Approaching Stillness looks at the Summer Solstice as a kind of enveloping metaphor – the moment in time when the light is at its maximum, the day is at its longest and the apparent movement of the sun, north or south, comes to a standstill: sol (sun) sistere (to stand still).

This collaborative project by Vida Simon and Tedi Tafel explores the layering of installation, live projected drawing and gesture. Their process entails a combination of in-gallery residencies and studio research at punctuated moments in 2009 and 2010. Vida and Tedi began with a series of questions: could the performances be microcosmic events encapsulating the entire cycle of dark to light to dark, created by the tilting of the earth? How does this inquiry play into notions of expanding and collapsing time and space? And finally, what is the intersection of performative, everyday and ritual actions? These questions are used as points of departure for the artists as they play, research and articulate.

In June, the artists continue their exploration with more specific questions and concerns: How to create an event where the audience/performer relationship is mobile, so that as the performance plays out in different areas of the space (both indoors and outdoors) the public participates in a wide variety of ways? How can the space be a container for the accumulation of actions, and then be de-constructed to reveal the simplicity of a moment? What is the relationship between the preparation of a performance and the performance itself? How can both be essential parts of the public event? This final residency will consist of a private exploration in the space, leading to a durational performance for the Summer Solstice.

Vida Simon’s work incorporates drawing, writing, hand-made objects, sound, and gesture, often combined to create site-responsive installations and performances. Linking all aspects of her practice is a passion for drawing, a form that most directly expresses her interests in visual storytelling, materiality, and embodiment. She has presented her work in a wide range of contexts across Canada, and internationally – most recently in Chile and Lithuania.

Montreal artist Tedi Tafel has a background in film and dance. Her work takes place in non-traditional venues and looks at the expressive possibilities of the body when in direct contact with rural, urban and wilderness spaces. She is interested in the layers of experience that exist just beneath the surface of our habitual ways of moving about; how our interior world is inspired and transformed by the places we inhabit.

 Les définitions changent, les frontières bougent, les continents de l'esprit ne cessent de dériver. Comment fugitivement recomposer, relier, réarticuler ce monde fuyant et instable, mais formidablement vigoureux? Parce que l'incertitude et le doute sont autant de stimulants, le projet Springtemps invite à rebondir ailleurs et autrement. Les propositions des quatre artistes présentés s'inscrivent dans cette idée de changement, de renouveau.En plus des événements planifiés, articule se veut, pour toute la durée du projet, un lieu d'accueil, de production et d'échange ouvert aux initiatives spontanées. Cabinet de travail, matière à métamorphose, laboratoire de production, c’est le temps de partager des expériences, de débattre et d'inventer, ensemble. Chacun est invité à fêter ce printemps, toujours riche en rebondissements.

Noxious sector arts collective (canada)

jackson 2bears, ted hiebert, doug jarvis

Nigthmare Induction

Sam kinsley (halifax)

Christian Bujold, Les Murs

Summer Window Project

Documentation visuelle du projet

Documentation du projet Service 1 : Offrir des consultations afin d'aider des individus à déterminer quoi faire avec leur équipement électronique par l'Institut de l'Artéfact.

Documentation of Les Faussaires

Kristi Ropeleski (montréal) Blue Skies

Léa Jeanmougin (marseille/montréal)

Marie-Michelle Deschamps (glasgow/montréal), Karen Elaine Spencer (montréal) 

Je me souvenir - exposition des membres

Brigitte Schuster (montréal) 

After years of going to K-Mart every day after he finished working, it seemed appropriate for the old man to die there. It was in the jewelry section in the centre of the store, where his heart stopped beating for good. Ever since his dad died at 60 of a heart attack at K-Mart, he thought that he would/should die at the same age, in the same way and at an equivalent place, such as Walmart or maybe Zellers.

Set around the homes of her parents in Mission BC, Sherry Walchuk’s work is extremely personal and deeply rooted in the desire to draw, paint and build stories. Out of the vernacular and the banal, Walchuk’s work tells stories that precariously take shape through bricolage and acts of trying. The exhibition For my Dad is dedicated to her father, for his upcoming 60th birthday. Inspired by the desire for and the attempt toward change, Walchuk creates a healing space, a warm space, a space of possibility and a space for the future as a gift to her dad for his potential impending death.

Working from memory and imagination, the cardboard spaces that she creates evoke sites of suburban leisure activity. Situated in the yard and outside of the home, where the rules loosen, these spaces become characters in Walchuk’s world. Ultimately, the humanity in these objects allows us to find humour in our own fumbling attempts to move through the world. It forces us to deal with and to be present in the insecurity of being and doing. The point is to make vulnerable, and to give pleasure.

Sherry Walchuk lives and works in Mission BC, and in Montreal QC, where she recently completed her MFA in Painting/Drawing at Concordia University.