Installation Shots of the USASK and USQ joint exhibition at the Gordon Snelgrove Gallery

Gordon Snelgrove Gallery                                                                                       Photography by Barbara Reimer

Gordon Snelgrove Gallery                                                                                       Photography by Barbara Reimer

Gordon Snelgrove Gallery                                                                                       Photography by Barbara Reimer

Gordon Snelgrove Gallery                                                                                       Photography by Barbara Reimer

It was great to see the show finally come together on Monday! Here are just a few of the wonderful photographs that were taken by Barbara Reimer, at the Gordon Snelgrove Gallery.   Perhaps the next step would be to also include a virtual video tour for our fellow artists from the University of Southern Queensland.

Install at the AKA

So this week is the first week of our second half of this project.  There are 6 of us in this section and we have had the wonderful opportunity to install work at AKA artist run centre in downtown Saskatoon.  I was designate ladder lady - both tall enough and brave enough to instal Di Decaire and Lizbeth Longaluit's work from a much higher ceiling than the Snelgrove.  New experiences: working with media players instead of DVD's, setting lights, and finding out that the grey tape that had seems like such a great solution for camouflaging into the grey ceiling turned out not to be that great after all!  A big thank-you goes out to Tarin and Derrick for helping us and answering a million questions like "Where's the packing tape?"

AKA Gallery    All photographs by Barbara Reimer

Two-faced

Two-faced is a floor sculpture made of two pieces, each with two different sides. The two units are placed in a curve in relation to each other. I used black-and-white with the natural brown color of the bamboo to create contrast. The diamond shapes of the stretched bamboo create negative spaces and create patterns with shadow and light. The two different sides and the created shadows make the viewer walk around it as it presents a different image from each angle.

I enjoy the visual contrast of the piece and also how it relates to the idea of having two faces. This refers to the way people can convey more than one personality. They might look like one thing from the outside but like something else from the inside. This is one of the biggest illusions that everyone has to face nearly everyday.

This piece was created in response to the Australian artist Glen Bowman’s piece, Fragmented Illusions #3.

Unsuspecting Light Bulb Moment

In an atttempt to try and keep shipping costs down for our joint exhibition with USQ; our professor Susan Shantz, asked the class to create a piece that was expandable.  After some rather frustrating attempts at replicating a small paper model that I had previously designed, I decided it was time for lunch.  That was when I noticed a bag of onions in my fridge.  That gave me an idea!

Polish Girl

 I was inspired by USQ student, Helena Lomulder plywood silhouettes that shape a narrative. The concept of storytelling holds great value in the sense that it provides me the capability to shape a narrative. My artwork is based on a fictional Polish folk story . I used vellum, a semi-transparent material to cut out the story. I also added details into the story with light expressive surface marks. Using both these approaches I was able to create a story by taking out and adding into the narrative. My intention is to create interest for viewers so they begin to imagine within the context of my narrative and begin thinking of their own stories as well.

Here is a sneak keep of a close up of one out of five sides and a distance photo of the hexagon structure.

The Process to Repetitiveness of Life

Hi. It's Di here again. 

Here is my process to creating my installation piece for class, and a response to AJ Gogas and Peta Berghofer pieces. 

Trial and error with tyvek paper

Then...

I found some cougar paper and I cut out the shapes I wanted... Triangles, circles, and squares. 

Then I painted them one of the primary or secondary colours.

Then I cut into the paper carefully.

Then I did a practice installation piece.

I position the various forms on the floor.

And suspended the forms from the ceiling to the floor. They all touch the floor and vary in height. 

Pretty much that was the process to create my installation piece. Soon it'll be installed in the gallery and you'll see the piece.

`

Response to Emily Kame Kngwarreye

I chose Emily Kame Kngwarreye because I admire her work that expresses energy, passion through her beautiful interplay of colours with her bold brushworks. Kngwarreye a prominent contemporary Australian aboriginal artist, which her paintings emphasis on the spiritual meaning based in the tradition of her people. While many aboriginal paintings are focused on dreamings, Kngwarreye chose to paint very abstract broad paintings of the land and how it supports their way of life. For my response to Kngwarreye's work, I wanted to emphasize the colours and the integration of her stroking she incorporated in her paintings by using Bee Paper Stripple Paper and colour markers.

Aboriginal Australian Mask

I have always had a fascination with differing cultures since I have been to the Polynesian Culture Centre in Oahu, Hawaii.  I even have a family history of woodcarving and carpentry and I wanted to experience a style of art making that I have never done before.  After some research of the Aboriginal  Australian culture I really wanted to carve a mask.  I wasn't perfect to being exactly like the originals you would find in Australia but I am very pleased with the result since it was my first time woodcarving.
The wood I used was Canadian Cedar to be the opposite of the continent that the mask is referencing.  I really like to work with acrylic paint and I used it for the majority of the surface.  The remaining of the wood that I didn't paint, near the center of the face, was intentionally left so it could be stained to show the wood's natural grain and to draw the viewer's eye. The dots are similar to traditional masks and I utilized them to help the viewer look up and down the mask from the brow, through the nose to the chin.
The wings on the brow are meant to represent freedom of mind and imagination which speaks to me as an artist.  The colours I chose remind me of warm earth and my favourite season, fall.

