Celebrate our local Albertan art scene with a free curator’s tour led by Lindsey Sharman and Danielle Siemens. They will take you virtually through the exhibition ‘The Scene’ at the Art Gallery of Alberta, giving you an in-depth understanding of the artwork, with a special Q&A hosted after the tour.
‘The Scene’ puts the spotlight on emerging to mid-career practices while presenting a cross-section of Edmonton’s art scene. With the aim of drawing attention to and supporting the vibrancy of Edmonton’s artistic community, ‘The Scene’ brings together and amplifies energetic and dynamic voices in Edmonton’s visual arts!
The Artists: Kasie Campbell, Lauren Crazybull, April Dean, Yong Fei Guan, Taryn Kneteman, Dwayne Martineau, Kim McCollum, Morgan Melenka, Gabriel Molina, Emmanuel Osahor, Tamires Para, Tiffany Shaw-Collinge, Jill Stanton
#AGAlive is made possible with the support of the EPCOR Heart + Soul Fund and the Canada Council for the ArtsCelebrate our local Albertan art scene with a free curator’s tour led by Lindsey Sharman and Danielle Siemens. They will take you virtually through the exhibition ‘The Scene’ at the Art Gallery of Alberta, giving you an in-depth understanding of the artwork, with a special Q&A hosted after the tour. …
Key moments
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Jill Stanton
Jill Stanton
4:49
Jill Stanton
4:49
Lauren Cruzabel
Lauren Cruzabel
7:50
Lauren Cruzabel
7:50
Taran Kanederman
Taran Kanederman
12:20
Taran Kanederman
12:20
The Installation by Dwayne Martino
The Installation by Dwayne Martino
13:51
The Installation by Dwayne Martino
13:51
Gabriel Molina
Gabriel Molina
19:14
Gabriel Molina
19:14
Tiffany Shaw Collins
Tiffany Shaw Collins
20:49
Tiffany Shaw Collins
20:49
Kim Mccollum and April Dean
Kim Mccollum and April Dean
22:31
Kim Mccollum and April Dean
22:31
Casey Campbell
Casey Campbell
27:22
Casey Campbell
27:22
Use CTRL+F to find key words if it is a longer transcript.
0:04
hi everyone um welcome my name is lindsay sharman i am the curator of art gallery of
0:11
alberta and i’m danielle siemens i’m the collections manager and curatorial
0:16
associate at the aga and we are both very happy to be hosting our event this afternoon uh
0:22
which is a virtual tour of this scene an exhibition that danielle and i have curated at
0:28
the aga the show is up right now um at the art gallery of alberta and although we remain
0:35
closed to the public that exhibition will be ready to go whenever health restrictions allow us to
0:41
open up again so this is a show that features um all
0:47
artists based in or closely associated with the city of edmonton or ms squishy wasp again so this is land
0:53
on which or this land on which we’re situated is treaty six territory um and part of the
0:58
metis nation of alberta where indigenous peoples have been making and creating since time immemorial these are the
1:05
ancestral and traditional lands of diverse indigenous peoples including the cree
1:12
dene netsitipi or blackfoot soto makotosu and metis we acknowledge and
1:19
extend gratitude to the many first nations metis and inuit whose footsteps have marked
1:25
these lands for generations and who continue to call this place home today so we of course privileged in this
1:31
digital realm to gather together from multiple places so i encourage any of you who do not share these same lands with us
1:37
to take a moment to acknowledge the people of the land on which you are situated and tuning in from
1:45
um so before we start our tour um i’d like to thank epcor uh for their
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support epcor supports all of our online programming through their heart and soul fund and we’d also like to
2:00
thank and acknowledge uh canada council for their generous support um so today uh the tour that we’re going
2:08
to go on is about uh 30 minutes after which danielle and i will take your questions
2:13
um but you don’t have to wait until the end of the tour to ask any questions that come up
2:18
um you can put them in the chat um function that we have here at any time
2:24
and then we’ll we’ll get to those questions towards the end so with that uh here’s our tour
2:37
um we are here uh now with aga to to share uh this new exhibition with all
2:45
of you um so the scene is an exhibition that uh danielle and i have curated together it shows
2:52
all edmonton artists and has been a project that we’ve been working on for a number of years um have been
2:59
working on for a very long time and so it’s it’s really exciting to see it all come together
3:06
in the exhibition space um so as i mentioned it’s all edmonton artists this is
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kind of our loose theme that that holds all of the artists together
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and we’re wanting to really showcase and celebrate um the kind of diversity of practices
