centre d'artistes.artist run centre
collaborative exhibition and intervention project
May 13 – June 12
Opening reception : May 13, 7pm
Discussion : Landscape, Geography and Feminism : May 15, 3pm
Closing performance/lecture by karen elaine spencer : June 12, 3pm
Text by Graham Hall click here
Listen to the artists talk
Read daily about karen elaine spencer night interventions at:
http://meetinginthesamehand.wordpress.com/
dear marie-michelle,
thank you. thank you for allowing me to enter your world. for accepting the movement of my body over the threshold into this landscape constructed by you. here, i will be alone, enclosed in a private scene, the gallery not-yet-open to the public. i imagine myself sitting on the floor, my back resting against the wall, my eyes closed. from this private enclosed space i will transit to an exterior location, a publicly visible location. i am not sure where…maybe a park, or the steps of a church, or the intersection of an alley. as i move between these two landscapes i wonder — if the fingers of my right hand lightly brush the palm of my left hand…will my skin feel different, more sensitive, more open to touch in one of the two locations?
sincerely,
karen elaine
karen elaine spencer situates her artistic research within the social and spatial geographies of the urban environment. she is concerned with issues of social justice and the effects of capitalism on human relations. spencer attempts to open, or slip through, overlooked or normalized structures of control, privileging a low impact (often invisible or “furtive”) production. text and common, mass-produced materials (oranges, cardboard, postcards, bread) are employed in a durational process. a low-cost, lightweight and quickly transmitted dissemination strategy allows spencer to deviate from traditional gallery structures. recent platforms include: street-level signage such as chalk on pavement and paint on cardboard, postcards, letters, newspapers, twitter, youtube, myspace and blogs. spencer pursues her practice in montréal, québec.
Born in 1980 in Montreal, Marie-Michelle Deschamps currently lives in Glasgow, United Kingdom, where she is currently a MFA candidate at the Glasgow School of Art. Her practice, marked by her continuing obsession with books as objects and texts, is rooted in language-- specifically miscommunication, slips, puns and plays with opposite and similar meanings of verbal and visual images. In her encounters with day-to-day use of words, she playfully recomposes, rearranges and appropriates visual and sound elements in an attempt to free them from their original way of signifying, bringing them beyond their linguistic connotations. Through techniques of assemblage, simulation and quotation, she transforms everyday objects through humorous poetics and inverts preconceptions so we see anew.
Her work has been exhibited in Canada, France and the United Kingdom. Recent exhibitions include Eaux Vives, Carentan, France, Labouring the Land, FOFA Gallery, Montreal and Figures, XPACE, Toronto.
The questions that Patricia Martin poses through the research that she conducts center on three central yet broad themes. The first theme concerns the uneven nature of international development. Here, she is particularly interested in understanding how successive rounds of capitalist expansion and restructuring (from the era of colonial expansion to the period of contemporary globalization) deeply influence the making and un-making of places. The second theme that traverses her research addresses the issues of power and politics. Drawing on feminist philosophies of power, she recognizes that politics is in play in multiple arenas, from the household, to public space, to formal interactions with the state. Power and politics can take on, furthermore, a variety of forms, from direct violence to the practices of solidarity, cooperation and participation. In her writing, she often discusses these dynamics in relationship to struggles over citizenship. The third major theme that cuts across her research is concerned with social identity and subjectivity. Here, she is interested in how social categories, such as gender, race and ethnicity, intersect with the social construction of space. She is also interested in understanding how people interpret and understand their place in the world, particularly in the face of economic, social and political change. The majority of her research has taken place in Mexico, reflecting a longstanding personal and professional interest in and commitment to that county.
Patricia Martin was born in Mexico, raised in the United States, and have been living in Québec for more than 5 years; She is current an Assistant Professor in Geography at the Université de Montréal.