Jaclyn

Great Barrier Reef Archive

Hi there,
My name is Jaclyn and I created an archive about the Great Barrier Reef composed of a glass tube with a starfish, seashell, sand, and the archive itself in a ziplock submerged in water.  This is meant to represent the constrictive area that is limited to protection yet the reef is still endangered with the growing oil industry that is forming close by.  The tube is much like a sample tube that is used in the oil industry and it is limiting the space for the marine life.
I had carved a shark out of a solid wax piece to represent how sharks are the regulators of the reef populations and how they are vital to the reefs whole survival.  The Great Barrier Reef became a protected zone mainly because of the shark populations that reside there.  To keep the wax shark from floating and looking dead, I used fishing line and a rock to keep it submerged but still float up to a limited height.

In Response to Benedict Ernst

Materials: Water plastic bottles, bottle tops, screws, clips, electrical tape, tyvek paper, button, straw

I combined 2 of Benedict Ernst Exhibition to create an archive on his works. 

(1)Ghost Botanicals- where he uses empty plastic bottles with an effect of black and white. 

(2) NOTHING (but flowers) -based on bouquets and botanical studies collated from found objects and collected detritus.

I chose him so that I can engage myself on trying to combine recycle things into a piece of art. I also admire his creations that shows an environment or a scene just by using his found objects.

Industrialized Dream Catcher

Last week I started constructing my five foot circumference metal dream catcher.  After some thought, a lot of trial and error and help from my peers I was able to construct a frame for my dream catcher.   Along the way I was photographing each step and as I went back to look through them I found it interesting to see the progression of the whole thing.  Here are some of those photos!

This first step was to construct the shape of a hoop.  As you can see I have used a grey plastic tubing (courtesy of Elizabeth Babyn) and secured it to a sheet of wood.  Once that was finished I measured how far apart my weaving would be and secured the butterfly clips accordingly. 

I needed a lot of tape!  To fit around the butterfly clips I needed to cut the duct tape in half.

Detail of the butterfly clips used.  I think this will make an interesting 'hoop' for my dream catcher.

Here you can see how I have arranged everything.  In total there are 47 butterfly clips taped to the plastic tubing.

Of course friends make tedious work way more fun! Thanks Josh Wade for helping me secure the tubing.   While constructing this I noticed that the tube would roll inwards if you gave the butterfly clips a tug (which isn't good when you need to pull the string of a dream catcher taught!).  So that meant securing every part of the hoop to ensure nothing moved.  

So much tape!!  I ended up using three different types of tape because the rolls kept running out!  Surprisingly the white tape held on way better to the wood than the duct tape.  

The next step in this whole process with be to start weaving the metal wire into the clips and attaching the metal washers aka 'beads', as the dream catcher becomes more and more complete I will continue to post more progress pictures!

Australia: Travel Light

Materials: Vellum, Double-sided tape

By folding vellum, I created shapes that links to the Opera house. I attached it to the wall so that the the light will travel better and the shadow will be more appealing. Also the gradient of light in vellum shows an effect as well. 

Response to Fiona Hall

This is my archive in response to Fiona Hall, who relates to the larger theme of imagining Australia. Her pieces "Price is Right" are founded objects that she transformed to speak about consumerism. I have used the same process of finding brand name products, but cutting them into numbers and placing the numbers into an sealed envelope with a shopping cart symbol on it. Consumerism is a topic faced all around the world. Each product has an endless amount of numbers to identify it. My response represents an "endless" amount of founded numbers crunched into a shopping cart symbol that rises the questions, How did consumerism become this way and how has it been impacting our society and environment?

The endless amount of numbers reveal consumerism has produced to much that our world cannot actually handle its productivity.

Cloak in Progress

Here is a progress shot of the "paper" cloak i am making in response to Catharine Callaghan's piece. I was taken by how light interacted with the surface of her piece. Another interest of mine is studying the body in a way other then drawing or painting it. I find clothing to fit this need. It is interesting to me how we celebrate certain aspects of our bodies by drawing focus to them with clothing and choose to hide others all with the same thing.

Australia + Benedict Ernest

This is my archive on Australia. It includes of all the top ten things that refer to Australia for me. This was inspired by Benedict Ernest's use of white on black theme that he uses to create his famous work.
For me the theme also references to the memories of past and this is how I will remember things when I get old.

_

Backward Feet

One thing I've noticed about our evolving theme in this project is the prevalence of memory in the work of our Australian counterparts.  A creature with backward feet might be imagined as a time traveller or an anthropomorphized memory, walking backwards in time.  Along this same trajectory, our professor, Susan Shantz, began our (Canadian students now) response to the work of the Australian artists with a visit to the archives.  Unlike a library, an archive is concerned, not just with information, but with objects of memory.  Opening one of the archival boxes might be like walking backward into the past of a person or an organization via the objects themselves.

Here are a few images from our visit to the University of Saskatchewan Archives: