Exhibitions 2006

2006 Juried Exhibition
October 14 -- December 14, 2006Glenhyrst Art Gallery’s juried exhibition is an opportunity for emerging and mature Ontario artists in all media to present their work to the public. Selection of the work was by jurors; Catherine Elliot Shaw, Curator of the McIntosh Gallery at the University of Western, London and Martin Pearce, artist and instructor at the Universities of Guelph and Toronto, whose own work was exhibited at Glenhyrst this past year.This contemporary exhibition demonstrates knowledge of materials, a relationship to the subject of the work, and a willingness to experiment. The artists include: C. Audit, R.Baecher, B.Bald, M.Batte, O.Bumstead, C.Couse, K.Crowder, B.Emard-Haskett, N.Farrell, J.Horgan, H.Horton, R.Kearns, M.Kelk, J.Kipfer, R.Krupka, P.La Porte, C.Lee, S.Martin, M. Murphy, H.Pravda, P.Roorda, H.Saunders, S.Simpson, S.Thompson, C.Vieira, L.Wisebrod.

Congratulations to Margie Kelk for winning the Juror’s Choice Award for her work “Datong”, Mary-Anne Murphy, “Reminisce” and Paul Roorda, “Keep” for winning Awards of Merit and Lorne Wisebrod,“Friday Night” and Heather Saunders, “Untitled (pink with ribbon)” for winning the Honourable Mention Awards. Also, congratulations to Sandra Martin for winning our first People’s Choice Award for her work, “Fractured Memory #1” (photo at right). The gallery thanks the sponsor, Brian Stephen of ScotiaMcLeod and all visitors who voted in this new award category.

HEAVY METAL: SCULPTURE IN STEEL AND STONE BY MARIANNE REIM
August 5 -- October 8, 2006
Reception: Sunday, September 10, 2006Working with stone and metal is a challenging process that includes drilling, welding, burning and cutting. Marianne Reim takes on this challenge to articulate her ideas in the form of interactive steel books. The books area numbered series each entitled, Das Buch. The information on the pages uses Reim’s personal interpretations of her own history and concerns, and humankind’s fragility, strengths, and spirituality as a catalyst to present a variety of interpretive readings, in unfamiliar language. Not only using international languages, her books are mysteriously masked by coded message in Morse Code, Roman numerals, and Ascii; the language of the computer. An aura of mystery and wizardry is palpable as one turns the weighty steel pages of these constructed books.Reim also ventures into other combinations of materials, such as photo transfers, imbedded wax and glass that over time takes on the patina of the metal. In the work, Hearing the Song, she drilled into large slabs of stone to break it into two pieces. The drilling created tunnel marks that represent the musical staff that she then implanted into wedges of steel. This work will be mounted outside in Glenhyrst’s gardens for the duration of the exhibition.

Marianne Reims lives in Beamsville, Ontario. She received a B.A. in Art and Art History from McMaster University and has been an artist in residence in Japan, Yugoslavia, Italy, and British Columbia. She participated in International Sculpture symposiums in Vietnam and China where she has built her work on site without the convenience of heavy machinery, sharing her knowledge of process with other artists. Reim searches for the education that she needs to pursue her art form. She has had the opportunity to show her work, worldwide in Germany, Italy, England, Scotland, Holland, Yugoslavia, Japan, Vietnam, China, United States, and Canada. For 2007 she is making plans to create work in Korea.

Marianne Reim gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council.

Artist Lecture with MARIANNE REIM
Wednesday, September 27, 7:00 p.m.In 2004 and 2005 Marianne was invited to China and Vietnam to participate in an international sculpture symposium, where she completed large scale outdoor sculptures; a 5m tall steel sculpture in China “PLASTIC DEFORMATION” and “ASCII”, a 2.5m x 2.5m stone sculpture in Vietnam. Marianne will discuss her experience with making work on site without using large machinery. She welcomes discussion following the lecture.

BLACK AND WHITE:
CATHERINE GIBBON, PETER KIRKLAND, ADAM LODZINSKI, MARCIA PRACZ
May 27 -- July 30, 2006
Reception: Sunday, June 4, 2006 2:00 p.m. -- 4:00 p.m.
The strength of imagery in black and white is the bond between the artists in this exhibition. With black and white, the concentration falls to line and form, hue and saturation.

Catherine Gibbon and Peter Kirkland are involved with the simplicity and power of the line as a creative form to express emotion and content.

Catherine Gibbon is interested in metamorphosis and life cycles. Her charcoal drawings reflect the power of nature and her concern for its survival. Her earlier work has dealt with chalk pastel in
brilliant colour to contain imagery of fire and its positive and debilitating affect on the environment. Gibbon looks for new pathways of understanding, healing and growing. Her drawings in this show are large and formidable reflecting her awe of nature, its elements, its impact and correlation with humanity.

Peter Kirkland’s non-representational work presents the form and flow of ideas of anatomical and botanical internal structure. He works in charcoal, rubbing and incorporating the fibre of the paper, as part textural, part imagery. Overlaying and erasing are part of the physical process. Both familiar and unfamiliar, emotional and mysterious, the forms are grounded within a floating surface. Energy, through strong lines comes alive, pulls out from the sketch, intermingles, and forms shapes. His personal forceful language opens the viewers to their own impressions and interpretations.

Looking to address non-representational art through the media of photography, Adam Lodzinski, shoots multiple exposures from a variety of angles of paper constructions. Using laser processing he enlarges the image to enhance the sense of landscape and mood while still pursuing the possibilities of abstraction. Other experimentation with media includes airbrushing chemical developer on paper with heat for effects of shade and form. Shapes float, shift and peer through, creating dramatic subtleties.

