Courtesy of the artist.
Courtesy of the artist.
Video still from installation.
Photo: Steve Bates
IGNITION is an annual, curated exhibition that features work by M.F.A. students in the Studio Arts program. It provides an up-and-coming generation of artists with a unique opportunity to present ambitious, interdisciplinary work in the professional context of a gallery with a national and international profile. It places an emphasis on innovative and experimental work that engages in an exploration of diverse media and practices.This 5th edition of Ignition features six artists whose practices include photography, video and sound installation, painting, drawing, and sculpture.
Steve Bates’ video installation, Radio Forest, is an abstracted representation, in image and sound, of the lengthy network of antennae that run along Northern Ontario’s Trans-Canada Highway, symbolic of transience and communication but also of human presence and absence. Amélie Guérin’s sculptural installations question the paradoxical role of modern, manufactured design objects for the home by re-investing these as objects of contemplation and reflection. Mark Igloliorte’s large-scale painting allegorically evokes the experiences of Inuit youth in the remote, northern communities of Newfoundland and Labrador where he was born, and which today are plagued by high rates of suicide and shifts in cultural and economic values. Through her video installation, Miriam Sampaio attempts to piece together her immigrant family’s history; a past which was largely lived in exile and secrecy, creating what the artist calls a “trans-generational haunting”. Meera Margaret Singh’s photographic portrait series Harbinger, depicts aging individuals in liminal states – in mid-speech, mid-gesture – revealing truth and fiction, pleasure and pain, history and the present. Cronograma de un tiempo inexistente / Chronogram of Inexistent Time, by Malena Szlam explores the architectural possibilities of moving images by projecting digital video and 16mm film onto several layered, textured screens.
Produced with the support of the Frederick and Mary Kay Lowy Art Education Fund.
The work featured in this edition of IGNITION was selected by independent artist-curator Susannah Wesley and Michèle Thériault, Director of the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery.
Exhibition produced by the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. The Gallery and the artists gratefully acknowledge Hexagram and CIAM – Centre Interuniversitaire des arts médiatiques, for their technical support.
THE ARTISTS
Steve Bates currently lives in Montréal where he is an MFA candidate in Studio Arts at Concordia University. He works on music, radio, and installation projects both independently and collaboratively. While his past production has primarily focused on live performance, a new concentration in installation and video work has emerged.
Mistakes. Tape hiss. Accidents. Layers. Residue. Skips. Feedback loops. All of these have a place in my work.
My current projects explore the detail in surface and the minute, unheard or ignored sounds around us, usually emphasizing texture over rhythm. I frequently use sound material that is site-specific in an attempt to uncover place and consider Henri Lefebvre’s concepts surrounding the production of space as points of departure. Recent collaborations include 100 Lines with jake moore and soundFIELD, an outdoor installation at the International Garden Festival, Reford Gardens/Jardins de Métis, with landscape architect Douglas Moffat.
THE WORK
Radio Forest, 2008.
Radio Forest is an installation consisting of projected video footage of passing antennae along Northern Ontario’s Trans-Canada Highway, itself a networked circuit. Accompanying the video footage, but separate from it, are audio signals collected and processed from shortwave radio broadcasts. Connecting the two entities is a flickering light, acting as a beacon, emitted from a video monitor receiving the audio signal via its video input.
Steve Bates, Radio Forest, 2008.
Video still from audio/video installation, courtesy of the artist.
EXPLORE
- the various levels at which sound and image interact with each other in Radio Forest;
- notions of space and the production of space and how they are addressed in this work.
ADDITIONAL SOURCES OF INFORMATION
Jardins de Métis. Sound Resonates in the Garden! Online posting. International Garden Festival. 4 Dec. 2008.
Sound Field. Landscape Architecture Magazine April (2007) : 68-69.
CloseAmélie Guérin holds a Baccalauréat en arts visuels et médiatiques from Université du Québec à Montréal and is currently completing an MFA, with a concentration in Painting and Drawing, at Concordia University. She recently participated in the Reverse Pedagogy thematic residency at the Banff Centre. Her work has been exhibited in Québec, France and Scotland.
