On Second Thought

On Second Thought

The presentation of the work of thirteen students from the Fourth Year Studio Seminar course of 2012-13, from Western’s Visual Arts Department, is an occasion for a moment of pause regarding the enterprise of presenting art by emerging undergraduate artists in urban London. At ‘first thought’ we might say that such an undertaking is the most natural thing in the world for a group of artists to do: to make a show. ‘On second thought,’ is it necessarily so?

Walking through the streets of London, Ontario, just adjacent to the ARTS Project where this lively exhibition takes place, an ambler encounters a world seemingly familiar yet filled with contradiction and cacophony. Within the urbanscape of a medium sized city in Southern Ontario, one finds a visual field that speaks of an assumed bucolic past now faded, of an optimistic future yet unrealized, and of a present always in flux. Garish advertise-ments and half-torn down band posters, official city signage, and random graffiti tags weave together to fashion a jarring screen of ocular stimuli not always welcome as one moves through the city. One may wonder if alongside such aesthetic noise it is possible to locate contemporary artworks in-tended to carefully capture and hold a viewer’s attention, and even sometimes to encourage contemplation. Is there any need for more pictures here, more signs, more symbols? If so, what could be their role in the often-buzzing context of downtown London?

The history of avant-garde art in the twentieth century charts an agitated story of disruption and visual resistance. The works of Duchamp, Breton andSchwitters were meant to expose the urban social environment and its unfortunate character of mystification, and to compel citizens to see differently. That was a worthy and demanding role for art, one to which artists today are still accountable. And yet in a world such as ours, of so many capitalist excesses, and one so marked by environmental disturbances, can art’s role as a ‘disturber’ be as imperative it was in the nineteen tens and twenties? Do we need our new art to trouble us amidst so many other signs of trouble? At first thought perhaps the answer ought to be ‘no.’ And on second thought, could we not say that we need new art to be a presence that works against and with the signs in our times. So (on second thought), our answer should be, ‘yes and no.’

The works of the thirteen students from Western’s Fourth Year Studio Seminar course make an important contribution to the cultural landscape of downtown London. By turns subtle, emboldened, fearful, and optimistic, their projects present a canvas of perspectives that show these emerging Western undergraduates to be deeply engaged with their work, and with the world. As such their projects offer themselves as echoes, mirrors and also as refuges against the backdrop of their display; as opportunities for new insights within a world that seems old, and yet is always being made again.

Patrick MahonApril 2013

First Thoughts, Second Thoughts, Old Thoughts, New Thoughts

KAITLYN BIDAPersonal experience with Leukemia have altered Kait Bida’s life drastically.These experiences are reflected through her series of work created over the last year.

Bida’s artistic journey explores the idea of being isolated by a disease. Her interpretation of her treatments is represented through the emotional and physical pain inflicted on the body during chemotherapy. Her most recent series depicts a healing process after treatments have ended. The artist connects nature as a powerful healing tool to her hair growing longer in each work. This correlation identifies the relationship of human beings to the Earth and how they cannot survive without their natural environment. The artist extends herself into nature and breaks free of the clinical setting with a reclaimed sense of control and confidence. Through the subject matter of her paintings, a connection is created between nature and healing.

Kait Bida is a Sarnia-based artist graduating with an Honours Specialization in Visual Arts and a Minor in Psychology. She plans to obtain aMaster’s Degree in Art Therapy.

SAM BURGESSSam Burgess’s work explores the relationship between individuals and the materials they commonly interact with. -This interaction is defined by the connotations the materials carry and the typical uses of the products in which they create influence their purpose. Just as wood can allude to ideas of the organic fragility of natural resources, metal can associate a given object with the rigidness of post-industrialization. Some materials allow for abundant manipulations while others maintain a level of resistance from the viewer. Enigmatic Anatomy is a series of Cubist-inspired sculptures that present fragments of the human body as it exists in its most basic structure. Burgess’s series depend as much on the materials they are comprised of as they do on the interpretation and physical manipulation of those materials. This malleability functions to reconstruct the human form: translating it from an identifiable anatomy to an uncanny abstraction of geometric shapes that nod towards the biological through a filter created by the material.

