Summer Arts Series showcases arts technology

by | May 12, 2023 | Alumni, Art History & Visual Studies, Events, School of Music, Visual Arts

Looking to expand your artistic repertoire with new skills and practices? Fine Arts is once again partnering with UVic’s Division of Continuing Studies and Alumni Relations for our second annual Summer Arts Series.

This year’s series, running in July 2023, will focus on workshops and lectures centred on the theme of arts and technology.

Learners of all backgrounds will experience how current professional artists use technology with workshops that include exploring the possibilities of projection in installation art, coding electronic music with Sonic Pi and an interactive introduction to beatboxing and live-looping technology. A special lecture on digital tools in contemporary painting will round out our series.

Each session will provide opportunities to learn practical skills for transforming fine arts knowledge into career opportunities while also engaging with celebrated UVic alumni who are successful in their chosen career.

Sonic Pi: Coding Electronic Music

School of Music alum Marco Neri Garcia will walk you through Sonic Pi, an alternative and versatile computer application for creating and exploring sound. This largely intuitive tool employs simple computer code to create musical works.

1-4pm Tuesday, July 4 (face-to-face), $60

Beatboxing, Live Looping & Vocal Triggering

School of Music alum Matthew Haussmann is offering this fun, interactive and informative introduction to the art form and culture of beatboxing and live-looping technology. Beatboxing is for everyone and anyone with a tongue, lips and lungs can do it!

6-9pm Tuesday, July 4 (face-to-face), $60

Room Without a Trace: Projection Possibilities & Installation Art

What are the possibilities of projection art? Can a room be filled without leaving a trace? Visual Arts MFA alum and current instructor Leanne Olson explores how, in a time of materials and waste considerations, projection art offers a way to create an immersive space.

10am-5pm Wed-Thurs, July 5-6 (face-to-face), $195

Digital Tools & Contemporary Painting

Visual Arts MFA alum and current instructor Todd Lambeth will help you discover how digital tools are used in contemporary painting, and how a world mediated by images has changed the way we think about the painting medium.

7-8pm Wednesday, July 5 (face-to-face), $15

Be sure to visit the Summer Arts Series homepage for full details & registration info

Call for submissions: 3rd annual Student Impact Awards!

by | Apr 18, 2023 | Art History & Visual Studies, Award, News, School of Music, Theatre, Undergraduate, Visual Arts, Writing

Are you a current or graduating Fine Arts student who’s been involved with some community-engaged creative activity in Greater Victoria between January 1/22 & May 31/23? If so, you could qualify for $1,000 via our annual Community Impact Award!

The Fine Arts Student Community Impact Awards will be awarded in Fall 2023 to undergraduate students who have demonstrated an outstanding effort in a community-engaged creative activity in Greater Victoria. Qualifying students are eligible to receive $1,000 for creative projects that went over & above their academic studies.

Since 2021, we have awarded $5,000 to 5 different students! (Read about our 2022 winners here and our 2021 winners here.) “In the arts, we put a lot of ourselves into our work because we love it,” says 2022 award recipient and School of Music student Isolde Roberts-Welby. “This award means that I can spend less time at work and more time pursuing opportunities and projects that are deeply fulfilling.”

Your activity may include — but is not limited to — any exhibit, performance, workshop, publication, curatorial, educational, digital, production and/or administrative role within the regional boundaries of Greater Victoria (Sidney to Sooke).

A completed submission package — including the submission form and all supporting materials — must be received by 5pm Wednesday, May 31, 2023.

Full application details can be found here: https://finearts.uvic.ca/forms/award/

Questions? Contact fineartsawards@uvic.ca

Annual BFA exhibition sees students developing their professional practice

by | Apr 10, 2023 | Events, Undergraduate, Visual Arts

While April sees most of campus focusing on final exams, graduating visual arts students are getting in one final taste of professional practice as they organize, curate, install and promote the annual BFA exhibit. Titled Don’t Need to Know to Feel It, this year’s show will feature 100 pieces by 23 emerging artists, showcasing their work in sculpture, performance, installation, painting, drawing, animation and digital media. With a gala opening starting at 7pm Saturday, April 15, and the exhibit running daily to April 23 in in 13 different exhibition spaces throughout the Visual Arts Building, there’s plenty of opportunity to see the work on display.

