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This video presents a glimpse into the process of the 'Remnant Emergency Artlab' - held in Sydney in November 2010. The outcome is called the Botanical Gardens Xtension.
This short film firstly lays out an seemingly intractable problem of managing flying foxes in a big city like Sydney. In Australia flying foxes are yet another threatened species - and yet one which is ecologically essential because of their critical pollination and seed spreading services. These flying foxes (predominantly the grey headed species) congregate in large numbers to sleep during the day in the Sydney Botanical Gardens. Through the inadvertent mechanical damage caused by large numbers of foxes, they are damaging the heritage trees there.
The video suggests that, instead of the current solution which is to remove them all using industrial noise, that the idea/concept of what a Botanical Gardens should be extended - removing the separations between current institutions and acknowledging the immense ecological services the gardens provide beyond the conservation of plants.
Our provocative idea is to extend the gardens throughout the city - and to focus key developments in areas adjacent to the gardens - in this case a harbour front site called 'Barangaroo' - South of the Sydney Harbour Bridge - a current a hot topic of conversation in Sydney. What is envisaged there at the site is the development of a new ecological park - in essence an Xtension of the idea of a botanical gardens into one one that actively attracts the flying fox colony to it - by creating favourable conditions for the bats through a mix of vegetation and temporary perching/hanging structures. By welcoming them as the extraordinary ecological and tourist asset that they are - the bat migration nightly from Barangaroo becomes one of Sydey's most important and cherished tourist attractions.
See also www.xtension.cc for the fuller artistic vision.
The video was shot and edited by filmmaker James Muller and features the input of the entire Sydney team: who are
Natalie Jeremijenko
James Muller
Keith Armstrong
Leah Barclay
Tega Brain
Kirsty Boyle
Ilka Nelson
Professor Tony Fry, Design Futures, Griffith University, Brisbane
Collaborating in Sydney with UTS academics Dr. Lian Loke and Dr. Lizzie Muller aided by Holly Williams and Tania Creighton of UTS Gallery - where this work is on show till December 10th 2010.
Other experts and participants who have contributed to this film and vision have included:
Leading Bat Ecologists Peggy Eby and Kerryn Parry Jones,
Professor Deborah Rose (Macquarie Uni),
Zoo Architect David Hancocks,
John Martin (Royal Botanical Gardens Trust) and
architects Tom Rivard, Allison Earl,
Nancy Pallin
Joni Taylor,
Sarah Waterson (UWS),
Caitlin McGee & Tania Leimbach (UTS Institute of Sustainable Futures)
Watch this video on Vimeo. Video created by remnant artlab.
New building housing art exhibitions on the EPFL* campus in Ecublens/Lausanne, canton of Vaud, Switzerland.
*Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology).
Shot with Alpa 10d and "P. Angenieux Paris" Alpa Retrofocus 28mm f/3.5 lens on Kodak Portra (new) ISO-160 film.
Exhibition dates: November 23 - December 3, 2020
Installation art is an artistic genre that challenges the boundaries of traditional art. The history of installation art dates back to the 1960’s to early 1970’s, in which it provoked a reversal to the modernist sculpture’s relationship with the pedestal. The pedestal disconnected the sculpture from the space or stated its indifference to it, allowing the work to possess independence from its environment. On the contrary, installation art is directed by the space in which it is constructed. Although installation may involve elements of architecture, sculpture, painting, video, photography and performance, it aspired to challenge the limitations of these art forms as well as their institutional settings. Moreover, installation art was an attempt to resist the trend of circulating art as a commodity, something that is transportable and exchangeable.
In this project, students from SA 2643: Introduction to Sculpture and Installation explore ideas of "where are you coming from?" with a focus on "your culture." Here, "culture" is interpreted both as culture in everyday life, as well as more specific historical and ethnic cultural backgrounds. Students explore cultural connections, exchanges, and crossings by using readymades and found objects to create collaborative installations. They are directed to incorporate ornaments, as ornate artefacts have circulated amongst various cultures and have been adapted/hybridized within new cultural contexts throughout history.
Course Instructor: Soheila K. Esfahani
Teaching Assistant: Rebecca Sutherland
Exhibiting artists: Shannon Boast, Charlotte Cao, Cauchi Rayne, Maggie Charbonneau, Julia Fawcett, Chloe Gatti, Megan Goddard, Emma Hennessy, Chelsea Hitchen, Josette Joseph, Lauryn Kell, Madison Kelly, Wesley Macpherson, Emma McInnes, Darcy McVicar, Linjing Qian, Aly Rana, Lara Stamenkovic, Laryssa Stoetzer, Hailey Watson, JoAnna Weil, Ava Wright
Due to COVID-19 safety measures, the Artlab Gallery and Cohen Commons will be operating virtually. In-person visits are not permitted at this time. We will be posting exhibition documentation, videos, and virtual walk-throughs on the Artlab’s website.
Artlab Gallery
JL Visual Arts Centre
Western University
London, Ontario, Canada
© 2020; Department of Visual Arts; Western University
Exhibition dates: November 23 - December 3, 2020
Installation art is an artistic genre that challenges the boundaries of traditional art. The history of installation art dates back to the 1960’s to early 1970’s, in which it provoked a reversal to the modernist sculpture’s relationship with the pedestal. The pedestal disconnected the sculpture from the space or stated its indifference to it, allowing the work to possess independence from its environment. On the contrary, installation art is directed by the space in which it is constructed. Although installation may involve elements of architecture, sculpture, painting, video, photography and performance, it aspired to challenge the limitations of these art forms as well as their institutional settings. Moreover, installation art was an attempt to resist the trend of circulating art as a commodity, something that is transportable and exchangeable.