By emphasizing the pliability of these human constructions, Burgess’s work calls forward the question of identity: how individual identity can be blurred and transformed and multiplied, and how this process has formed an intimate connection between the human identity and the endless structural interpretations of post-modern urbanities. As a combination between the biological and the technological, these sculptures present a cross between the fluid movements of the human body with the rigidness of modern materials. Enigmatic Anatomy establishes a mirror into the human mind as it orients around social discourses involving post-industrialized manufa-cturing.

Originally from Toronto, Ontario, Sam Burgess has an Honors Double Major in English Language and Literature and Visual Arts from Western University. She has recently been admitted into Western’s MA Journalism program with the hopes of continue her studies of art and writing. Sam’s sculptures explore the human as an incomplete subject.

EMILY DAVIDSONEmily Davidson is interested in modernization and the transformations it brings upon society. Modernism strives for perfection.Through modern times, the world has become very geometric and grid like. People are all part of a large number system and are recognized through their student numbers, drivers’ licenses, health cards and more.

Davidson works with the ideas of modernism through her photography and paintings, making her work interdisciplinary. She tends to work from personal photographs that are then abstracted through the use of fragmentation and geometric shapes. Davidson is interested in the transitional experience people witness in modernization and expresses this with the use of perfection through forms. Moving from a realistic image and slowly abstracting it allows the viewer to understand the idea that modernization and perfection is all encompassing.

Davidson’s paintings tend to consist of very hard lines that make up different shapes and appear as if she is sectioning the photo using colour. A key word in her work is transition: the viewer will understand that the photo is not realistic, but depicts a recognizable, everyday scene. The geometric shapes of the canvases mimic the shapes one will find in her paintings. The canvases themselves reference a visual puzzle for the way our modern world is being re-arranged.

Emily Davidson is an artist originally from Ancaster, Ontario. Now residing in London, Emily is currently completing her last year of an Honours Spe-cialization in Studio Arts program at Western University.

AMY KOVACAmy Kovac interprets the human mind as constantly processing thoughts, and it is through painting that the artist attempts to illustrate this compli-cated psychological journey. The images in Kovac’s work become fragmented narratives that develop during the painting process—memories and imaginations merge to create complex and unclear relationships. Seemingly mundane objects or figures become symbolic or emotionally charged. This fragmented visual language is used to express the fleeting quality of thoughts and tackle multiple ideas simultaneously.

Kovac is inspired by the stream of consciousness, particularly when used as a narrative device in literature. A story that would traditionally be orga-nized logically remains in its natural wild state, jumping from one thought to the next. Visualizing these narratives is often difficult, but through painting she hopes to show the beauty and value of uninhibited thought. Kovac’s title, Named After All Of Them, comes from the writing of William James who first coined the term ‘stream of consciousness’. In his work Principles of Psychology he wrote:

“We name our thoughts simply, each after its thing, as if each knew its own thing and nothing else. What each really knows is clearly the thing it is named for, with dimly perhaps a thousand other things. It ought to be named after all of them, but it never is.”

Amy Kovac is an artist from Beachville, Ontario. She is graduating with an Honours Specialization in Studio Art and a Minor in English. Amy plans to pursue teaching alongside her career as an artist.

SHEENA LACROIXSheena Lacroix’s work approaches objects in a new light by attempting to re-imagine their looks, their functionality and details. By taking an object and re-imagining it, not only are you creating fantastical possibilities but you are challenging the meaning of the item. Furthermore, the artist has always wondered why people grow attachments to objects. Giving names or personalities to items and emotionally attaching oneself to these objects that define their personas by continuously establishing sentimental value to items throughout their lives.

Home Sweet Home started through the process of requesting pictures of objects that held some sort of value to the individuals who owned them. Lacroix found this part of the project important because the objects she received not only had a cultural functionality but also a value given to them by an individual. Her job was to reclaim the object and re-imagine it. Therefore, Lacroix was challenging an aura of functionality and importance already placed upon the object by its owner.

