At both the undergraduate and graduate levels an intensive studio experience in a critical setting defines our program. We emphasize fine art practice rather than applied art or craft training. A visiting artist lecture series enriches our program.
Graduates become professional artists, curators, critics, as well as professionals in fields which require creative approaches and critical thought such as the film industry, computer animation, software design and industrial design.
Students exhibit and curate in the department's gallery as well as in self-initiated sites in downtown Victoria. In its senior-level courses, the program encourages multi-disciplinary and self-directed studies under the guidance of our professional faculty.
Be sure to check the visiting artists listings as we have many interesting events planned this spring.
Wednesday, February 10, 8pm
Visual Arts Building Room A 162
Laurie Freeman recently graduated with a BFA Honours from The University of Victoria in 2004 and continued on to Central Saint Martins School of Fine Art, Byam Shaw, graduating from the Postgraduate program in 2006. Since her graduate show, Freeman has been represented by The Empire Gallery in east London, England. Her primary work is sculptural, fusing mannequins and PVC plumbing elements to discuss ideas of the constructed environment, social and architectural, and the strive of perfected beauty while diverting the humours. Art historical eras, such as the 1960's New Figuration and Minimalist movements, inform Freeman's body of work.
Lynda Gammon Coordinator
Wednesday, February 24, 8pm
Visual Arts Building Room A 162
Based in Toronto, James Carl creates small- and large-scale sculpture, made from a wide range of materials, from cardboard to marble, to venetian blinds. Most recently, Carl constructed large-scale, amorphous sculptures by intricately weaving brightly coloured venetianblinds. Carl has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally. Most recently, the first major survey of his work, entitled do you know what, was presented at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery at the University of Toronto, the Cambridge Galleries Queen’s Square and the MacDonald Stewart Art Centre in Guelph. Other recent shows include: jalousie at Galerie Heinz-Martin Weigand in Karlsruhe, Germany; negative spaces at Florence Loewy in Paris; plot at Vancouver’s Contemporary Art Gallery, and bottom feeder at Mercer Union in Toronto. Carl earned his MFA from Rutgers University and has degrees from McGill, the University of Victoria and the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing. His work is in public and private collections across North America and Europe. Currently, Carl is an Associate Professor of Studio Art at the University of Guelph.
Lynda Gammon Coordinator
Wednesday, March 17, 8pm,
Visual Arts Building Room A 162
Bruce Ferguson is an independent curator and critic who has worked internationally for more than thirty years. Ferguson articulated and advocated the vision for Site Santa Fe which now has a successful 15 year history and has attracted other institutions to become the physical center of the city's cultural mission. With Future Arts Research at Arizona State University he has created a vision for an international arts research center which commissions works of art; creates dialogue across academic disciplines and between the university and the community; and extends the reach of the cultural dialogue to a broader public through symposia and artists' residencies. He served formerly as the Dean, School of Arts at Colombia University, as President and Executive Director of the New York Academy of Art, and is the founding Director and first biennial curator of SITE Santa Fe, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Ferguson has curated more than 35 exhibitions for institutions such as the Louisiana Museum in Copenhagen, the Barbican Art Gallery in London, the Winnipeg and Vancouver Art Galleries in Canada, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. He also organized exhibitions in the international biennales of Sao Paulo, Sydney, Venice, and Istanbul.
Lynda Gammon Coordinator
Wednesday, March 24, 8pm,
Visual Arts Building Room A 162
Jessica Wozny is a young German-born artist who has been living and working in Mexico for the last 13 years. She has exhibited extensively internationally, and throughout Mexico, most recently as part of Paréntesis: 17 años de trabajo, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca (MACO), and NOW. Transformation. Spaces at Casa de Lago in Mexico City. Upcoming exhibitions include Last Gasp First Flame at Deluge Contemporary Art in Canada in July of 2009 and a three woman exhibition Vol. III, with Maria Ezcurra and Mariana Gullco curated. by Mexican critic and curator Jessica Berlanga Taylor at Manuel Garcia Arte Contemporaneo in Oaxaca in August. With Luis Hampshire, she is the cofounder of Ediciones Plan B, a curatorial collective based in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Luis Hampshire is a Mexican artist, critic and curator based in Oaxaca. In 2003, with Jessica Wozny, he founded Ediciones Plan B, a not-for-profit artists space located on the periphery of the city with the mandate to investigate, promote, create and generate solo and group shows, as well as multiples and art 'zines, employing diverse strategies and mechanisms to generate a ongoing dialogue between Oaxaca, Mexico and the world at large. Over the past six years Hampshire has organised and curated more than 20 shows and art-based projects featuring artists from Oaxaca, Colombia, Canada, France, Chile, Switzerland, USA, Denmark, Argentina, Israel, Germany and Mexico. His exhibitions include Superpop, Rock You, This monkey goes to heaven, Playground Heroes, happypets, Tiempo Fuera, Hechizo, Sitiar and The Light is Better in Mexico. Hampshire has also taken his exhibitions from alternative spaces to institutions such as the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca (MACO) and the Centro Cultural Recoleta in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 2007, Hampshire was awarded a prestigious FONCA curatorial grant for his two-tiered project Revolver, comprising the exhibition Sonda and the artists' zine Idea. With Saul Hernandez , he runs the online project hechoenoaxaca.org and currently he is the Director of exhibitions and Special Projects for Manuel García Arte Contemporáneo in Oaxaca. Hampshire received support from the Canada Council Visiting Foreign Artists program to direct a residency in Victoria in March of 2010. With Deborah de Boer of Deluge Contemporary Art, he is the co-curator of the touring exhibition Dios Nunca Muere: the visual politics of transmutation in contemporary Oaxacan art.
Lynda Gammon Coordinator
Audain’s $2-million gift a boon to visual arts
Visual Arts students at the University of Victoria will benefit from a $2-million gift from BC art philanthropist Michael Audain and the Audain Foundation. The gift will establish the Audain Professorship in Contemporary Art Practice of the Pacific Northwest, bringing a distinguished practicing artist to teach in UVic’s Department of Visual Arts.
You can sign up for a workshop outside FIA#215 on the big bulletin board
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