In this project, students from SA 2643: Introduction to Sculpture and Installation explore ideas of "where are you coming from?" with a focus on "your culture." Here, "culture" is interpreted both as culture in everyday life, as well as more specific historical and ethnic cultural backgrounds. Students explore cultural connections, exchanges, and crossings by using readymades and found objects to create collaborative installations. They are directed to incorporate ornaments, as ornate artefacts have circulated amongst various cultures and have been adapted/hybridized within new cultural contexts throughout history.
Course Instructor: Soheila K. Esfahani
Teaching Assistant: Rebecca Sutherland
Exhibiting artists: Shannon Boast, Charlotte Cao, Cauchi Rayne, Maggie Charbonneau, Julia Fawcett, Chloe Gatti, Megan Goddard, Emma Hennessy, Chelsea Hitchen, Josette Joseph, Lauryn Kell, Madison Kelly, Wesley Macpherson, Emma McInnes, Darcy McVicar, Linjing Qian, Aly Rana, Lara Stamenkovic, Laryssa Stoetzer, Hailey Watson, JoAnna Weil, Ava Wright
Due to COVID-19 safety measures, the Artlab Gallery and Cohen Commons will be operating virtually. In-person visits are not permitted at this time. We will be posting exhibition documentation, videos, and virtual walk-throughs on the Artlab’s website.
Artlab Gallery
JL Visual Arts Centre
Western University
London, Ontario, Canada
© 2020; Department of Visual Arts; Western University
Exhibition dates: November 23 - December 3, 2020
Installation art is an artistic genre that challenges the boundaries of traditional art. The history of installation art dates back to the 1960’s to early 1970’s, in which it provoked a reversal to the modernist sculpture’s relationship with the pedestal. The pedestal disconnected the sculpture from the space or stated its indifference to it, allowing the work to possess independence from its environment. On the contrary, installation art is directed by the space in which it is constructed. Although installation may involve elements of architecture, sculpture, painting, video, photography and performance, it aspired to challenge the limitations of these art forms as well as their institutional settings. Moreover, installation art was an attempt to resist the trend of circulating art as a commodity, something that is transportable and exchangeable.
In this project, students from SA 2643: Introduction to Sculpture and Installation explore ideas of "where are you coming from?" with a focus on "your culture." Here, "culture" is interpreted both as culture in everyday life, as well as more specific historical and ethnic cultural backgrounds. Students explore cultural connections, exchanges, and crossings by using readymades and found objects to create collaborative installations. They are directed to incorporate ornaments, as ornate artefacts have circulated amongst various cultures and have been adapted/hybridized within new cultural contexts throughout history.
Course Instructor: Soheila K. Esfahani
Teaching Assistant: Rebecca Sutherland
Exhibiting artists: Shannon Boast, Charlotte Cao, Cauchi Rayne, Maggie Charbonneau, Julia Fawcett, Chloe Gatti, Megan Goddard, Emma Hennessy, Chelsea Hitchen, Josette Joseph, Lauryn Kell, Madison Kelly, Wesley Macpherson, Emma McInnes, Darcy McVicar, Linjing Qian, Aly Rana, Lara Stamenkovic, Laryssa Stoetzer, Hailey Watson, JoAnna Weil, Ava Wright
Due to COVID-19 safety measures, the Artlab Gallery and Cohen Commons will be operating virtually. In-person visits are not permitted at this time. We will be posting exhibition documentation, videos, and virtual walk-throughs on the Artlab’s website.
Artlab Gallery
JL Visual Arts Centre
Western University
London, Ontario, Canada
© 2020; Department of Visual Arts; Western University
featured: Matthew Brown
Exhibition Dates: January 15 – 28, 2021 in the Artlab Gallery and virtually
Every few years, the Artlab Gallery at Western University hosts a Faculty and Staff exhibition. These exhibitions are important opportunities for fostering a sense of community in the Visual Arts Department: students are able to see their instructors and mentors at work, and colleagues have a chance to share in each other's research. 2020 was a year like no other, and so the Artlab is leaning into the present with a collective address to this moment of separate togetherness. "Distance makes the heart grow weak" invites faculty, staff and graduate students to speak to how they've been experiencing the last year. It prompts participants to explore and express how isolation has shifted our focus, our research and art practices, as well as our forms of connecting with one another. The exhibition is also an opportunity for participating artists and researchers to show flexibility (and inherently, optimism) despite the high strangeness we’re all currently experiencing. In this time of shared solitude—unable to walk down halls, knock on studio or office doors, and enjoy quick hellos and impromptu conversations—we'll quote Chris Kraus (quoting Søren Kierkegaard): "art involves reaching through some distance."
Organized by Dickson Bou and Ruth Skinner.
Participants: Cody Barteet; Sarah Bassnett; Dickson Bou with Charlie Egleston & Peter Lebel; Matt W. Brown; Andreas Buchwaldt; Brianne Casey; Jérôme Conquy with Kevin Heslop, Sachiko Murakami, Sile Englert & Ruth Douthwright; Ioana Dragomir; Meghan Edmiston; Soheila Esfahani; Sky Glabush; Anahí González; Philip Gurrey; John Hatch; Tricia Johnson; Iraboty Kazi; Shelley Kopp; Anna Madelska; Patrick Mahon; Jennifer Martin; Linda Meloche; David Merritt; Ana Moyer; Dong-Kyoon Nam; Kim Neudorf; Katie Oates; Sasha Opeiko with Martin Stevens; Michelle Paterok; Kirsty Robertson; Geordie Shepherd; Andrew Silk; Ashley Snook; Christine Sprengler; Michelle Wilson with Bridget Koza,Sophie Wu, & Azadeh Odlins; Jessica Woodward
The promotional graphic for "Distance makes the heart grow weak" cites the short film, "Extraordinary Measures," by Sasha Opeiko and Martin Stevens, featured in the exhibition.