The idea of illustrating these objects into imagined homes comes from the ideology of home also being an object whose whole essence revolves around the importance placed upon it. We can see this in quotes such as ‘home is where the heart is’. By illustrating these objects into homes the artist is placing more value on the object for the owner. At the same time Lacroix is also augmenting her own value to the item as an artist who has no original attachment to the object.

Sheena Lacroix is an artist originally from Sarnia, Ontario with an Honours BFA and a Minor in Women’s Studies from Western University. The artist’s work tends to come from concepts such as memory and the imagination, while other works are heavily influenced by her background in Women’s Studies. Home Sweet Home is a recent project developed around the concept of giving new meaning to individual’s valued objects through the pro-cess of illustrating them into houses.

LINDSAY LAURLindsay Laur’s current work is heavily influenced by music. Whether it is the use of song lyrics in a title, or inspiration from a music video, music has always been a huge part of the artist’s work. In recent pieces, Laur has been exploring the various aspects of rock and roll culture, specifically that found in small venue shows. This interest stems from her teenage years where she frequently attended all-ages rock shows in various small venues around London, Ontario, including Call the Office, The Salt Lounge, The Music Hall and Rum Runners. It was not only the show itself that interested Laur, she was always fascinated by the graffiti in the washrooms of these bars, especially in the grungier establishments. The concert posters, album covers and t-shirts available at the merchandise table also drew her attention. It is the artist’s intent to recreate the various aspects of the experience of these rock shows through a variety of mediums.

Laur’s current practice involves a variety of materials and styles. Inspired by Steven Shearer’s As A Boy, her lithography work involves psychedelic portraits of up and coming musicians that she has a personal connection with. The unknown identities of these individuals leave the viewer question-ing who they are, and why they are represented in art. Her oil paintings explore the light effects and movement of musicians during concerts. They are painted in such a way to allow the viewer to connect with their own experiences at concerts, through the use of ambiguous settings and subjects.

Born and raised in London, Ontario, Lindsay Laur is a 5th year student with a major in Classical studies and a Honors Specialization BFA in Studio Arts. Her artwork is heavily influenced by music, drawing inspiration from lyrics, music videos, and rock shows. Lindsay is specifically interested in the exploration of lighting and movement of musicians through the painting of blurred images.

ALEXANDRIA PETROPOULAKISAlexandria Petropoulakis’ practice investigates the point where contemplation turns into excessive rumination, relying on the examination of these prevalent reservations and cynicisms. Through installation and mixed media, Petropoulakis visually manifests uncontrollable cerebral spaces, inves-tigating the characteristics of each material and the relationship with their resulting form. From this, the artist carefully considers the narratives that may develop between certain figures and their situations. The artist’s most current constructions focus on mimicking the spirit of inescapable egos and thoughts while undermining their power. This is accomplished by realizing them physically in an unfamiliar domain and sharply interrupting their surrounding space. As such, Petropoulakis’ recent projects have been diverging from the representational to speak a more ethereal and transcen-dental language.

Further examination shows recurring themes of femininity and gender roles, along with issues of constructed persona and social identity. At the heart of these ideologies are taboos in which the artist wishes to expose and deconstruct. The core of Petropoulakis’ aims is to display the complexities of these hyperactive mental spaces, exploring the isolated intellectual realm and its blurred relationship with the somatic world.

Alexandria Petropoulakis is an emerging artist currently residing in London, Ontario while completing her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at Western University. Her work has been included in recent group shows such as Free Association and the Eleventh Annual Juried Exhibition at the ArtLab gallery. Petropoulakis is a major contributor to the fashion and lifestyle magazine VOLTA. She aims to further her studies in visual arts in the future.

EMMA PIPESBy researching dating rituals of the past and present, Emma Pipes compares shifts in gender customs as they have evolved into the 21st century. Dating rituals are always transforming and yet many of the expectations that were emphasized in the 1930‘s are still relatable today. Pipes’s work explores which gender holds the dominant role in a courtship setting during a specific time period. Her inspiration for this series is rooted in her grandmother’s experiences growing up in the 30s--Pipes’s goal is to show how the same patricarchal traditions followed in the early 20th century are still practiced today.