“Don’t Need to Know to Feel It is a reminder that what we do as artists isn’t just for us, but for the whole world,” says graduating student and curation co-chair Stella McCaig. “Understanding beauty, magnificence and joy is not something you can learn, and therefore you need not know anything to feel it.”

Stella McCaig “Cars and Girls” (2023, installation shot)

A good example of that is graduating artist Jasper Pettman. A Two-Spirit/trans artist from Secwepemcúl’ecw (100 Mile House) and a member of Cowessess First Nation, Pettman’s practice explores personal conceptualization of identity as it relates to the physical realities of the body.

“I use acrylics and unstretched canvas to depict bodies in motion and transformation, often mirroring sensations I experience within my own body and experience as a Two-Spirit and trans artist,” he explains. “I also engage with similar ideas when I work with digital media, such as 3D modelling software and web coding, with extra emphasis on text and Indigenous language.”

Among Pettman’s work in the exhibit will be his Tumblr-based digital work “napêhkân.blog”, which is influenced by late ’90s/early ’00s internet art as seen on then-popular sites like Geocities and Myspace—but is given a contemporary twist with its focus on Indigenous resurgence and Indigenous language revitalization.

“Through building community and curation of my own space online, I want to imagine or re-imagine the era of early Internet blogging in a personal, Indigenous context,” he says. “I’m constantly updating the [HTML and CSS] coding as I learn new techniques, as well as creating content to post on the blog—including writing in Cree and my paintings.”

Jasper Pettman

Also graduating this year is Leina Dueck, whose work reflects her own cultural history as an artist of mixed Japanese, Canadian, German and Dutch heritage. She uses a variety of multimedia techniques—including canvas, cyanotype, sewing, textiles and photography—to exploring the “emotional baggage” of past events.

“The act of creating is a deeply personal and an intuitive experience,” says Dueck. “Each piece that I make represents a journey, a process of discovery and a way of engaging with the world around me.”

Her work in the grad exhibit will showcase a form of regalia created using traditional Japanese textiles and modern sewing techniques, with an added layer of cyanotype photography symbolizing “frozen moments and breaths of time”. “The concept of this regalia will be targeting my struggles with identity and the shifts I’ve had to make in order to resist being culturally fetishized.”

Ultimately, says Dueck, her goal as an emerging artist is similar to that of any established artist: to create pieces that both challenge and inspire. “I hope to create works that encourage viewers to question their assumptions and see the world in a new context and perspective.”

Leina Dueck, “Delirium” (2022, Cyanotype)

Don’t Need to Know to Feel It runs April 15 to April 23 in UVic’s Visual Arts Building.

Visual Arts professor’s work in new Metallica video

by | Apr 7, 2023 | climate, Faculty, Research, Visual Arts

Kelly Richardson’s original pieces and how they appear in the Metallica video

What happens when “suitably apocalyptic” art by an internationally acclaimed, environmentally focused digital artist appears in the official video for the new Metallica album title track, “72 Seasons”?

If you’re UVic visual arts professor Kelly Richardson, you hope it’s an opportunity to use this format as another way to spread your environmental message.

“I love it when contemporary art breaches popular culture in this way: it’s really important to get my work out to as many people as possible . . . not that Metallica is taking to the stage and talking about my concepts,” Richardson laughs.

But with over 3 million views on the official video in the 7 days since it dropped on March 30, Richardson says she’s been watching some of the “72 Seasons” reaction videos online and has noted that people seem to be remarking on what she describes as her “suitably apocalyptic” visuals.

“For me, it’s about engaging the public in bigger conversations about where we’re all heading,” she says. “There is potential for people to look up the work, see what it’s really about and possibly influence the wider public that way.”

Visual Arts professor Kelly Richardson

Art that reflects our impact on the landscape

One of the world’s leading digital artists specializing in creating video installations of rich and complex landscapes using manipulated CGI, animation and sound, Richardson takes her cues from 19th century painting, 20th century cinema and 21st century scientific inquiries. Her practice offers imaginative views and constructions of the future that are plausible enough to prompt careful consideration of the present.

A passionate environmental artist whose work often reflects the human impact on the natural landscape, Richardson firmly believes that artists are equally equipped as scientists to motivate the need for change in our thinking of — and relationship with — the environment.

The use of cutting-edge imaging and video technologies is an appropriate means to do this, bridging fiction/real and present/future. Underpinning her research is a critical and often collaborative engagement with scientists (including NASA), philosophers and writers whose work engages with issues related to climate change.