3:24
that we have in edmonton so all of the artists are emerging mid-career
3:32
and so there are a couple of themes that have sort of emerged um
3:38
all of the artists being uh located in edmonton i think that that the city itself and and this area
3:46
and this landis is definitely a theme that has come out
3:51
um there is also um
3:56
the kind of natural and the artificial and our relationship with the
4:02
natural world and how we kind of navigate that whether it’s um you know through walking in the river
4:10
valley or through uh navigated through screens and things like that i think one final theme is
4:17
that of the body so the artist’s own body or the body of others and how bodies exist within societal
4:25
expectations so yeah so with that i think we’ll head on inside
4:35
so here we are in the the first room um of the exhibition um so there are
4:41
several artists that are that are represented here the first that i’d like to draw your attention to is
4:49
and also jill stanton um who’s just in the mural behind me here
4:54
and i think these two works together i think are really exciting
5:01
um there’s some some really interesting connections um between them so of course if we talk
5:08
about the the mural first um you can see that it is this
5:14
monumental trash um and so what’s what jill is doing is
5:20
kind of taking language of um you know monumental landscape
5:27
and kind of presenting um these bags of garbage and what you might find kind of in your back
5:33
alley and presenting it as this sort of atmospheric
5:38
and monumental landscape um and i think if we look at that sort of in conversation or relationship with
5:45
this work um which also has its its pair behind you here the the pair of lions
5:52
so this work um was conceptualized out of two events
5:59
one uh would be the carbon gate which is very near
6:05
where the aga is and so the harbin gate um was taken down for the new
6:12
lrt line to go through and so
6:18
um
6:27
faye is looking at um that event and kind of thinking of it in
6:32
relationship to chinatown how that changes chinatown how that relates to chinatown both
6:40
historically contemporarily and kind of looking to the future and the second event that this work is
6:47
related to was china along with many other countries making the decision
6:53
not to take um other countries recycling any longer and so looking at kind of our
7:00
relationship to um recycling um and kind of thinking of that in
7:07
relation also to trash and if you know there are not
7:12
effective ways to recycle that those those objects that we don’t really think much about consuming or using
7:20
actually do become trash and just become discarded and i think is also a way to
7:27
kind of start a conversation of thinking critically of the entire recycling
7:34
industry and if you can’t tell from where you are these two lines are completely made of
7:41
recycled waste so milk jugs and six pack can rings
7:49
so i think we’ll move and talk about lauren cruzabel
7:56
okay so this is one of three paintings we have by the artist lauren crazy bowl lauren’s practice for several years has
8:02
been focused on portraiture so they are quite interested in the
8:08
relationship that’s embedded in the act of painting a person so in that imbalanced
8:13
power dynamic between the artist and the sitter and then between the viewer and the
8:18
sitter so lauren individually paints people that they know
8:23
spend time with photograph and then translates into painting and then these really kind of powerful
8:30
portrayals of individual people oftentimes their gaze is kind of confronting you staring right back
8:36
at you and then together they become this really beautiful uh collective portrait of a community or
8:43
kin um what i quite enjoy about some of these portraits as well are these other little elements that are
8:48
embedded in them so in this painting of connor for example you have this little object in the corner i don’t
8:55
quite know if it’s a toy or maybe a dog’s ball
9:00
so you have any glimpses of the person’s environment
9:06
that might tell you something about them but also leaves uh the narrative open-ended you kind of have to
9:11
fill in the details so i think we’ll move to talk about emmanuel’s work which lindsey will show you one of
9:17
his paintings yeah so one of the things that i kind of really appreciate
9:24
and enjoy about uh lauren and emmanuel’s work um they are hung sort of side by side on
9:30
this wall and there’s another view of lauren’s over there and emanuel is kind of further behind me
9:35
they’re both um unframed unstretched and there’s something um
9:42
really interesting to me about the kind of immediacy um that you feel in both of both of the
9:47
works they are both um painting and so i think it’s kind of like an
9:53
interesting um choice that both of the artists have opted to have their have their canvases in kind