Given Ontario's recent stay-at-home order, the exhibition will be released in a virtual format on Friday, January 15th. Throughout the course of the exhibition, Artlab will publish short video features from participating artists and researchers.
Visit the Artlab Gallery: www.uwo.ca/visarts/artlab/
Due to COVID-19 safety measures, the Artlab Gallery and Cohen Commons will be operating virtually. In-person visits are not permitted at this time. We will be posting exhibition documentation, videos, and virtual walk-throughs on the Artlab’s website.
www.uwo.ca/visarts/artlab/exhibition_archive/20202021.htm...
Artlab Gallery
JL Visual Arts Centre
Western University
London, Ontario, Canada
© 2021; Department of Visual Arts; Western University
Sometimes in the night, the fox slips by
January 7-21, 2022
Artlab Gallery
Anahí González, Philip Gurrey, Dong-Kyoon Nam, Sasha Opeiko
Studio PhD candidates from the Department of Visual Arts present Sometimes in the night, the fox slips by, a group exhibition of recent work by Anahí González, Philip Gurrey, Dong-Kyoon Nam and Sasha Opeiko. The show gathers a broad spectrum of investigations sharing a common interest in the relationship between poetic and theoretical potential in making. Some orient themselves toward the political, looking at labour issues both in Canada and abroad. Others probe the language of modernism with strategies centered on improvisation and decay. Others still, use a posthumanist perspective to deconstruct notions of the readymade or to renegotiate representations of melancholy. In concert they are the fox of John Burnside’s poem, deftly weaving a path through fence and thicket.
Anahí González
Bueno, Bonito y Barato, is deeply involved in exploring the Mexican cues portrayed in visual culture, evoking quiet tensions of nationalism and labour representation. By bringing this approach of Mexican labour visual representation on a mobile wood billboard together and allowing them to interact within the gallery, the work engages with concepts of temporality, mobility, the USMCA and institutionalism.
Dong-Kyoon Nam
Praxis of New Assemblage
My work focuses on reconstructing ordinary objects encountered in daily life into ‘animate things’: things understood as dynamic, temporal, yet precarious assemblages animated in a relational field that encompasses humans/nonhumans and organic/inorganic matter.
The method of assemblage I use is not based on the sculptural representation of an assumed and pre-existing whole, rather it refers to a process wherein a visualization of the potential movement of things, and the relationships between their parts, rhythms, affects, and intensities are privileged.
My studio process is semi-impromptu, a horizontal attunement with things, entangled in chance and necessity. My bodily sensibility starts from meticulous attention to fleeting, small occurrences that would otherwise remain unacknowledged.
re | cycling
On a mechanical level, these works reclaim parts of digital home appliances that usually remain invisible, and in so doing, momentarily stabilize the rapid cycle of production, consumption, and disposal. Installed on the wall by adhering them at right angles on a canvas panel, each singular assemblage stands alone and simultaneously exists in relation, signaling both continuity and discontinuity in turn. The works are abstract, like drawings of fluid lines and fragmented outlines, yet still concrete and sensorial. They take the form of artificial assemblages made of e-waste that paradoxically imply ecological precarity and complexity. On a mechanical level, these works reclaim parts of digital home appliances that usually remain invisible, and in so doing, momentarily stabilize the rapid cycle of production, consumption, and disposal. Installed on the wall by adhering them at right angles on a canvas panel, each singular assemblage stands alone and simultaneously exists in relation, signaling both continuity and discontinuity in turn. The works are abstract, like drawings of fluid lines and fragmented outlines, yet still concrete and sensorial. They take the form of artificial assemblages made of e-waste that paradoxically imply ecological precarity and complexity.
Sasha Opeiko
In Something like Fan Object Objects the banal object of study is a used domestic desk fan with a missing safety grill. It was found as a discarded, unwanted item sold in a thrift store. Damaged and disentangled from its previous function, the object is melancholically symptomatic and its image is mediated into multiple manifestations of loss and disintegration. The fan was visualized through faulty 3D scanning, rendered into a rotating 360° animation, and exported as 1400 individual frames, which were fed into a machine learning algorithm that produces new images based on the data it received. The fan itself is rendered useless, its melancholic image diffracted into 10,000 iterations of manufactured glitch. They are presented in video not so much as an animation, but a kind of factual flickering of machine-produced visual data. The nonhuman gaze of image data processing unravels a gapped 3-D representation into a myriad of fractured views, flatly glitching in a dark melancholic refusal to be coherent.
#melancholy began with a collection of screenshots of Instagram posts that were coming up under #melancholy. The screenshots are samples of the prevalence of sublime, mostly Nordic landscapes that the general population locates as representative of melancholy, branding it into named images for dissemination. Working with 460 screenshots, an AI algorithm on Runway ML was used to produce new images based on what it learned from the collection of screenshots. The AI model generates "#melancholy" Instagram landscape images and has the capacity to produce a video of these generated images morphing into one another. The images are disintegrated but new reintegrated versions of what a nonhuman gaze recognizes to be a #melancholy landscape image.