My work consists of installations that incorporate sculpture, painting, found objects and texts all put into play inside choreographed environments. I strive to absorb, copy, transform and occasionally question my immediate environment via popular culture, art, fashion, sport, design, music and my own personal experience. I investigate contrast and contradiction in an attempt to underline the places or instances in which art and life overlap.
THE WORK
Untitled/Sans titre, 2008.
Untitled/Sans titre is an installation consisting of paintings, textual components, self-portraits, found objects and sculptures. The elements are orchestrated to generate a dialogue between them and to evoke a surreal domestic environment that oscillates between the familiar and the unknown.
Amélie Guérin, Untitled/Sans titre, 2008.
View of mixed media work in progress, courtesy of the artist.
Photo: Simon Bilodeau
EXPLORE
- what is made reference to in this work and how it affects the “dialogue” that takes place between the work’s constituent parts;
- the ways in which presentation is important to our understanding of this work.
ADDITIONAL SOURCES OF INFORMATION
Dumas, Julie. Les différentes saisons d’Amélie Guérin-Simard. Traces Magazine Nov. 2007.
Guttman, k.g., Tegan Forbes, Solomon Nagler, and Caroline Boileau. Compression : Concordia University MFA Studio Arts Group Show/Université Concordia maîtrise en beaux-arts exposition collective. Montreal : MFA Program, Concordia University, 2007.
Saito, Daichi, and Malena Szlam. STRATA: Concordia University MFA Group Exhibition 2008/Exposition collective de la maîtrise en beaux-arts de l’Université Concordia 2008. Montreal : MFA Program, Concordia University, 2008.
CloseMark Igloliorte holds a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, a B.Ed from Memorial University, and is currently completing an MFA with a concentration in Painting and Drawing at Concordia University. His work has been exhibited in Canada and the United States.
My work consists primarily of painting and drawing and incorporates elements of sculpture, performance and new media. Through my work I seek a kind of balance between being Inuit and my Newfoundland/Canadian identity. I explore and negotiate that which is innate, being born of mixed heritage, and that which is chosen, being a painter as well as an avid skateboarder and snowboarder.
THE WORK
My Name, My Home, 2008.
My Name, My Home consists of one painting that is 13 feet long and two videos showing skateboarding and snowboarding trick sequences. This work is based on recent experiences on the coast of Labrador and is a response to being in an area with a high suicide rate. It continues an ongoing negotiation of identity in which I examine the relationship between my art practice and my Inuit ancestry.
Mark Igloliorte, My Name, My Home, 2008.
Video still from installation, courtesy of the artist.
EXPLORE
- identity, how it is constructed and the ways in which this is addressed in My Name, My Home;
- painting and its role in Mark Igloliorte’s examination of identity and ancestry.
ADDITIONAL SOURCES OF INFORMATION
Amber Berson and Laurie Filgiano. In your Footsteps: Indigenous Artists at Concordia. Online posting. Making Marks: First Nations, Inuit and Métis Art History. 4 Dec. 2008.
Grant, Phyllis. Capturing Beauty in the Everyday. Say Magazine Fall, 2004.
CloseIn 1998, Miriam Sampaio completed a BFA in Interdisciplinary Studies at Concordia University. She is currently completing an MFA in Studio Arts, with a concentration in Open Media, also at Concordia University. Since 2002, she has exhibited her work in Canada, Portugal and Cyprus. She divides her time between Montréal and Lisbon.
My photographic/film practice is marked by an obsession with collecting, hoarding and archiving. It is a means of visibly charting lived experience and marking moments that have passed. My Super 8 images offer impressions of a distant past and a dislocated present. I feel compelled to document, preserve and thwart disappearance. I situate myself within a constructed myth where I blur and distort elements of truth. I am exploring the moment when silence begins to fill with secrets.
THE WORK
Fractured Bones, Porous Outlines, 2008.
Fractured Bones, Porous Outlines, completed in 2008, is composed of video, performance and photography. It traces, through a continuous process of recapturing, reworking and rephotographing, an ongoing personal quest to reconstruct memory.