10:00
of this raw and immediate sense so emmanuel’s work um
10:07
a lot of his practice stems from his experience of coming to canada from nigeria so when he came to canada he was
10:15
expecting this sort of perfect utopia of a country
10:23
when he got here of course he he came to the realization that that is definitely not the case um and
10:29
he recognized that you know canada struggles with the same sort of colonial
10:36
um and racist uh histories uh and current uh situations that a lot of
10:42
countries are also facing and so his kind of interest um
10:47
in utopia in seeking utopia in creating utopia and how you kind of
10:55
find it and maybe explore that within your own life and so that’s led him
11:00
to be very interested in um in edmonton in particular in the river valley and
11:06
how that sort of outdoor idyllic space
11:11
is used um for for leisure but is also used um for living in that there’s lots
11:19
of folks that kind of make uh their home in camps along the river valley and so looking at this sort of strip of
11:26
land from these very very different perspectives this also led him to be very interested in um
11:34
backyards i think he has uh just a very kind of genuine appreciation and love of
11:42
people that um tend to their gardens and but there’s also something in that um
11:48
you sort of how you’re creating a space for yourself and sort of carving out
11:54
what you might imagine as your own utopia and how you’re able to to produce that
12:02
so i think we’ll just head over um to have a look at uh some video work
12:08
that’s in the exhibition
12:19
so this is a work by taran kanederman taryn often works in print making in
12:25
installation and in video as you can see here so this is one of two works
12:30
and she’s really kind of adopting the visual language of popular videos we might see on youtube
12:37
so the kind of getting ready video or personal routine
12:42
or the how-to video which are really popular like how to boil an egg or how to cut an onion
12:48
but as you watch there’s this really kind of surreal element so in one video she’s cracking and
12:54
frying an egg and as she cracks the egg a little
12:59
the yolk is in the shape of a human brain and then in the next film um she’s drawing a bath
13:06
and the bath bombs are the form of an anatomical heart so for
13:12
each of these she actually made the objects cast them and made them for the videos
13:19
and so a part of her interest is this kind of popular culture of self-care but thinking about how to
13:26
actually get into our interiors or into our bodies
13:32
so they have this really kind of surreal quality to them and kind of comic um as well
13:49
so here we are in um the installation by dwayne martino
13:54
um so here you kind of walk into a darkened room in the gallery and
14:01
you’ll see um this circle of new strange looking
14:06
figures so what you see in the images are actually images of
14:12
trees and so there are two images that have then been paired together
14:17
in the the middle that kind of give sort of this mirror like image on either side but what that
14:23
effect does is also kind of create
14:28
faces that you see within these trees and the trees themselves sort of become
14:34
these kind of spirits um or spirits of the the forest or kind of individuals um
14:42
so dwayne is really interested in our interaction with the natural
14:47
world um so he is sort of fascinated by
14:53
this world um you know kind of in air codes natural world that’s sort of all around us
14:59
and that’s kind of functioning in in tandem to our everyday lives that we very rarely
15:05
stop and take notice of um so like emmanuel uh dwight is quite
15:10
interested in uh the river valley and so is often taking um walks through the river valley um but
15:18
yeah sees kind of the natural world or the nature that he
15:24
he sees and what he encounters as both fascinating and terrifying
15:30
um and this kind of part of the world that um you know he’s not really
15:37
kind of equipped to fully understand or even come close to be able
15:43
to comprehend so the work itself is also called strange jury and the installation it’s really
15:51
designed for interaction um pretty much with with one person at a time
15:57
where you would kind of be drawn into the circle of figures as you’re standing inside you can then
16:04
sort of turn around and see and really be watched by this
16:10
this sort of strange jury and it’s this kind of uncomfortable sense of of this
16:16
jury that’s you know probably also judging you um at the same time
16:24
so in this section of the gallery there are several works by morgan malenka um so everything that’s
16:30
around me now is is from morgan so morgan is a printmaker but she really kind of tests the
16:39
the limits of what printmaking could be she’s really interested in contemporary
16:46
