IGNITION is an annual, curated exhibition presenting recent work by students in Concordia University’s graduate Studio Arts program and Humanities doctoral program. It provides an up-and-coming generation of artists with a unique opportunity to present ambitious, interdisciplinary works in the professional context of a gallery with a national and international profile. Students work directly with Gallery staff to produce an exhibition that places an emphasis on critical, innovative, and experimental work engaging in an exploration and consideration of diverse media and practices.
David Arseneau’s painting Items and Weapons from Friday the 13th Part 1 to Part 12 assembles on one visual plane the historical shift in objects specific to the films bearing the same title. The painting becomes a chronology of changing technologies acting as an archive of popular culture iconography. Celia Perrin Sidarous work indexes a personalized collection of colloquial material. Through scenographic installations, her work methodologically occupies space beyond the image border.
As nearly invisible architectural interventions, Candice Davies places sculptural replicas of utilitarian elements, electrical outlet faceplates, in the gallery. In contrast, Jennifer Lupien’s Plinthe draws attention to spatial banality by disruption. Lupien modifies the built environment by embellishing existing ornamentation: aiming to enlighten viewer’s perceptions.
Read moreColleen Heslin’s monochromatic canvases are composed of discarded domestic fibers altered through experimentation with dying and craft techniques. The resulting compositions subtly erase the garment fabric’s history. In-Betweeness, a satirical project by Timothée Messeiller, interrogates the function of everyday objects through minimal absurd alterations. Messeiller collects rejected materials and transforms their purpose, rendering obsolete their intended functionality. Les Ramsay collages appropriated ready-made materials together producing new objects. Through aesthetic similarities, Ramsay’s sculptural extensions elicit unexpected narratives in relation to his wall-mounted tableaus.
Inspired by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Dana Samuel’s project is an interpretation of the constructivist artist’s Telephone Paintings (1923). In her iteration of the work, five sound compositions and vinyl graphics mediate Moholy-Nagy’s process of communicating parameters for graphic production without providing the visuals.
CloseThe Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.
Produced with the support of the Frederick and Mary Kay Lowy Art Education Fund.
Independent curator and critic, Iliana Antonova, and Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery director, Michèle Thériault, selected the eight artists for the tenth edition of IGNITION. Working in a variety of disciplines, this year’s artists engage with the mediation of popular cultural and personal visual archives, mimetic fabrication, manipulation or re-purposing of vernacular materials and the interpretation of historical works.
My work is the result of relentless and exhaustive project-driven investigations surrounding artistic investigation itself. Working in a prolific, conceptual, and serial manner, the studio is transformed into an experimental laboratory. Within this space, production becomes akin to an obsessive alchemy, well aware of its ludicrous and futile pseudo-scientific approach. My objective is to create work that is socially as well as artistically relevant, work that explores contemporary concerns tied particularly, but not exclusively, to the visual arts community.
THE WORKS
Items and Weapons from Friday the 13th Part 1 to Part 12, 2014
Oil on canvas
Courtesy of the artist
Items and Weapons from Friday the 13th Part 1 to Part 12, 2014
Artist’s book
Courtesy of the artist
Items and Weapons from Friday the 13th Part 1 to Part 12 is a large painting that is part of a bigger installation and a larger research project. It showcases a visual archive of all the culture-specific objects and weapons that are used in the Friday the 13th films of which there are twelve in total. Structures and systems are put in place to categorize items and weapons from each film on a large canvas. Each item is archived as one would complete a grocery list, as a function. This function, however, has no immediate purpose. The painting can be read as a map or a timeline categorizing items in relation to their respective movies. On the surface, this system and its subject matter may act as a fanatic homage to a movie franchise. In fact its subject is only used as a way to communicate art and ideas and is not meant to be read as an act of fanaticism, but rather as fanaticism towards art itself.
David Arseneau, Items and Weapons from Friday the 13th Part 1 to Part 12, 2014
EXPLORE
- the status of painting;
- notions of the archive and how they relate to this work.
ADDITIONAL SOURCES OF INFORMATION
CloseMy art practice draws attention to layers of meaning within the gallery space and questions existing assumptions surrounding the art object. By engaging the viewer in an unexpected encounter with objects through subtle material interventions in the gallery space, I blur the line between art and reality. Through the manipulation of everyday objects and the viewer’s own visual perceptions, I investigate issues of interpretation, craft, value, and function.