The series consists of eight paintings involving two characters from an etiquette book that is meant to teach young women how to appeal to men. The book consists primarily of rules about what a woman should not do in the presence of a man. For example, “don’t talk about clothes or try to describe your new gown to a man”, or, “please and flatter your date by talking about the things he wants to talk about.” It is clear that in the 30s, the man had the influence and power over what a woman was able to do.

Pipes creates a juxtaposition in her series by portraying the woman in a position of power over a more passive male character. To accompany her paintings, Pipes is recording herself reading the etiquette rules in order to contrast the humility of the man in her series with the strength of a woman’s voice. There is humour in unveiling gender stereotypes that are now seamlessly integrated into the process of dating.

Born in Lima, Peru, Emma Pipes came to Canada when she was adopted by her mother and raised in Guelph, Ontario. After growing up in a Cana-dian setting, she has been influenced by the stories of her grandparents and family. She is graduating from Western University from the Visual Arts program this year and will be studying post graduate studies in Toronto next year.

JAG RAINAAt the core of Jag Raina’s practice lie ideas of imaginative and haunting narratives buried deep within the illusion of a utopian existence. Through painting, drawing, and installation, Raina is interested in the process of creating alluring narratives that deal with issues of identity and exaggerated social stigmas concerning a South Asian Diaspora.

Raina seeks to create a striking juxtaposition of rudimentary and delicate gestures through these interdisciplinary means. This merging of the prim-itive and ethereal speaks to the longing he has to further unravel his figures as magnetic yet detached. He is also engrossed in a desperate need to unveil themes of possession, desire, and ennui, which are ubiquitous and recurring throughout his work. How these motifs manifest themselves through his narratives, and the complicated relationships they form are questions he strives to answer.

A flux of characters and lush backdrops inhabit Raina’s large-scale compositions. While some of his images derive from a canon of archival photo-graphs, others are fictional constructs. The incorporation of figures in Raina’s work is integral to every painting, allowing him to bring forth corporeal yet ghostly characters. These characters ensnare and seduce the viewer into being trapped within the work itself.

Raina has begun to collect discarded South Asian apparel and re-use it in his installation work, blending it in with his large-scale paintings and mixed media drawings. Through the use of adding this material and saturating it with his visual language, he seeks to further instill his work with a smooth and lucent aesthetic.

Jag Raina is an emerging artist and writer from Guelph, Ontario. Currently in his final year of undergraduate studies at Western University, Raina plans to complete an MFA and study costume design after graduation. He recently completed an Advanced Painting Intensive Program through Columbia University in Paris, France.

Rachel Read-Baxter’s work explores unique methods of paint application and how this process can create completely innate and inimitable forms. This technique is accomplished through a process of staining large sheets of cloth over Stonehenge paper or primed canvas, where the cloth is soaked with water and acrylic paint is laid thinly over top. The paint seeps through to the surface underneath, which leaves an imprint of the creases and curves of the sheet. As a result, this effect creates an image that explores concepts of space and dimension.

The forms Read-Baxter creates produce a space that is unrelated and external from the viewer’s perspective. The experience of the work is entirely visual and allows the viewers to have their own individual rapport with the piece. The work also touches on the subjects of beauty and ethereality. Baxter uses muddy greys and blacks juxtaposed with soft pastels that create an odd mixture of displeasing beauty. The forms that the sheet leaves on the surface have a delicate, ephemeral quality as if the surface is in constant movement, which contributes to the visual experience.

Rachel Read-Baxter is an emerging artist from London, Ontario. She is currently completing her undergraduate degree at the Western University.