In Forged Afterimage Compression six rotating 3D scans are presented as a result of a remediation process that started with 3D scans of provisiona, transitory physical constructions of found objects and images. This first set of 3D scans, already full of gaps and distorted by the nature of the scanning app Trnio, was made into rotating animations that were then 3D scanned again off of a laptop screen. The outcome is a kind of forged afterimage, compressed into a digital skin or something like a distorted geological compound, resulting from the app’s inability to fully comprehend a 3D representation on a flat screen. These are remnants forged from remnants.
Artlab Gallery
JL Visual Arts Centre
Western University
London, Ontario, Canada
© 2022; Department of Visual Arts; Western University
ARTLAB
Saturday 9 May Noon - 10:00 p.m.
Sunday 10 May Noon – 6:00 p.m.
Location: 3rd floor, Artlab
The NIMK's Artlab hosts this weekend a selection off Artist in Residence projects since the introduction of that program in 2002. Through May, 2009, 23 artists have received support in the creation of new work. The Artist in Residence program supports research for and the development of new work based on digital/interactive/networked media and technology in an artist's practice. Visitors get an insight into the production of art and the place where it happens. The presentation encompasses audiovisual documentation, text displays and photos of the projects and video records of recent Artist in Residence projects. The installation Fontera V.2, by AiR Lilia Romero Perez, is to be seen in the Artlab (2008; for more information see Installations). In addition, Elephants Dream by Blender (2006; for more information see the video program, page xx) is being screened in the back stairwell, and the Dutch première of the new installation by Marnix de Nijs, Exploded Views, Remapping Florence (2008; for more information see Installations,) is found in gallery 5.
août 2019
Lausanne, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
ArtLab (Kengo Kuma, 2016) - vue sur la halle de la Mécanique (Dominique Perrault)
- Sculpture Bing Bang (Etienne Krähenbühl, 2016)
Most learning games focus on teaching educational standards, but games and game development can also help players build empathy and challenge stereotypes. This two part mini-talk discussed current research into social emotional learning through games, why games that promote social emotional learning are important, and how the Smithsonian and other museums are addressing critical issues related to emotional intelligence. With James Collins (Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access), Bradford Lewis (Corporation for National and Community Service), and Cody Coltharp (Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden ARTLAB+).
Photo Credit: Anna Thornton
Objects newly-arrived from Artlab with their brand-new display supports. They're ready to go on display on 11 May for the Migration Museum's new exhibition 'Refugees and Australia, 1972-2012'. For more on the exhibition, visit migration.historysa.com.au/events/2013/refugees-and-austr...
The Waterside Workers' Association Wallaroo banner dating from 1909, was restored and conserved by Artlab Australia over 3 years between 2004 and 2006 with funding from the History Trust of South Australia.
This magnificent banner represents the important presence of the Waterside Workers' union in what was a major South Australian port from the 1860s when the mining of copper began on the Yorke Peninsula. Copper smelters were built close to the port and there were many unionists on the wharves. Wallaroo Waterside Workers Hall in Wildman Street was officially opened on 24 January 1908.
The banner was designed and completed in 1909 by artist and signwriter Chris McLennan of Port Adelaide ready for use for the local Eight Hours demonstration on 1 September that year. It is made of turkey twill with silk trimmings and measures 11 by 10 feet. (3.3m x 3 m)
This is the reverse side which is allegorical in design with three female figures representing Liberty, Justice and Prosperity, and Labor, Rest and Recreation on the columns while there is the Commonwealth Coat of Arms in the centre beneath a sunset sky. Three medallions beneath depict the discharge of a collier at the Wallaroo jetty with shunting horses at work (centre); and an ocean going steamer and a sailing vessel on each side.
On the upper part of the obverse side there is the union's name and the clasped hands symbolising union. Below this was originally an image of the Wallaroo Jetty but this was severely damaged.
Exhibition Dates: October 26 – November 12, 2020
To Be Me
Sepideh Tajalizadeh Dashti
The Artlab Gallery is pleased to present MFA candidate Sepideh Tajalizadeh Dashti’s thesis exhibition, “To Be Me”.
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I will meet you there.”
-Rumi
There is something inside each one of us that, sometimes, is impossible to explain and define in precise words. However, this ambiguous something exists and acts. Sepideh Tajalizadeh Dashti, an Iranian woman who grew to adulthood in Iran and who now resides between Canada and the United States, has experienced deep feelings of ambiguity in her encounters with different cultural and social expectations.
Not all diasporas are the same. Not all female experiences of oppression are the same. Dashti’s experience as an Iranian diasporic woman is fragmented along ethnic, religious, social, political, and class lines. These fragments pose challenges to her attempts to bind with others and find solidarity based in multiculturalism and ethnicity. Dashti establishes her body as an integral material in her art practices to make the explanation of her experiences and challenges possible. She seeks to claim her body across multiple media of performance, video, and installation. Dashti focuses on traumas that underscore both personal experience and engagement with larger sociopolitical structures of the phallocentric systems that exist in both her homeland and her host countries.
Representation is a crucial location of the struggle for any exploited and oppressed bodies asserting subjectivity. Dashti insists on reminding us to work against the silence and erasure of traumatic experience. “To Be Me” features contemporary representations of Dashti’s Iranian and immigrant identity formation. Works within this MFA thesis exhibition relay the immense struggles of living between places and cultures. Dashti explores her identity in the hope of calling oppressive authorities into question. Perhaps there is not much hope for a bright future where differences are recognized without eliminating the voices of others. But striving to make this future fosters hope—both to endure and to continue.
