IGNITION is an annual exhibition that features new work by students currently enrolled in the Studio Arts or Humanities graduate programs at Concordia University. It provides an upandcoming 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. Graduate students work directly with Gallery staff to produce an exhibition that places an emphasis on critical, innovative, and experimental work, engaging in the exploration and consideration of diverse media and practices. IGNITION is of interest to all students and faculty, the art community, and the general public.
May 7 – June 6, 2015
Projects selected by Sarah Watson, Director of Artexte, and Michèle Thériault, Gallery Director
Shirin Fahimi, Maryse Goudreau, Adam Kinner, Lise Latreille, Geneviève Moisan, Matthew Ng, AN Soubiran
Opening
Wednesday May 6, 5:30 – 7:30 pm
Artexte Director, Sarah Watson, and Gallery Director, Michèle Thériault, selected the seven artists for the eleventh edition of IGNITION.
Maryse Goudreau’s practice moves between mediums of photography, video, the archive, the performative and the participatory. The work is an inquiry into Québec’s forgotten maritime history, specifically that of the government’s campaign in the 1920s to eradicate beluga whales. Although an untrained dancer, Adam Kinner researches the political potential of the performing body through dance. In his piece Suite canadienne, Kinner re-performs a minor part from Ludmilla Chiriaeff’s 1955 folk ballet, titled the same, in institutional spaces across the city. Aluminum Lake, a sculptural installation by AN Soubiran, references the pigment found in cosmetics, food and oral drugs in relation to how HIV is defined, experienced and represented.
I Never Think of Alaska is a photographic series by Lise Latreille. Latreille’s longterm engagement with her hometown of Shawville, Québec is central to her work. She depicts rural and familiar landscapes while disrupting linear narrative and documentary photography. Geneviève Moisan’s textile based practice is inspired by traditional artisanal techniques but created on the computerized Jacquard loom. Dark, Foursome, Selfie, Kiss, Gum, À la pointe, and Relation reflects this tension between the new and old in hypermodernity.
Shirin Fahimi’s installation, The Apparatus of Desubjectification, is a theoretic investigation of the relation between the subject and mechanisms of communication. Her research takes its artistic form in chalk diagrams and a video. Matthew Ng is interested in the tension between order and freedom. In his installation Projector paint, he juxtaposes various material forms, from light to ceramics to reflect upon the interface between an internal view and external influences, and the art historical canon.
The Gallery and the artists gratefully acknowledge the Centre for Digital Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and Hexagram for their support.