articule’s annual Members’ Show will be on view from December 14th until January 7th in the centre’s vitrine. Show-Off brings together posters and promotional material from past exhibitions of articule’s members. Taking inspiration from the idea of self-directed management, the show is framed as an opportunity to foreground the activities of the member-artists who sustain the centre in addition to their own art practices. The exhibition site (the vitrine) reflects the nature of the works—advertising and promotional materials, elements designed to invite curiosity—partitioned as they are behind glass. The collective installation mirrors the street, where posters abound. Though the information these materials provide is obsolete, they gain new life as historical documents, and together form a mosaic or network of artists active in Montreal today.

 

Participating artists:
America Blasco

Samuel Garrigó Meza

Graham Hall
Edwin Janzen
Julie Laurin
Denis Lessard

Véronique Lévesque-Pelletier
Natalie Olanick
Katerina Pansera
morgan sea
Matthew Thomson

 

America Blasco is a lens-based artist whose practice includes photography, video and installation. Largely, through the use of textile and sculptural elements, she describes visually revealing aspects of human experiences in relation to psychological states, relating to larger themes concerning mythology and identity.

 

Samuel Garrigó Meza is a writer and multidisciplinary artist. His work examines methods of deploying and reconstructing text and voice, often using discomfort and awkwardness as means of communication and aesthetic goals. His installations, writing, and performances have recently appeared at the 50/50 Gallery, Glenbow Museum, MS:T Festival, Art Matters Festival, the Capilano Review, and the anthology Best Canadian Poetry in English 2012. He has a BA in Philosophy and resides in Montréal.

 

Graham Hall lives and works in Montreal. He is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design (Drawing and Painting, 2000), and of OCAD's off-campus programme in Florence, Italy (2001). While often figurative in nature, Hall's work has more recently shown an increasing interest in abstraction. Graham has been an active member of articule since 2003.

 

Winnipeg-born artist Edwin Janzen works in diverse media to create fantasies of security, surveillance and technology inspired by the Cold War. Drawing upon the period’s political and popular culture, his work appropriates the Cold War themes and styles, narratives and traditions to investigate how human character and knowledge are shaped in a climate of suspicion and a dearth of reliable information. Edwin completed his MFA at the University of Ottawa (2010). He also holds a BFA from Concordia University (2008) and BA in history (Byzantine Empire) from the University of Manitoba (1993). Edwin serves on articule’s board of directors.

 

Julie Laurin is a multidisciplinary artist based in Montreal. She grew up in a Montreal suburb, which is the starting point of her artistic approach. The specific design associated with such neighbourhood is translated in her work by the use of furniture and housing objects as sculptural material. Her performative works emerge from the relationship between her body and large objects she transforms into giant movables. She gratuated in 2011 from Concordia University in Fine Arts, with a Major in Sculpture and did an artist residency in Spain in summer 2012. Her work has been exhibited in Canada and Spain.

 

Denis Lessard lives and works in Montreal. Since 1982, he has presented his performances and visual works in Canada, the United States, France and the Netherlands. He has an art history master's degree and a certificate in archival science (Université de Montréal, 1985 and 2010). He also works as an art critic, translator and archivist for cultural organizations. Through his interdisciplinary practice, he adresses issues about collecting, male identity, spirituality and the relationship between literature, music and the visual arts. He has participated in a number of residencies in Canada and the Netherlands since 1987, developing themes of memory, history and communities in relation to the cities and places he explores. www.denislessard.ca

 

Véronique Lévesque-Pelletier was born in Rimouski in 1984 and lives in Montreal since 2003. She studied visual arts at UQAM. Her current practice of drawing involves careful and precisely rendered superpositions of elements, a form close to collage that she uses as a language to reveal new relations between the elements on which she draws her attention. Current General Manager for RAIQ, she showed her work at Galerie SAS for the Nuit Blanche, at the Centre d’art Amherst (“Complot / pathologie(s)”) and at l’Art Passe à L’Est (“États Limites”).

 

Natalie Olanick is an artist, writer and part-time curator. She teaches at Dawson College and is on the board of articule in Montreal. She has shown her work in various galleries and museums in Canada and the United States. Recently, she curated an exhibition of Francoise Sullivan at Womens’ Art Resource Center in Toronto (2010). This event was in partnership with the Art Gallery of Ontario. In November 2011, for Sortons les archive at Skol, she did a raid and came up with a diverse selection of works.

 

Katerina Pansera is an artist based in Montréal who mostly paints. She recently completed a BFA in Studio Arts at Concordia University. Through her work she explores notions of spectacle and setting. She is particularly interested in the state of contemporary painting and can be heard on the airwaves of CKUT 90.3 FM talking shop.

 

Morgan Sea is a transsexual artist, living and loving in Montreal. Her performance, video, and storytelling practice often blends fantasy and queer theory to create trans feminist mythologies. Sea graduated from Inter-Media Cyber Arts at Concordia University, after studying media art at Alberta College of Art + Design, and ‘pataphysics' in her bedroom. Alongside her artistic practice, Sea is an active vlogger in the Youtube Trans*community and produces a monthly radio program, Tranzister Radio, that celebrates trans cultural production. By using any accessible technology and a hearty ‘do it yourself’ work ethic, Sea hopes to encourage a more tangible and flexible culture for trans*people everywhere. www.morgansea.com

 

Matthew Thomson completed his MFA in Print Media at Concordia University in 2013. His multidisciplinary work, which engages recycling and everyday living in the modern city, has been exhibited at multiple venues in Québec and also in Ontario. Matthew was curator of the Mouse Print Gallery in 2012-2013, where he worked with students and teachers from Concordia University to create unconventional and collaboration-based exhibitions. He currently teaches Printmaking at the Visual Arts Center in Montréal.