Sepideh Tajalizadeh Dashti is currently an MFA candidate in the Department of Visual Arts at Western University in London, Ontario. She migrated to Canada in 2011 from Iran, and has lived in the USA since August 2019. Her artistic practice involves exploring her body through performance, video, and installation. Her work reflects concerns about the unjust and tyrannical politics of her homeland. Dashti is always rediscovering, reinventing, and reinterpreting her Iranian identity through multiple discourses and contexts, in multiple and heterogeneous ways. She earned her BFA, Fine Arts Studio Practice-Intensive Studio Specialization, with an Honours Digital Arts Communication Minor, at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, making the Dean’s Honours List. She is also a recipient of various awards such as the Lynn Holmes Memorial Award and Curator’s Choice Award during her BFA. Dashti received the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship in Social Sciences and Humanities Research in 2019. Her work has been showcased nationally and internationally.
Due to COVID-19 safety measures, the Artlab Gallery and Cohen Commons will be operating virtually. In-person visits are not permitted at this time. We will be posting exhibition documentation, videos, and virtual walk-throughs on the Artlab’s website.
Artlab Gallery
JL Visual Arts Centre
Western University
London, Ontario, Canada
© 2020; Department of Visual Arts; Western University
Exhibition Dates: January 15 – 28, 2021 in the Artlab Gallery and virtually
Every few years, the Artlab Gallery at Western University hosts a Faculty and Staff exhibition. These exhibitions are important opportunities for fostering a sense of community in the Visual Arts Department: students are able to see their instructors and mentors at work, and colleagues have a chance to share in each other's research. 2020 was a year like no other, and so the Artlab is leaning into the present with a collective address to this moment of separate togetherness. "Distance makes the heart grow weak" invites faculty, staff and graduate students to speak to how they've been experiencing the last year. It prompts participants to explore and express how isolation has shifted our focus, our research and art practices, as well as our forms of connecting with one another. The exhibition is also an opportunity for participating artists and researchers to show flexibility (and inherently, optimism) despite the high strangeness we’re all currently experiencing. In this time of shared solitude—unable to walk down halls, knock on studio or office doors, and enjoy quick hellos and impromptu conversations—we'll quote Chris Kraus (quoting Søren Kierkegaard): "art involves reaching through some distance."
Organized by Dickson Bou and Ruth Skinner.
Participants: Cody Barteet; Sarah Bassnett; Dickson Bou with Charlie Egleston & Peter Lebel; Matt W. Brown; Andreas Buchwaldt; Brianne Casey; Jérôme Conquy with Kevin Heslop, Sachiko Murakami, Sile Englert & Ruth Douthwright; Ioana Dragomir; Meghan Edmiston; Soheila Esfahani; Sky Glabush; Anahí González; Philip Gurrey; John Hatch; Tricia Johnson; Iraboty Kazi; Shelley Kopp; Anna Madelska; Patrick Mahon; Jennifer Martin; Linda Meloche; David Merritt; Ana Moyer; Dong-Kyoon Nam; Kim Neudorf; Katie Oates; Sasha Opeiko with Martin Stevens; Michelle Paterok; Kirsty Robertson; Geordie Shepherd; Andrew Silk; Ashley Snook; Christine Sprengler; Michelle Wilson with Bridget Koza,Sophie Wu, & Azadeh Odlins; Jessica Woodward
The promotional graphic for "Distance makes the heart grow weak" cites the short film, "Extraordinary Measures," by Sasha Opeiko and Martin Stevens, featured in the exhibition.
Given Ontario's recent stay-at-home order, the exhibition will be released in a virtual format on Friday, January 15th. Throughout the course of the exhibition, Artlab will publish short video features from participating artists and researchers.
Visit the Artlab Gallery: www.uwo.ca/visarts/artlab/
Due to COVID-19 safety measures, the Artlab Gallery and Cohen Commons will be operating virtually. In-person visits are not permitted at this time. We will be posting exhibition documentation, videos, and virtual walk-throughs on the Artlab’s website.
www.uwo.ca/visarts/artlab/exhibition_archive/20202021.htm...
Artlab Gallery
JL Visual Arts Centre
Western University
London, Ontario, Canada
© 2021; Department of Visual Arts; Western University
jason Cook, Artlab Manager and Magician, very focused while he solders LEDs and manages the music on the computer behind him.
Day 1
Sometimes in the night, the fox slips by
January 7-21, 2022
Artlab Gallery
Anahí González, Philip Gurrey, Dong-Kyoon Nam, Sasha Opeiko
Studio PhD candidates from the Department of Visual Arts present Sometimes in the night, the fox slips by, a group exhibition of recent work by Anahí González, Philip Gurrey, Dong-Kyoon Nam and Sasha Opeiko. The show gathers a broad spectrum of investigations sharing a common interest in the relationship between poetic and theoretical potential in making. Some orient themselves toward the political, looking at labour issues both in Canada and abroad. Others probe the language of modernism with strategies centered on improvisation and decay. Others still, use a posthumanist perspective to deconstruct notions of the readymade or to renegotiate representations of melancholy. In concert they are the fox of John Burnside’s poem, deftly weaving a path through fence and thicket.
Anahí González
Bueno, Bonito y Barato, is deeply involved in exploring the Mexican cues portrayed in visual culture, evoking quiet tensions of nationalism and labour representation. By bringing this approach of Mexican labour visual representation on a mobile wood billboard together and allowing them to interact within the gallery, the work engages with concepts of temporality, mobility, the USMCA and institutionalism.
Dong-Kyoon Nam
Praxis of New Assemblage
My work focuses on reconstructing ordinary objects encountered in daily life into ‘animate things’: things understood as dynamic, temporal, yet precarious assemblages animated in a relational field that encompasses humans/nonhumans and organic/inorganic matter.