building materials and so often materials that are quite flimsy or plastic
16:53
or some sort of plastic composite that has um a more luxurious material
17:00
um actually printed on top of it she’s also interested in kind of
17:07
architectural details in our contemporary built environment that often would go unnoticed
17:15
so one of the works that i find that the most interesting of hers are the gate posts and so those are these
17:23
larger works here and so they’re they’re modeled after um
17:30
a fairly common um architectural flourish um that you might see out front
17:37
of a strip mall um or you know kind of at the edge of a parking lot and there are
17:43
these these details that are that are quite familiar um but really finding um
17:51
the history of them um is a little bit difficult and so she’s interested in those kind of
17:57
elements of our everyday that are really everywhere and are recognizable but
18:04
we’re not really paying any attention to them and so what she’s wanting to do is really draw attention to them and
18:11
monumentalize them so what she’s done with the the gate post she’s actually made smaller
18:17
versions of them that we have over here
18:24
and so she’s turned these gate posts into um keychains and so she’s taken
18:31
um you know what you would imagine as you know you can you kind of imagine
18:37
that you would very commonly find such a thing of the eiffel tower
18:42
and things like that and those sort of monumental um recognizable and memorable elements and
18:48
kind of take it this detail that we don’t really think of and
18:54
kind of placed it within the same visual language as that
19:12
okay so this is a video work by gabriel molina and gabriel is really interested in the
19:19
mediation of our experiences through technology so this work was made
19:25
while he was in iceland uh doing a residency and he was spending a lot of time in the
19:31
beautiful outdoors of iceland and filming the world around him and streaming it back home
19:37
using regular social media apps like instagram and twitch but then he became quite
19:43
fascinated in how those apps um distort our imagery by
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their algorithms are compressing and distorting the images we take um so they become
19:57
they become actually these really sort of inadequate ways of documenting and sharing
20:05
our experiences in nature specifically but also more generally um and then he was also i think he’s
20:12
commenting a little bit about um the tourism industry particularly iceland and the
20:19
hashtag my stopover which was quite prevalent a few years ago
20:26
promoting iceland as a place to visit and as a place to stop while you’re flying somewhere else
20:32
and how these tourism campaigns that are really aggressively
20:39
promoted through social media actually really impact our choices and what we decide to do in
20:45
the world okay so this is a work by tiffany shaw collins
20:51
and tiffany is an artist in the city but also an architect so she’s someone that’s quite interested in the built environment and she has
20:58
quite a bit of public art in the city these are works where she is looking
21:04
at familial sites so this example is her mother’s house and
21:10
then we have another set of similar work that’s her grandmother’s house so she has pinpointed these locations that are
21:17
meaningful to her um and her family um in google maps and then used a series
21:25
of computer programs to make these layers
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of images so the nice thing in this exhibition is we are actually showcasing a part of the
21:35
process of the making so here you have the digital image and then she uses a cnc router to make
21:43
this final three-dimensional image in wood um and what’s interesting about tiffany
21:49
is she actually considers those technologies such as the cnc wood router um as a kind of collaborator
21:58
so she doesn’t have full control of what the final image will look like but that
22:03
technology um is a part of kind of has a say in what the final image will turn out so there’s two examples of
22:12
the um digital image and then the final wooden piece
22:17
and in this room um we have two other artists who are also
22:23
using the grid as a kind of thinking about the grid as a formal and conceptual tool
22:29
tool um so we’re gonna go look at some of those now with kim mccollum and april dean
22:36
all right so in this space also um sharing space with tiffany in this room
22:42
of the gallery is april dean on my left and uh kim mccollum has has several works um here
22:48
as well so um yeah as danielle mentioned i think there’s something really interesting
22:54
happening here um with a kind of interest in the grid um so kim is a weaver
23:01
um and uh so we do have some actual weavings of hers and these are our
23:06
