The Next Chapter

Category: arts 76

Connexion ARC conclude Fredericton Playhouse exhibition series with the work of two established Canadian artists.

grid city magazine - connexion“In order to focus our energies on new programming initiatives, including curated video art screenings, a group thematic residency and the presentation of new performance artworks, Connexion ARC will not continue programming the galleries at The Fredericton Playhouse,” said Sophia Bartholomew, associate director of Connexion ARC, announcing the end of the Centre’s current working relationship with The Fredericton Playhouse.

“We’ve had a very fruitful partnership with The Fredericton Playhouse for the last two years,” she said.  “With support from The Playhouse and from The Province of New Brunswick, we have been able to mount an exhibition series which paired new projects by New Brunswick based artists with projects by artists based outside of the province, whose work shared similar material or thematic concerns.”

The partnership between Connexion ARC and the Fredericton Playhouse allowed the city’s only artist-run-centre to reach a broader, more diverse audience – a valuable opportunity to introduce the city to “a dynamic community of people dedicated to contemporary art, and to emerging and experimental artists and ideas”, in the two years following the Centre’s re-branding from its former life as Gallery Connexion.

“Use of the space at The Playhouse also allowed us to present a number of community-minded exhibitions, including Connexion ARC members’ exhibitions, exhibitions by NBCCD students and a recent exhibition by Fredericton-based collective Shiftwork.”

While the Centre’s exhibits at The Fredericton Playhouse focused largely on work by emerging artists, the series will conclude with the two exhibitions by two established Canadian artists: The Floating Archipelago by Marina Roy (Vancouver), and On the idea of Wilderness, by Janice Wright Cheney (New Brunswick).

The Floating Archipelago

IMAGE: Marina Roy, The Floating Archipelago (video still) (2015)
IMAGE: Marina Roy, The Floating Archipelago (video still) (2015)

In a new animation work for Connexion ARC, Marina Roy imagines a sci-fi feminist utopia, where ‘Nature’ takes on a supernatural nature, and sets us adrift into the dreamworld of The Floating Archipelago – stretching what we know to be true or possible in our relations with the natural world.

Coming out of a time spent immersed in animal studies and biopolitics research, here the artist returns to the feminist texts central to her earlier work. The Floating Archipelago borrows materially from craft practices and from the bold cut paper style made famous by Matisse, late in his career. With the vinyl-acrylic collage works that structure the video animation installed alongside the animation itself, the work begins to reveal its processes of production.

Marina Roy is a contemporary artist based in Vancouver whose practice examines the various conditions and conditioning of lived-bodily relations, making use of painting, drawing, performance, animation, and collaboration, among other tools. The publication of her new book project, Queuejumping, is forthcoming.

On the idea of Wilderness

IMAGE: Janice Wright Cheney, On the idea of Wilderness. (detail) (2015)
IMAGE: Janice Wright Cheney, On the idea of Wilderness. (detail) (2015)

With reference to early photographic history, when long exposure times demanded that wildlife photographs make use of taxidermy animals, and in relation to the contemporary ecological concept of ‘re-wilding,’

Janice Wright Cheney’s new photographic work for Connexion ARC addresses cultural attachments to the idea of Wilderness, to the known and the unknown, and places the semi-mythological Eastern cougar somewhere between a Romantic longing for wilderness and an inconvenient truth quietly dismissed by government and industry.

She is a contemporary artist based in Fredericton whose practice examines the cultural baggage of natural history and domestic labour. Her work makes use of craft and textile techniques and histories, extending into sculpture, photography and site-specific installation.

With reference to photographic history – when in the late nineteenth century long exposure times demanded that ‘wildlife photographs’ make use of taxidermy animals – an contemporary notions of ‘re-wilding,’ “On the idea of Wilderness.” –

Connexion ARC invites the public to join them for a mid-exhibition reception on Friday, July 3, from 5 – 6:30 PM at The Fredericton Playhouse.

 

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