The method of assemblage I use is not based on the sculptural representation of an assumed and pre-existing whole, rather it refers to a process wherein a visualization of the potential movement of things, and the relationships between their parts, rhythms, affects, and intensities are privileged.
My studio process is semi-impromptu, a horizontal attunement with things, entangled in chance and necessity. My bodily sensibility starts from meticulous attention to fleeting, small occurrences that would otherwise remain unacknowledged.
re | cycling
On a mechanical level, these works reclaim parts of digital home appliances that usually remain invisible, and in so doing, momentarily stabilize the rapid cycle of production, consumption, and disposal. Installed on the wall by adhering them at right angles on a canvas panel, each singular assemblage stands alone and simultaneously exists in relation, signaling both continuity and discontinuity in turn. The works are abstract, like drawings of fluid lines and fragmented outlines, yet still concrete and sensorial. They take the form of artificial assemblages made of e-waste that paradoxically imply ecological precarity and complexity. On a mechanical level, these works reclaim parts of digital home appliances that usually remain invisible, and in so doing, momentarily stabilize the rapid cycle of production, consumption, and disposal. Installed on the wall by adhering them at right angles on a canvas panel, each singular assemblage stands alone and simultaneously exists in relation, signaling both continuity and discontinuity in turn. The works are abstract, like drawings of fluid lines and fragmented outlines, yet still concrete and sensorial. They take the form of artificial assemblages made of e-waste that paradoxically imply ecological precarity and complexity.
Sasha Opeiko
In Something like Fan Object Objects the banal object of study is a used domestic desk fan with a missing safety grill. It was found as a discarded, unwanted item sold in a thrift store. Damaged and disentangled from its previous function, the object is melancholically symptomatic and its image is mediated into multiple manifestations of loss and disintegration. The fan was visualized through faulty 3D scanning, rendered into a rotating 360° animation, and exported as 1400 individual frames, which were fed into a machine learning algorithm that produces new images based on the data it received. The fan itself is rendered useless, its melancholic image diffracted into 10,000 iterations of manufactured glitch. They are presented in video not so much as an animation, but a kind of factual flickering of machine-produced visual data. The nonhuman gaze of image data processing unravels a gapped 3-D representation into a myriad of fractured views, flatly glitching in a dark melancholic refusal to be coherent.
#melancholy began with a collection of screenshots of Instagram posts that were coming up under #melancholy. The screenshots are samples of the prevalence of sublime, mostly Nordic landscapes that the general population locates as representative of melancholy, branding it into named images for dissemination. Working with 460 screenshots, an AI algorithm on Runway ML was used to produce new images based on what it learned from the collection of screenshots. The AI model generates "#melancholy" Instagram landscape images and has the capacity to produce a video of these generated images morphing into one another. The images are disintegrated but new reintegrated versions of what a nonhuman gaze recognizes to be a #melancholy landscape image.
In Forged Afterimage Compression six rotating 3D scans are presented as a result of a remediation process that started with 3D scans of provisiona, transitory physical constructions of found objects and images. This first set of 3D scans, already full of gaps and distorted by the nature of the scanning app Trnio, was made into rotating animations that were then 3D scanned again off of a laptop screen. The outcome is a kind of forged afterimage, compressed into a digital skin or something like a distorted geological compound, resulting from the app’s inability to fully comprehend a 3D representation on a flat screen. These are remnants forged from remnants.
Artlab Gallery
JL Visual Arts Centre
Western University
London, Ontario, Canada
© 2022; Department of Visual Arts; Western University
Sometimes in the night, the fox slips by
January 7-21, 2022
Artlab Gallery
Anahí González, Philip Gurrey, Dong-Kyoon Nam, Sasha Opeiko
Studio PhD candidates from the Department of Visual Arts present Sometimes in the night, the fox slips by, a group exhibition of recent work by Anahí González, Philip Gurrey, Dong-Kyoon Nam and Sasha Opeiko. The show gathers a broad spectrum of investigations sharing a common interest in the relationship between poetic and theoretical potential in making. Some orient themselves toward the political, looking at labour issues both in Canada and abroad. Others probe the language of modernism with strategies centered on improvisation and decay. Others still, use a posthumanist perspective to deconstruct notions of the readymade or to renegotiate representations of melancholy. In concert they are the fox of John Burnside’s poem, deftly weaving a path through fence and thicket.
Anahí González
Bueno, Bonito y Barato, is deeply involved in exploring the Mexican cues portrayed in visual culture, evoking quiet tensions of nationalism and labour representation. By bringing this approach of Mexican labour visual representation on a mobile wood billboard together and allowing them to interact within the gallery, the work engages with concepts of temporality, mobility, the USMCA and institutionalism.
Dong-Kyoon Nam
Praxis of New Assemblage
My work focuses on reconstructing ordinary objects encountered in daily life into ‘animate things’: things understood as dynamic, temporal, yet precarious assemblages animated in a relational field that encompasses humans/nonhumans and organic/inorganic matter.
The method of assemblage I use is not based on the sculptural representation of an assumed and pre-existing whole, rather it refers to a process wherein a visualization of the potential movement of things, and the relationships between their parts, rhythms, affects, and intensities are privileged.