RACHEL READ-BAXTER

Lately Stephanie Stehr has been experimenting with the practise of Automatism. She challenges herself by denying any sort of reference imagery. In addition, the artist has been working on wood panels—the absorbency of the material allows her to revisit the surface with paint multiple times. Since Stehr strives to paint through intuition, her process involves short intervals of intense painting with many breaks in-between. This allows her to continuously paint with a fresh set of eyes without getting stuck in a routine. Stehr is intrigued and influenced by the grain and pattern of the wood, constantly seeking to incorporate it in the overall design of the piece. The reoccurring result has been a series of paintings that work as mental landscapes, visually mapping out her state of mind at a certain moment in time.

Stephanie Diane Stehr is an artist originally from British Columbia and currently based out of London Ontario. She is in her final year working towards an Honors in Visual Arts and a Major in English Literature. After graduating she will be moving to Alberta to continue her practise from the west coast.

STEPHANIE STEHR

When Brenda Stonehouse considers the subject of the Canadian Landscape and Canadian art, things that come to her mind are; infinite forest, lakes, undisturbed wilderness, and the Group of Seven: all symbols of our northern identity. In Stonehouse’s work, she hopes to evoke symbols of being Canadian while at the same time confronting the tough issues of humanity’s negative influence on an otherwise untouched wilderness. Where some artists have combined beauty with violence or beauty with death, Stonehouse has combined beauty with waste. She has chosen to paint discarded objects; plastic bottles, glass or other objects that do not belong primarily in the woods, objects placed or discarded in the natural setting. The backdrop for this series has been appropriated from photographs taken during her canoe trips in the backcountry of Northern Ontario—hiking in her backyard or walking with friends along the banks of the Thames River and Medway Creek in London, Ontario. While on these outings, Stone-house encounters many species of flora and fauna living harmoniously and/or decaying to enrich the continuous growth of the natural forest. When she happens upon objects that do not belong, Stonehouse captures digital photos and brings the images back to her studio to further preserve those objects in her paintings.

Born and raised in Southwestern Ontario, Brenda Stonehouse recently graduated with a BFA from Western University. Brenda’s artistic practice has varied throughout the years from photography, to watercolour, acrylic and oil painting. Her interest in photography began while working with analog photography alongside her father in the darkroom and this curiosity developed into her present use of the digital camera. Brenda continues to use photography as a record keeping tool and to assist with her painting practice. She hopes to continue with painting, showing, and selling her work.

BRENDA STONEHOUSE

Lauren Wells views children as simple and spontaneous people. She elaborates on this sentiment by explaining that children learn from observing the world around them and translate this information uniquely from adults by their choice of communication. Play is the way children express their feelings and explore their identity. Therapeutically, play inspires curiosity, investigation, and intuitive behaviours. In relation to the philosophies of Bauhaus, Wells’s piece Composition Hum asks the viewer to consider the relationship between usefulness and beauty by combining art, craft, and technology. Using society’s technological obsession with touch and accessibility as a fulcrum, the piece challenges rules and uses of traditional insti-tutional spaces. Bright colours visually engage the viewer. Memory guides the internalized intuition to spot interactive elements. The viewer is given permission to think with their hands, opening up the questions of “what is it?” and “what can I do with it?” This process of exploration encourages “flow state:” a concept proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi from positive psychology. Flow (or absorption) is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement and, enjoyment in the process of the activity. Like an institutional space, play has rules. Can a designed experience for healing, creativity, and delight exist in an environment with a discourse of control, formality, and convention? Or does conformity to social norms disrupt flow, even when permission to deviate exists?

Lauren Wells is an artist currently based in her hometown of London, Ontario. She is graduating with an Honours Specialization in Visual Arts and a Major in Psychology. Lauren plans to continue her studies in art therapy and personal studio practice.

LAUREN WELLS

Well, it has been an active eight months. Thirteen individuals came together and under the guidance of an Artist/ Professor made art, went to a lot of exhibitions, established a working art blog, and organized two group shows. Individually the thirteen have varied art interests that are well repre-sented in the show as well as in the text, illustrations and artist statements included in this catalogue. They have worked hard to establish an amiable cohesive alliance based on mutual respect in order to fundraise for and to set up this show.