paintings and so through her painting she she’s looking at um
23:12
historical weaving patterns and kind of translating them into these monumental um paintings and i
23:19
think offering a really interesting um both archive as
23:24
well as monumentalization of that work that often really goes on
23:30
unnoticed and april here i don’t know if you can see the sort of grid in these
23:37
works um from there but they do have this grid that overlays the
23:42
the entire image and it’s related to the screens that um you would have it in
23:50
like a screen door or in a window on your home so she’s interested in our separation
23:56
as well as interaction with the natural world what you see in the images are plants
24:02
propagating in jars and so april she’s kind of really interested in
24:09
the phenomena of house plants i think is something that um is often sort of
24:16
formatted or described as kind of a typically millennial pastime of um
24:23
having house plants but i think is also something that you’ve seen a real rise in through the pandemic of
24:30
people buying plants for their homes and having more of an interest in their homes but
24:35
also more interest in um caring for for something i suppose
24:41
and so april is propagating plants and sort of sees that
24:47
propagation and also their distribution to friends and family and loved ones
24:53
as kind of an anti-capitalist gesture because the plants of course are like printmaking that
25:00
she’s she’s working with are kind of infinitely reproducible um but then sort of overlaid
25:08
um with that very kind of domestic grid um conveying kind of
25:14
our our own interaction with with plants whether it be within our our own home sort of sitting
25:20
on a windowsill or you know in a garden as you’re sort of peering out
25:25
um into your kind of pseudo-natural environment
25:34
so here we’re just standing in front of a couple of works by tamira’s prayer um so she has several works in the
25:40
exhibition um she is i guess um maybe quite similarly
25:46
to um lauren crazy bull kind of interested in um the history of painting um
25:55
within sort of a western art historical sort of lens and looking at it as something that
26:00
is primarily dominated by um men um and within uh the concepts of
26:07
western art history uh by white men and so she’s interested in kind of
26:13
taking those tropes um of historical and references to historical painting
26:21
where you know you might see some references to uh caravaggio or bacon um
26:29
and kind of those um individuals in in our street and and kind of playing
26:35
with that a little bit yeah so in tamarissa’s painting she’s often painting herself
26:41
or other women she’s met and spend time with um as a kind of response to
26:48
the the patriarchal society she’s grown up in and that has shaped her world view
26:54
um often times the paintings also have this element of violence
27:01
i think speaking to her experiences and to other women’s experiences um and
27:07
kind of undermining what lindsay was talking about these art historical tropes so kind of taking control of their own
27:15
message and story and identity okay so this is the final artist in our tour of the scene this is work by
27:22
casey campbell and casey campbell um often works in
27:28
sculpture and performance um so this work is a little bit different but it’s photographic documentation
27:34
um from work that was happening the very beginning of the pandemic so
27:39
she had a newborn and was also dealing with the grief of the loss of her mother
27:46
and the beginnings of the pandemic and the anxieties around that um so she was
27:52
nursing her child and her regular kind of postpartum anxieties are really exasperated
27:58
by the unknown conditions of the pandemic so worrying about having enough to feed
28:04
her baby if she got sick would her baby have enough nourishment
28:10
so she started pumping and saving that milk in these bags and then using the bags as a kind of
28:15
visual daily diary um so sometimes she’s documenting more mundane things about
28:21
breastfeeding so here you have all the feeding times of the day but then some of the other bags are
28:27
commentary on perhaps the pain after birth or how she’s feeling physically
28:33
or more personal and kind of poetic messages things to her mother for example one of them says when you
28:39
were dying i decided i was going to have a baby so i think with this she’s really mourning the loss of her mother
28:45
the absence of her child’s grandmother so we have just a selection of the few
28:51
months that she was doing this for
28:58
okay so thank you so much for joining lindsay and i on the tour of the scene and we’re going to
29:04
now move into a question and answer period and hope you can stick around
29:21
all right thanks a lot um and yeah i’ll just point out that denial was putting all of
29:26