My studio process is semi-impromptu, a horizontal attunement with things, entangled in chance and necessity. My bodily sensibility starts from meticulous attention to fleeting, small occurrences that would otherwise remain unacknowledged.
re | cycling
On a mechanical level, these works reclaim parts of digital home appliances that usually remain invisible, and in so doing, momentarily stabilize the rapid cycle of production, consumption, and disposal. Installed on the wall by adhering them at right angles on a canvas panel, each singular assemblage stands alone and simultaneously exists in relation, signaling both continuity and discontinuity in turn. The works are abstract, like drawings of fluid lines and fragmented outlines, yet still concrete and sensorial. They take the form of artificial assemblages made of e-waste that paradoxically imply ecological precarity and complexity. On a mechanical level, these works reclaim parts of digital home appliances that usually remain invisible, and in so doing, momentarily stabilize the rapid cycle of production, consumption, and disposal. Installed on the wall by adhering them at right angles on a canvas panel, each singular assemblage stands alone and simultaneously exists in relation, signaling both continuity and discontinuity in turn. The works are abstract, like drawings of fluid lines and fragmented outlines, yet still concrete and sensorial. They take the form of artificial assemblages made of e-waste that paradoxically imply ecological precarity and complexity.
Sasha Opeiko
In Something like Fan Object Objects the banal object of study is a used domestic desk fan with a missing safety grill. It was found as a discarded, unwanted item sold in a thrift store. Damaged and disentangled from its previous function, the object is melancholically symptomatic and its image is mediated into multiple manifestations of loss and disintegration. The fan was visualized through faulty 3D scanning, rendered into a rotating 360° animation, and exported as 1400 individual frames, which were fed into a machine learning algorithm that produces new images based on the data it received. The fan itself is rendered useless, its melancholic image diffracted into 10,000 iterations of manufactured glitch. They are presented in video not so much as an animation, but a kind of factual flickering of machine-produced visual data. The nonhuman gaze of image data processing unravels a gapped 3-D representation into a myriad of fractured views, flatly glitching in a dark melancholic refusal to be coherent.
#melancholy began with a collection of screenshots of Instagram posts that were coming up under #melancholy. The screenshots are samples of the prevalence of sublime, mostly Nordic landscapes that the general population locates as representative of melancholy, branding it into named images for dissemination. Working with 460 screenshots, an AI algorithm on Runway ML was used to produce new images based on what it learned from the collection of screenshots. The AI model generates "#melancholy" Instagram landscape images and has the capacity to produce a video of these generated images morphing into one another. The images are disintegrated but new reintegrated versions of what a nonhuman gaze recognizes to be a #melancholy landscape image.
In Forged Afterimage Compression six rotating 3D scans are presented as a result of a remediation process that started with 3D scans of provisiona, transitory physical constructions of found objects and images. This first set of 3D scans, already full of gaps and distorted by the nature of the scanning app Trnio, was made into rotating animations that were then 3D scanned again off of a laptop screen. The outcome is a kind of forged afterimage, compressed into a digital skin or something like a distorted geological compound, resulting from the app’s inability to fully comprehend a 3D representation on a flat screen. These are remnants forged from remnants.
Artlab Gallery
JL Visual Arts Centre
Western University
London, Ontario, Canada
© 2022; Department of Visual Arts; Western University
ARYEN HOEKSTRA
Untitled (moving objects)
Artlab Gallery
October 8 - October 21, 2021
Walter Benjamin’s 1929 essay Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia suggests that a central feature of Surrealist work was the perceptual experience he named ‘profane illumination.’ Benjamin describes the process by which, sometimes but not always drug induced, a person might be distracted into perceiving the most ordinary, overlooked objects of everyday reality as uncanny, supernatural, and irrational. According to Benjamin, Surrealism’s ability to disorient and estrange through this ‘profane illumination’ made it a potentially revolutionary operation. A few years later in his Artwork essay Benjamin identifies an analogous trait in the work of Dadaist painters and poets, writing that “their poems are 'word salad’ containing obscenities and every imaginable waste product of language. The same is true of their paintings, on which they mounted buttons and tickets. What they intended and achieved was a relentless destruction of the aura of their creations, which they branded as
reproductions with the very means of production.” While the latter essay suggests that it is the reproducibility of buttons and tickets that destroys this aura I prefer to think that Benjamin was simply too sober in his appraisal of these works, leaving himself perceptually untuned to the profane character immanent to their everyday objectness.
The separation of the sacred from the profane is one art’s most strictly maintained divisions, extending even to the architectural standard now ubiquitous in nearly all contemporary art galleries. This is described in detail in Olav Velthius’ Talking Prices, a comparative analysis of the business practices and pricing logic of art dealers in Amsterdam and New York in the early 2000’s.
In some cases, the back is sealed off hermetically, suggesting that the exhibition space is all there is to the gallery. Other gallery owners allow the public at least a partial view of the back space through open doors or glass windows. In small galleries … the back space may be limited to a single room or even a niche of the gallery space, where a small number of artworks are stored and a desk space is located for the owner and her assistant. In the largest New York Galleries … the back of the gallery consists of several corridors and spaces with unique functions. These spaces may include the following: offices for the directors or dealers and, in some cases, their personal assistants; a private viewing room, furnished with comfortable seats, where potential buyers can look in full comfort at a small number of works they are interested in; a stock room, where (part of) the inventory of the gallery is stored — the everyday territory of the art handler, who is responsible for the shipping and installation of artworks. A general office room may have a large table where staff meetings take place, and where deals may be negotiated and arranged between the dealer and a collector, away from the works of art.
Velthius describes this as a Durkhemian separation that functions to remove any trace of commerce (ie. the profane) from the sacred space of the exhibition. The need for this is made clear by the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben in his essay In Praise of Profanation, in which he recalls the legal definition of the profane in Ancient Rome.