This cooperative of Samantha Burgess, Rachel Read-Baxter, Kait Bida, Emily Davidson, Amy Kovac, Sheena Lacroix, Lindsay Laur, Alexandria Pet-ropoulakis, Emma Pipes, Jag Raina, Stephanie Stehr, Brenda Stonehouse and Lauren Wells has bonded through field trips, critiques, and seminars in order to discuss their art and also contemporary art issues, primarily those focused on social or extreme sensibilities. Each one through their work and research has broadened the knowledge and experiences of the others.

In seminars and relevant discussion they and I, a collective we, have looked at art made from garbage, or from blood, watched a house arrested artist diss his oppressors while dancing gangnam style, watched another artist have their clothes cut off, seen another work as a sanitation consultant, and others wear animal masks to support gender equality. We have contemplated the work of an artist whose work is based on his experiences in a refugee camp, as well as pondered the work of another who engaged in sexual activities as part of a Museum Fundraiser. We have debated the work of someone who takes the drugs of their impoverished apartment building associates as a stimulus for producing commentary drawings. We have discussed art permanently installed under the sea, projected onto the side of a City Hall, seen a artist become a cyborg robot while simultaneously growing an extra ear, another have herself surgically implanted with devil horns and yet+ another eat and vomit paint onto canvases. We have learnt from artists who make work about aboriginal issues, transgendered identities, feminism, gay rights, ecology and the effects of colonialism, war, edu-cation and poverty, and hopefully developed stronger empathies.

Last Thoughts

As a unit or in smaller pods we have visited a multitude of museums and other types of art galleries. We have been to Museum London, the McIntosh Gallery, Michael Gibson Gallery, Forest City Gallery, and the ARTS Project. We drove to Hamilton on a snowy, windy day and visited the Art Gallery of Hamilton and the McMaster Museum of Art. Most of us spent a day in Toronto meandering through the Art Gallery of Ontario, watching clocks at the Power Plant, attending an award ceremony and opening at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, and roaming the streets while calling at a variety of Art Dealer Galleries.

Nine of us flew to New York where we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, and P.S. 1. On a sunny Friday we visited a prestigious design firm that showcased modern art and in the afternoon wandered the Chelsea art district, viewing a medley of exciting contemporary art. People went to the theatre, or went shopping, some danced the night away celebrating a birthday at a rave bar, and a number drank beer at likely the oldest surviving bar in New York. Most walked through Central Park and perhaps have a memory of Strawberry Fields forever. In reflection, over the year it is impossible to remember all that we have seen and contemplated, I don’t say the names of all the places we have been

or the titles of all the art works we have viewed not only because there are so many but also because it is more about what we have done and how it helps us think rather than titles and names. But we have our blog, and on it artists including Matisse, Philip Guston, Frida Kahlo, Ellsworth Kelly, Pavel Tchelitchew, Douglas Gordon, Ragnar Kjartansson, Keith Sonnier, Christian Vincent, Michael Snow, Kim Adams. Kelly Jazvac, Kelly Wood, Paulette Philips, Wyn Gelenyse, and John Hartman had their work posted and reviewed. As well there are many worthy others included, much more than can be cited.

I mention all of the above not only because it is a way of remembering but because I want to emphasize what a valuable period this has been, not only for the thirteen but me as well. They have engaged seeing and discussing art as an enriching experience intellectually and soulfully. They understand that an artist has to continue to educate themselves in order to stay relevant and constructively self- critical. It has been a good year, I’ve learnt from them and I’ve had fun. I wish them all great success in the future.

Kim Moodie

Text: all essays attributed to author, all artist’s text by artist Editors: Kasia Knap, Jag RainaDesign: Kasia Knap Photography: Jag Raina, Alexandria Petropoulakis Cover Design: Alexandria Petropoulakis

Copyright 2013 the artists, authors, and the publishers

Acknowledgments

The fourth year studio seminar class would like to thank Kim Moodie as the instructor for the course. A sincere thanks to Patrick Mahon for contributing an essay. The class would also like to extend their gratitude towards the staff at The ARTS Project.

Financial Support:Arts & Humanities Student Donation Fund USC Grant Fund