the artist’s names in the chat so if you are kind of having
29:32
or wondering about the names of the artists they’re all there for you um and yeah if anybody has any any
29:39
questions for danielle and i are questions about the work um please just put it in the chat
29:44
uh and we’ll try to address them as best we can um yeah i guess one of the things that
29:52
um i kind of mentioned in the intro um was that
29:58
uh danielle when you and i were kind of putting together this exhibition i think one of the things that we
30:04
kind of purposely didn’t want to do was sort of define like this is an edmonton style
30:11
or you know this is the only thing that’s happening um in edmonton uh but we were wanting to really kind of
30:18
um you know give a taste of all of the really exciting things that
30:23
that happen here but of course a lot of similarities did come out and so
30:30
yeah i’m wondering danielle if you could share just some of the maybe themes that emerged in the show
30:36
that you found were particularly like exciting or surprising
30:42
i think one for me was a focus on screens and grids um
30:50
so you had talked about in the tour like the relationship between um kim and april but i think there’s
30:57
also a really nice connection between april and gabriel in terms of this sort of technological
31:03
mediation of our experiences of nature um and how um
31:10
using viewing things through screens and devices becomes this kind of imperfect way of recording
31:15
and sharing um our experiences but then also um i think tiffany’s work
31:23
uh is quite interesting because she’s looking at mapping which is this constraining device and especially in edmonton where we are
31:30
a lot of the city is on this grid um but then really kind of undermining that grid
31:36
through these 2d and 3d processes into this final object which i think is
31:42
a bit of a decolonial act when you’re thinking about mapping um but then there’s this relationship too
31:48
with um kim’s work who’s also interested in the grid as this kind of conceptual and
31:54
visual tool um but then she is translating the grid through painting and
32:00
weaving which is ultimately a hand done activity so the grid is then again this not this
32:06
perfect constraining device um so the grid and the screens i thought was really interesting um
32:12
and i really love that one room uh with those three together yeah i don’t know is there anything for
32:18
you yeah well i think like with i think definitely this like mediation through
32:23
screens um and i guess like when i was listening to you on um the tour when you were talking about
32:32
um taryn’s work which i actually hadn’t really kind of put in that sort of category
32:38
um but it’s definitely an aspect of her work as well that i i really didn’t think about until today that you know she’s
32:44
looking at you know kind of the language of youtube videos and and things like that and i think it’s
32:51
super interesting um like we did start planning this
32:57
exhibition and start working on it before the pandemic um it’s been kind of
33:03
postponed and it was supposed to be up a while ago um but i think that you know it’s kind
33:10
of the pandemic has made those elements of the show maybe a little bit more
33:15
urgent feeling and a little bit more important where you know of course i think you
33:20
know before the pandemic you know we did of course also experience a lot of our lives through
33:27
screens and kind of have that kind of play with mediation but i think it comes up um
33:35
especially now that like the majority of our life is getting kind of experienced through
33:42
screens yeah see we do have a question so how much work did you have to select from how many
33:50
artists in edmonton did you get to explore so yeah
33:56
you mentioned this show has been probably two over two years in the making it was supposed to be up about a year ago
34:03
and then was delayed um we probably met with like
34:09
we were just at the time meeting with a lot of edmonton artists um i don’t know probably a lot
34:16
yeah i think it’s a it’s a good question and i mean many many many many artists that
34:23
we’ve met and and i think that there is um i mean there are so many interesting
34:28
um artists working in the city and lots of interesting um practices and you know lots of
34:35
lots of artists that we met that you know they may not have been in the show but you know they’re
34:41
artists that we kind of use that to build a connection with and you know kind of engage with
34:46
with later so yeah we did we did a lot of um a lot of studio visits
34:52
for sure what was i mean of course there were so many people i’d love to have in the show
34:57
um but i think what was nice about what we did was each artist in the show has a lot of
35:04
space um and for some of them they’re working on a greater scale than maybe
35:09