The Roman jurists knew perfectly well what it meant to "profane." Sacred or religious were the things that in some way belonged to the gods. As such, they were removed from the free use and commerce of men; they could be neither sold nor held in lien, neither given for usufruct nor burdened by servitude. Any act that violated or transgressed this special unavailability, which reserved these things exclusively for the celestial gods (in which case they were properly called "sacred") or for the gods of the underworld (in which case they were simply called "religious"), was sacrilegious. And if "to consecrate" (sacrare) was the term that indicated the removal of things from the sphere of human law, "to profane" meant, conversely, to return them to the free use of men.
And it can be an uncanny and irrational experience to enter that profane space which lies just beyond the walls of the gallery. My own research is particularly interested in the ways that contemporary art objects are traded, the logistics of the art business, the storage and shipping of artworks, their care and
circulation. This often finds me considering artworks in those moments that they are removed from their intended site of operation; out of the white-cube exhibition space and in the storage racks of the gallery’s back room. This is also the space that inverts Benjamin’s misunderstanding of Surrealism as it sees artworks transformed into art objects, which is a true profanation.[1] And it is only as objects that these works may then be handled by gloved technicians, wrapped in cushioning, and readied for transport.
That which has been ritually separated can be returned from the rite to the profane sphere. Thus one of the simplest forms of profanation occurs through contact (contagione) during the same sacrifice that effects and regulates the passage of the victim from the human to the divine sphere. One part of the victim (the entrails, or ex ta: the liver, heart, gallbladder, lungs) is reserved for the gods, while the rest can be consumed by men. The participants in the rite need only touch these organs for them to become profane and edible. There is a profane contagion, a touch that disenchants and returns to use what the sacred had separated and petrified.
Perhaps what is potentially radical about the buttons and tickets Benjamin wrote about in Dadaist works, and in the Readymade more generally, is that they not only point their own mechanical (re)production, but also possess a haptic indexicality that conjures their handling as objects prior to their consecration as artworks.
Untitled (moving objects) (2021) is an installation of provisional sculptures created from 12 moving blankets and a number of objects found in the gallery that have previously had direct contact with artworks. The blankets, wrap and gloves acknowledge the materially fragile nature of the works that have and will enter this exhibition space, their dual existences as both artwork and object, and their always potential profanation.
[1] Everyday objects already exist within profane sphere, so don’t require further intoxication to be perceived as such.
Artlab Gallery
JL Visual Arts Centre
Western University
London, Ontario, Canada
© 2021; Department of Visual Arts; Western University
Join us in the Artlab Gallery this Thursday, June 20 from 5-7pm for the opening reception of MFA candidate Johnathan Onyschuk's thesis show, "Bone Meal."
The exhibition runs from June 20 - July 4, and consists of monumental avatars, WWI junk and wooden sculpture.
In 75 A.C.E Greek biographer Plutarch wrote on the aftermath of the defeat of Tuton and Ambrones tribes in Rome, different accounts report the inhabitants of Massilia made fences round their vineyards with the bones, and that the ground, enriched by the moisture of the putrefied bodies yielded at the season a prodigious crop. Bone Meal is a multimedia installation that explores the relationships between escapist fantasy violence and real world conflicts. Virtual avatars become the calloused husk from which we enjoy the exploited violence and heroism of the past; first as tragedy, second as farce and third as larp. The exhibited works examine the entertainment value of historical trauma and it’s hyper-mobility in the virtual space.
Warrior culture is the insufferable masculine hangover everyone else has to nurse and entertain. Every year a new video game or Netflix show comes out based on the “true events” of war and conflict and every year we lazily consume it like a dog eating the same food for it’s whole life. I find myself trapped in this reoccurring pattern of violent consumption, this work is generated from the bits of flesh consumed while trying to gnaw myself free.
Artlab Gallery
John Labatt Visual Arts Centre
Department of Visual Arts
Western University
London, ON
© 2019; Department of Visual Arts; Western University
Annual Juried Exhibition: March 2 – 16, 2023
Opening: Thursday, March 2 from 6–8PM
People’s Choice voting: 6:00-6:45pm
AJE Award Announcements: 7:00pm
Celebrating twenty-one years the "Annual Juried Exhibition" continues to be one of the Department of Visual Arts most highly anticipated undergraduate exhibitions. This diverse show supports the production of new work made in a variety of mediums including painting, sculpture, print, video, and photography. Exhibited works were selected by a professional jury who consider creativity, concept, materiality and technique. This year’s show is indicative of the resilience and dedication our students continue to demonstrate.
Featuring work by: Tammy Abela, Bridget Beardwood, Laila Bloomstone, John Cocker, Giulia Commisso, Stefania Dragalin, Kate Dunn, Sebastian Evans, Cheyne Ferguson, Megan Goddard, Morea Haloftis, Katelyn Halter, Emma Hardy, Emily Kings, Bridget Koza, Victoria Kyriakides, Myles Lynch, Darcy McVicar, Grace Maier, Amy Murray, Venus Nwaokoro, Dhra Patel, Olivia Pattison, Bridget Puhacz, Michaela Purcell, Hilary Rutherford, Chloe Serenko, Abbygale Shelley, Marissa Slack, Maggie Shook, Madison Teeter, Timothy Wiebe, Sophie Zhang
Jury Members: Anna Madelska (Faculty), Jessica Karuhanga (Faculty), Dickson Bou (Artlab Gallery Preparator) Liza Eurich (Artlab Gallery Manager), by proxy Teresa Carlesimo (FCG Director)
artLAB Gallery
JL Visual Arts Centre
Western University
London, Ontario, Canada
© 2023; Department of Visual Arts; Western University