THE WORK
Outlet Wall Plates – White, 2014
26 electrical wall plates in alabaster
Courtesy the artist
In Outlet Wall Plates – White, 26 gallery outlet plates have been replaced with replicas made of white Italian alabaster. What is usually ignored has been put on display. The replicated objects, expected and familiar visual elements in the space, become inconspicuous and seemingly invisible.
Candice Davies, Outlet Wall Plates – White, 2014
EXPLORE
- the relationship between craft and art and how it is addressed here;
- what is visible, what is concealed, and why these are important considerations.
ADDITIONAL SOURCES OF INFORMATION
CloseActivated by formal abstraction and craft methodologies, I construct paintings using experimental dying techniques on second hand domestic fibers. My practice considers the essential support and surface traditions of painting, assembled through methods of quilting. Frayed boundaries between medium and pastiche address the post-medium condition of painting along with cultural patterns of material excess. Employing methods of deskilled labor through experimental hands-on production, I seek to explore metaphysical concerns relating to objects, causality, and material.
THE WORKS
First Base, 2014
4 elements
Silk, linen, polyester
Courtesy of the artist
Hawaiian Slice, 2014
Ink and dye on cotton
Courtesy of the artist
The One That Got Away, 2014
Ink and dye on cotton
Courtesy of the artist
Colleen Heslin, The One That Got Away, 2014
The group of colour field paintings presented in IGNITION explores the monochrome as a textile readymade and considers subtractive colour theories of painting, dying, and the use of printing ink. These collaged blouses are 1980’s cast-offs addressing and subsuming fashion and excess in contemporary culture. The range of fibres, from silk to polyester, exemplifies qualitative shifts within design and fashion, and the insufficient longevity of surface illusion. These monochromes reconsider material and process as they relate to contemporary painting, expanding into the fields of sculpture, craft, and design.
EXPLORE
- formal analysis: surface, material, texture, marking;
- the relationship between formal abstraction and textiles, or craft.
ADDITIONAL SOURCES OF INFORMATION
CloseQuestioning appearances and notions of the real, my works create ambiguity around what and how we see. They also address the relationship between the art object and its environment via its sculptural properties and its evocative potential. My works function as mnemonic artifacts. They give rise to considerations of how we occupy space, what is noticed, what goes unnoticed, and how memory functions.
THE WORK
Plinthe, 2014
Wood, paint
Courtesy of the artist
Plinthe is an intervention that is concealed in a subtle modification the Gallery’s architecture. It questions the authority of the art institution by minimizing attention to the artwork and emphasizing the exhibition space itself. It defies the norms associated with the viewing of art by turning an illusion of absence into a tangible experience that blurs the boundaries between what is inherent to the exhibition space and what the artist brings to it.
EXPLORE
- what a viewer’s expectations might be regarding the architecture of exhibition spaces;
- the questions raised by the artist’s intervention in this space.
ADDITIONAL SOURCES OF INFORMATION
Through the hybridization of various codes inherent to fields such as Design, Pop Culture, Leisure, and Art History, my art practice takes on meaning. By recontextualizing everyday objects, I initiate a dialogue between the viewer and the artwork that serves to question the boundaries of the institution, standards, the status of art and, particularly, the status of the artist.
THE WORKS
Debroken Hammer with Two Handles, 2014
Found hammer, handle, woodfiller, wood
Courtesy of the artist
One Utility (Fence), 2014
Metal fence support, scrap wood, fabric scraps, rust paint
Courtesy of the artist
One Utility (Podium), 2014
Scrap wood, printed textile, rust paint
Courtesy of the artist
One Utility (Stewi), 2014
Scrap wood, hardware, cloth line, silk printed canvas, rust paint
Courtesy of the artist
One Utility (Sign), 2014
Metal trolley, scrap wood, wool, cotton rope, fabric scraps, T-pins
Courtesy of the artist
Supreme, 2013
Acrylic on canvas
Courtesy of the artist
The work in front of you is proof of the uselessness of art. The objects, all derived from daily life, are separated from their primary use by their passage through the hands of the artist and their subsequent insertion into an exhibition space. There is no longer a barrier that serves to separate and protect. The hammer can no longer nail and the panel shows nothing. The objects are now in between the limits of their resolution and resistance to their original form.
Timothée Messeiller, Debroken Hammer with Two Handles, 2014
EXPLORE
- the status of both art and the artist;
- the functions and meanings of the objects presented here.
ADDITIONAL SOURCES OF INFORMATION
CloseThe central consideration of my practice positions photographed materials as ciphers for ideas, affect, and various histories, represented through objects and, therefore, at a distance. Arrangements and assemblage follow a logic that is at once internal and associative. The photographs offer a considered way of looking at collected objects and images while outlining an interest in their physical presence and potential for inner life. They mark moments where the transfiguration of inanimate objects occurs through the photographic act.
THE WORK
Three Stone Lions, 2014
Installation
Gypsum wall and platform, framed and unframed photographs
Courtesy of the artist and Parisian Laundry, Montreal
Produced with support from the Fonds québécois de recherche sur la société et la culture (FQRSC)
Photographs are installed on a free-standing structure, an architectural component that creates is own scenography, both as an object and a space in itself, a self-sustaining universe. There is an oblique wall with two sides, two distinct yet complementary viewing spaces, two spaces in which to look at images. One guards the other. Photographs comprise found images of animals, statues, stones, botanical gardens, as well as temporary sculptures and arrangements recorded in the studio.
Celia Perrin Sidarous, Three Stone Lions, 2014 (detail)
EXPLORE
- the ways in which this artist uses photographic images;
- the impact of the architectural component of this installation.
ADDITIONAL SOURCES OF INFORMATION
My practice is rooted in methods of abstraction and material processes that investigate tropes found in Modern art and everyday life through an enhanced medium studio practice, incorporating collage, painting, drawing, sculpture, and video. By appropriating ready-made materials derived from an existent form of labour, the works suggest an obscured use value
THE WORKS
Heavy Weight Serious, 2013
Corduroy and jute with twine
Courtesy of the artist and Cooper Cole Gallery, Toronto
Venus, 2013
Mixed media on stool
Courtesy of the artist and Cooper Cole Gallery, Toronto
Lazy Susan, 2014
Fabric collage
Courtesy of the artist and Cooper Cole Gallery, Toronto
Fog Whistle, 2014
Fabric collage
Courtesy of the artist and Cooper Cole Gallery, Toronto
Signed Sealed Delivered, 2013
Fabric collage
Courtesy of the artist and Cooper Cole Gallery, Toronto
A Minor, 2014
Fabric collage
Courtesy of the artist and Cooper Cole Gallery, Toronto
Les Ramsay, Heavy Weight Serious, 2013
I incorporate a language of both painterly and sculptural form, and use art historical tropes to produce new formal objects that lapse into distinct categories of meaning. By re-purposing everyday domestic forms of contemporary excess, such as thrift store fabrics, the works re-stage these materials and set them in motion, merging coincidental, accidental and unexpected connections to encourage a paradoxical combination of material and imagery.
EXPLORE
- the ways in which this artist addresses questions of excess;
- materials and their transformation.
ADDITIONAL SOURCES OF INFORMATION
CloseMy doctoral research, structured around tracing a lost familial history, investigates exile, temporality, a performative research method, and artistic reconstruction. Chronopolitics lies in the tension between the impossibility of describing history, and the new realities generated therein. What is created through this failure? While history is sometimes described as a language that cannot be fully deciphered, it could also be imagined as a message from the future, as-yet incomprehensible except through other modes—artistic, affective, sensorial, for example.
THE WORKS
Email 3, 2013–2014
Audio composition for telephone, vinyl graphics
Courtesy of the artist
Email 2, 2013–2014
Audio composition for telephone, vinyl graphics
Courtesy of the artist
Email 1, 2013–2014
Audio composition for telephone, vinyl graphics
Courtesy of the artist
Email 0.5, 2013–2014
Audio composition for telephone, vinyl graphics
Courtesy of the artist
Email 0.25, 2013–2014
Audio composition for telephone, vinyl graphics
Courtesy of the artist
In the series Email Paintings, I elliptically traverse the working process of Bauhaus artist-designer Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and its connections to contemporary artistic research. Inspired by Moholy-Nagy’s humorous question posed in the 1930s, “I wonder how your nose will sound?” I examine the histories of his iconic Telephone Paintings (Construction in Enamel 1-3, 1923-24), asking how they might sound today. My installation “plays telephone” with these historic works, re-interpreting the paintings as computer-generated audio, then back again, registering further changes to the images—now reproduced via contemporary sign-making media.
EXPLORE
- the role(s) that sound plays in this installation;
- the strategies this artist employs to engage with history and the resultant narratives, interpretations, connections, etc., that come to light.
ADDITIONAL SOURCES OF INFORMATION
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