Maria Pracz photographs organic forms that generate the feeling of weightlessness. Photographing the unassuming weed in black and white transforms these organic shapes into a ballet of tone. Her enlargement of the photographs allows for the observation of detail, perhaps not known to the naked eye and therefore presents the viewer with information about our natural world. This combination of documentation and drama unveils the beauty that lies in humble imagery.

Artist Lecture with Adam Lodzinski
Wednesday, June 14, 7:00 p.m.“What can photography add to abstraction that painting has not already addressed?” Adam Lodzinski will discuss the relevance of abstraction within the photographic medium. In an open talk, he will also compare and contrast technical processes artists are using including laser and chromogenic prints. Everyone welcome!

WHERE THERE'S SPACE: Martin Pearce and Jesse Stewart
March 18 -- May 21, 2006
Reception: Sunday, March 26, 2:00 -- 4:00 p.m.
Artist Performance with Jesse Stewart: Sunday, March 26 at 3:00 p.m.
Artist Talk with Martin Pearce: Wednesday, April 19 at 7:00 p.m.Martin Pearce has been observing and painting circumstances of the weather and the light, creating worlds of frantic brush strokes and scratched colour. Through the process of breaking down an image his work has been aggressive and illusive.

Since I visited his studio, Pearce has been awarded an Ontario Arts Council, mid-career grant that has allowed him to focus exclusively on his work for an eight-month period. His format has become larger, and along with his earlier work, it is the fruits of this period that will be on exhibit at Glenhyrst. He still includes cold and hot wax to his paint that acts as a medium for his oils and creates texture. Now his work includes the new component of rectangular shapes that infuse the canvas. They remind one of buildings, projecting concepts of control and a sense of community to his work. He still breaks down the imagery by laying down colour and then removing it. Now the combination of recognizable form and decomposition are a direct enquiry into uncovering what lies beneath the surface, the formation of the earth, and the powers that form it.

Martin Pearce was born in England and studied art there, culminating in an MA from the Royal College of Art in London. Along with his own discipline of painting, he is also a painting instructor at the Universities of Guelph and Toronto.

Jesse Stewart pulls his work from the multiple disciplines of Music, Art, Literature and Theatre that he has studied. As a result, installation art becomes a natural choice of medium for Stewart. With an idea to explore the cycle of nature and the way that its elements affect each other, he begins with an installation work that speaks about the element of water. Waterworks, is comprised of a large curved water bowl with a cone suspended above it. A released valve allows droplets of water to slip through the cone and to strike the surface of the water bowl casting a wave pattern against the walls when projected with light. A meditative, mandala pattern results through this drawing in light, from shadow. This space is set-up to reflect on the passage of time and the impermanence of form.

In a second gallery, a video installation depicts the artist on film with a water-filled shell. The contrast of this image with an actual shell, set up in the gallery space, creates a connection or dysfunction between reality and technology. The thread between the two works is in the comparison between audio and visual waves. Stewart received a BA from the University of Guelph in Music and Art, an MA in music from York University and has returned to Guelph as a PhD candidate in Literary and Theatre Studies. Jesse Stewart has written musical compositions to include experimental percussion instruments.

PORTRAITS OF SOCIETY:
Paintings by Wynne Paquette & Shannon Reynolds & Portraits from the permanent collection
January 7 -- March 12, 2006
Reception: Sunday, January 29, 2006, 2:00 -- 4:00 p.m.
Lecture: Wednesday, February 22, 2006 at 7:00 p.m.Portraiture has an illustrious history of stylistic and interpretive changes. Where once the artist was in the employment of a benefactor, called on to interpret a likeness of the sitter, the artist has since grown into a creative interpreter of society. This exhibition compares and contrasts contemporary approaches to portraiture by Shannon Reynolds and Wynne Paquette with works from the Permanent Collection that will include oil portraits from the mid 19th Century and 20th Century works on paper. Shannon Reynolds sets up two kinds of dialogue in two separate series of paintings. For Suspect Profiles, Reynolds solicits volunteers to pose as criminals against a measured backdrop that indicates the prospective criminal’s height, akin to a police line-up. These works address subtle forms of discrimination, racial profiling, and fears in general. In Dramatis Personae, acting as artistic director, she casts characters in the poses of archetypes such as The Coquette or The Dandy. She allows her models an interpretive leeway in their costumes, makeup and characterization. Drawing from her background in literature and to dramatize theatrical imagery, she includes literary text that lingers just below the surface of the painting. The result is an imposing interaction between model, artist, and ultimately the viewer.

Wynne Paquette paints large female figures, up-close, drawn from life models and concentrating on sculptural shapes. Often in foreshortened composition, the viewer is above looking down on the figure. There is not a feeling of superiority on the part of the viewer; on the contrary, the viewer enters a world of form and energy. Brilliant colours on nude skin tones create a combination of power and sensuality. Paquette paints large oil canvases of defiant women who simultaneously expose and challenge themselves to the viewer.

To create a forum comparing stylistic changes that reflect on changing attitudes within society, the paintings by Shannon Reynolds of Kitchener and Wynne Paquette of Guelph, are accompanied by works from the Permanent Collection. These include portraits of former Brantford residents, painted in the mid 1850’s by Brantford artist, Robert Reginald Whale and portraits from the 1970’s collected through the Art Gallery of Brant. Artist Lecture with Shannon Reynolds. ARTIST LECTURE WITH SHANNON REYNOLDS: Wednesday, February 22, 2006 at 7:00 p.m. Shannon Reynolds will discuss her unconventional approach to the model and her interpretive use of painting and portraiture to reflect on society.