, including performance and conceptual approaches. During this period, he taught as associate professor at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and, from 1985 to 1989, at both the State University of New York and the City University of New York in Manhattan. Back in Montreal, he taught at Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières until 1996. Since then, he has joined the teaching staff at Concordia University. In the nineties, he exhibited regularly at Galerie Christiane Chassay, in Montreal, and at Horodner Romley Gallery, in New York (1993-1996). He has taken part in several national and international exhibitions, including the Biennale du Havre (2006), the Biennale de Montréal (2002), and ICI’s Walk Ways (2002), New York. Currently, he is represented by the Joyce Yahouda Gallery in Montreal. Besides the events/actions/performances on which his practice is founded, Morelli also indulges in drawing, sculpture, installation, and artists’ books.