they were before i think like april’s photographs um and casey’s i don’t think had ever
35:15
been that big and dwayne’s installation was quite large even though he’s done similar work before so um while there aren’t a ton of people
35:24
in the show in the end everyone really has you can really see a lot of quite a bit of their practices um from the space
35:30
they have in the exhibition yeah i think like you know when you mention dwayne’s um
35:36
especially i think like that for me was one of the most um kind of like surprising or like
35:43
exciting studio visits that we did um i really wasn’t familiar with duane’s work um before we set out to do
35:51
this show um and yeah i’ve become a huge fan um and i think it was it was nice to
35:58
be able to give um give his work that entire um space and so he could have that
36:04
entire installation really have kind of room to play around
36:10
i should say with that installation that there’s also um you can’t really get it from the the
36:15
video but there is a sound component as well and so it really does kind of make
36:21
um this really kind of like immersive environment and the
36:27
the audio component is is um just found footage from from just found outdoor footage
36:33
that he’s um slowed down and so it kind of adds to this sort of like
36:38
discomfort or creepiness that you might have in that space
36:44
um i have another question so you were talking about screens and
36:51
tech not like thinking about how that has sort of shifted a little bit in the context of this year is there any other work for you that has
36:57
um you’re thinking about differently because we selected it all before the pandemic
37:03
yeah um
37:09
i guess i mean maybe morgan’s a little bit i think like
37:17
you know um there’s also this like huge explosion of
37:22
building happening now and you know like even like the the price of of
37:28
and demand for like all of our building materials has get just like gone through the roof and i
37:33
think so her kind of interest in um cheaper building materials i i think maybe i
37:41
kind of think of her as like a little bit different as well um
37:46
so i have a question here do you think that there is an edmonton
37:52
style or a general direction um in the work you see
37:58
um you stumped
38:11
i do think that there is definitely like an interest in connection to
38:18
a natural world um and i think that that’s that’s not coming out in all of the
38:24
artists but i think that it’s in a lot of artists practices um
38:30
that are in this show but but also you know that are just kind of working in edmonton and i think even you know
38:36
the amount of artists right now that are interested in plants or planting or
38:44
you know as we see with like emmanuel here backyards and back alleys and the river
38:49
valley and um and things like that so but if that’s a style i’m not i don’t
38:56
think so no um yeah one thing i mean this doesn’t have to do with style necessarily but we
39:03
asked quite a few of the artists or we asked all of them and some of them responded about sort of what the edmonton art scene was
39:10
to them and so many people just talked about the community um so the people and the resources
39:19
and the fact that we are you know sort of away from what we might consider more of the big
39:24
art centers and just how much community was important and i and a lot of the artists we chose are
39:29
really kind of important community leaders like april dean running snap or
39:35
kim has a a weaving space on the north side of the city um and so they have these art practices
39:41
but are also just so involved in furthering the arts in the city in other ways through teaching
39:47
and running spaces so again that’s not a style but just something that really came through
39:52
um in this show so um okay we have a question
40:00
um any advice for an early career artist or curator when it comes to navigating through the
40:05
current state of our environment um pandemic do you both have a new perspective
40:11
or new considerations of your curatorial practices that you will continue to consider moving forward
40:18
um i don’t know if this is going to be like a complete answer to your question but i i think
40:25
one of the things that um i was kind of
40:30
maybe surprised by in our like research phase of this exhibition was a lot of it um happened on
40:38
instagram uh and i think you know there is like probably once a
40:44
time where you needed a website as an artist to kind of be visible and and be seen um but
40:51
more and more i think you know and of course now that we’re in a pandemic that you can’t go to
40:56
museums or galleries that everything is also moving um online but yeah like i found that
41:03
you know a lot of even just like finding artists um
41:10
a lot of it did happen like on social media and in instagram in particular
41:17