EXPLORE
- the image, the various ways in which it is reworked and represented and why this is important to the construction of meaning in Fractured Bones, Porous Outlines;
- notions of amassing, collecting and archiving and the ways in which they operate in this work.
ADDITIONAL SOURCES OF INFORMATION
La Centrale. Miriam Sampaio (Montréal), photographie et vidéo : Murmur. Online posting. Murmur. 4 Dec. 2008.
Hashmi, Aneesa. Miriam Sampaio : Murmur. Gatineau : DAÏMÕN, 2002.
CloseMeera Margaret Singh is a visual artist based in Montréal. She holds a BA in Anthropology and a BFA in Photography, both from the University of Manitoba, as well as an MFA from Concordia University. Singh has participated in residencies and is the recipient of numerous awards. Her work has been exhibited in Canada and the United States.
My work explores relationships that exist between individuals and their environment. In either domestic or exterior settings, I construct and examine points of intersection between the body and the environment while also occupying the interstice between fact and fiction. I use photography both to elicit intimacy and as a means of constructing narratives that are based on actual events. The subjects I work with, whether family, friends, or strangers who I have approached on the street, assist in the creation of these narratives.
THE WORK
Harbinger, 2008.
Harbinger explores the interaction between the aging body, the landscape (interior and exterior), and light. The work revolves around my interest in exploring the fine line that exists between truth and fiction, the historical and the contemporary, and between pleasure and pain. All of the images draw on my fascination with historical painting and sculpture.
EXPLORE
- notions surrounding the portrait;
- the ways in which references to historical painting and sculpture are present in this work and why they are important to our understanding of it.
ADDITIONAL SOURCES OF INFORMATION
Meera Margaret Singh, official Web site, meeramargaretsingh.com
Borderviews. The Desiring Dark : Meera Singh. Border Crossings 94 (2005): 12-13.
Dahle, Sigrid, and J.J. Kegan McFadden. Meera Margaret Singh: You’re All I Ever Think About. Winnipeg: PLATFORM Centre for Photographic and Digital Arts, 2006.
Enright, Robert. Winnipeg’s New Litter of Art Pups. The Globe & Mail 16 Feb. 2006, national ed.: R1+.
CloseBorn in Chile, Malena Szlam is a visual artist working in the realms of cinema, photography, and installation. She is currently completing an MFA in Studio Arts at Concordia University and is a member of Double Negative, a Montreal-based group of film, video and installation artists interested in creating, curating and disseminating experimental film. Her work has been screened in Winnipeg, Victoria, Toronto, Montréal, Seoul and Paris.
I explore the displacement of notions of cinema through installations that incorporate the use of photography, film, video, electro-mechanical systems and organic materials. My work expresses the physicality of images as gestures in light, and creates interplay between both open and contained spaces and their limits. A poetic reflection on the language of time through still and moving images, my work attempts to unfold perceptual experiences at odds with the linearity of time.
THE WORK
Cronograma de un tiempo inexistente / Chronogram of Inexistent Time, 2008.
Cronograma de un tiempo inexistente / Chronogram of Inexistent Time consists of projected film and video loops. The work is based, among other things, on an exploration of the architectural possibilities of images; ephemeral images, their displacement and the traces that they leave behind; repetition and time.
EXPLORE
- the ephemeral nature of the image;
- notions of stillness, motion and time and the ways in which they all come into play in this work.
ADDITIONAL SOURCES OF INFORMATION
Cifuentes, Guillermo. Una montón de imágenes rotas. Santiago, Chile : Galleria Anímal, 2005.
Saito, Daichi, and Malena Szlam. STRATA: Concordia University MFA Group Exhibition 2008/Exposition collective de la maîtrise en beaux-arts de l’Université Concordia 2008. Montreal : MFA Program, Concordia University, 2008.
Szlam, Malena. Una Esfera. (cuyo centro està en todas partes y su circunferencia en ninguna). Pausa Nov. 2004 : pp. 62-67.
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