yeah and i think right now in terms of curatorial practices
41:22
because things are still so unknown i think the sort of doing a lot of large international
41:28
things is more difficult right now and a lot more unknown so i think
41:33
um for me it’s it’s really unfortunate the gallery is closed because almost the
41:38
entire gallery is artists from the city and it really is showcasing how much amazing art we have so um i’m really excited for it to open
41:45
and i think that that is definitely something to consider
41:50
moving forward so um royden mills asked us did the artists
41:55
get to have time together discussing the work as a group and
42:01
so far not really we have done we have gotten together once digitally or
42:06
virtually um kind of as a meet-and-greet but um unfortunately all the things we would
42:12
have done such as an opening and other kind of public events haven’t been able to happen
42:18
um but it would be a really great conversation to hear more the artists and maybe some of the
42:24
connections that they didn’t think of before um yeah and i think that was one of one of
42:30
the things that i kind of appreciated that um in non-pandemic time
42:37
um that we normally we probably wouldn’t have done was like to just get together with just
42:42
the artist like danielle said we had a meet and greet that was online but it was just um just us so typically you know you
42:50
would have a public opening um and have everybody together but it was it was nice to kind of just
42:56
sit down for for a little bit with just the artists
43:02
um did any of these artists study
43:09
in the same place are they self-taught or schooled
43:14
yeah that’s the question well i think several studied at the u of
43:20
a um i’m trying to think of everyone’s biography
43:26
[Laughter] um
43:35
uh yeah i mean several would have studied at the u of a um emanuel right now is currently doing
43:41
his mfa in guelph so i think he’s actually the only artist who isn’t currently in edmonton
43:47
morgan oh yeah morgan i know morgan’s left us
43:52
um yeah so a lot of them would have studied together
43:58
um so you have a question from carolyn how do you curate a show um do you select a topic and then
44:05
artists submit and then you choose
44:11
so some shows are different than others so in this case
44:16
um we were wanting to just do a show about edmonton artists so there wasn’t a theme in mind um which
44:23
i think we kind of discussed and um so it was just about meeting with lots of people and of course we were
44:29
always meeting with local artists but um and then we
44:35
really in this case we really want to show a diverse array of practices so you know we have photo video
44:42
print sculpture painting installation um and then the themes kind of emerged
44:48
from the artists who were really interested in and some of the themes come together when we then placed the work
44:54
um but in this case it wasn’t uh it didn’t start out with a strong
44:59
kind of concept or theme um but yeah i think talk about other shows
45:04
maybe yeah i think every show is curated a little bit differently um
45:11
yeah like sometimes you would kind of start with a theme and then go from there um sometimes you know like with this one
45:18
you start with you know just a region or area where you’re wanting to draw artists from
45:24
or um just the artists themselves and and the theme sort of comes from them
45:32
um yeah i think we’re kind of approaching the end of our time
45:40
um danielle did you want to add anything more about
45:47
any of the artists in the show or um not really i mean i really want to
45:54
say congratulations to all of them i’m really excited about their practices
45:59
and really hope that people can see the show i think um we’ll be sharing
46:04
we all have all these installation shots now so i think a lot of this will be shared more so people can see them
46:10
um but yeah i don’t really have much more to add how about you um no yeah i just
46:17
also would like to congratulate everybody congratulations to you too danielle nice work
46:25
um yeah and so i guess with that we’ll just kind of wrap it up for the day um
46:33
thank you everybody for joining us um i just wanted to draw your attention
46:38
to to one thing we do have a survey um helen is gonna put the survey
46:44
in the chat um for us and if you you know want to offer us any
46:50
feedback um of our events um what more you’d like to see um
46:57
you know times of days days of the week that sort of work for you uh better or worse um you can all you
47:03
can put that in um that google doc um that helen has just put the link for there so please
47:09
if you have a few more minutes um to kind of offer us a little feedback to help us uh with future programs
47:17
and other than that um thanks everybody and enjoy your saturday
47:22
thank you
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