Metallica is a good match for Richardson’s “suitably apocalyptic” imagery

“A sense of awe that mirrored the sonically heavy sound of Metallica”

Explaining that her work wasn’t actually made for specifically Metallica, Richardson says the piece “Halo”  would normally be seen in large-scale gallery installations but in this case was projected behind the band during filming. “There’s an eclipse In ‘Halo’ and at one point you actually see [guitarist] James Hetfield inside the eclipse,” Richardson says in this April 7 interview with CBC Radio’s As It Happens.“That’s my favourite moment in the video.”

As noted in the CBC story, “72 Seasons” director Tim Saccenti and visual art curator Dina Chang thought Richardson’s art resonated with what they were trying to accomplish. “Aside from being longtime fans of her work, we both felt Kelly’s pieces had a particular kind of monumental grandeur, a sense of awe, that mirrored the sonically heavy sound of Metallica,” Saccenti said in an email to CBC. “There’s a primal unease to her pieces that cuts to your core.”

See the As It Happens story to read more about the filming of the Metallica video and how the video’s 100-person creative and technical team went “silent in respect” when Richardson’s work was projected. “It was a perfect mix of spectacle and emotion, creating a near mythological environment to capture the band in,” says Saccenti.

Following the As It Happens piece, Richardson’s story was subsequently reported on both CBC News and CBC Music sites, as well as individual interviews with the Times Colonist, CTV (local and national) and iHeart Radio; it was also picked up by The Zone radio station, Capital Daily, Galleries West, UVic’s Campus Checklist, Canadian Art Junkie and it appeared on a number of reposting sites like Flipboard, IG News, Newstral, Spoutible, PiPa News, News-24.fr, CanadianNewsMedia.ca, OneNewsPage, Her-News.com, TOPNews.media and the West Observer, among others.           

A worldwide platform

With current exhibits on now in the UK & Montreal, and shows just recently closed in Belgium & LA, Richardson’s work is designed to be digitally exhibited at galleries on screens — but when the April 13 72 Seasons worldwide listening party hits theatres for one night only, it will be the first time her imagery will appear simultaneously across the globe.

Richardson happily admits she was “a huge Metallica fan” in her early 20s, and says she’s pretty blown away by the whole thing. “The young version of me can’t quite get my head around my work being in their music video!”

Both Metallica video director Tim Saccenti and visual art curator Dina Chang had used digital versions of work by other artists in previous videos and have been following (and collecting) Richardson’s work for some time, so they approached her about exclusively using three of her pieces — “Halo” (2021) + “Origin Stories” & “Origin Stories (AR) (2023)” — in this particular video.

Not that it’s the first time her work has meshed with rock music: she appeared on stage at 2022’s Rifflandia music festival in Victoria as part of the team behind Visual Arts MFA Rande Cook’s Awinakola: Tree of Life research group.

Richardson’s work projected onto the Metallica set (Image: Setta Studio)

Inspired by Awi’nakola

As seen here on the set of the Metallica video, each floating “diamond” in Richardson’s “Origin Stories” represents an extinct species. “These are complex life forms which took 4 billion years to evolve & which we are losing at a terrifying rate,” she says.

As well being beautiful to look at, Richardson’s art is intended to foster conversations about the continuing loss of complex life. “In my practice, I’ve explored many ideas which illustrate anxieties about where we’re heading as a species in relation to climate change,” she says. 

This piece in particular is inspired by her work with Awi’nakola Foundation, a collective of artists, scientists and Indigenous knowledge keepers who are working towards the preservation and restoration of BC’s old-growth forests, which are some of the last primary forests on the planet. 

Together with Visual Arts professor Paul Walde, Audain professor Lindsay Delaronde, MFA alum Rande Cook and more than 35 others, Richardson is working collectively to build a better future for generations to come. Through galleries, museums and unexpected projects like the Metallica video, the Awi’nakola Project is making a difference by securing exhibitions in locations where the government is known to purchase by-products of old growth trees.

Four Fine Arts recipients in Distinguished Alumni Awards

by | Mar 23, 2023 | Alumni, Award, indigenous, School of Music, Theatre, Visual Arts

The annual Distinguished Alumni Awards celebrate the remarkable achievements of UVic graduates in three different categories: the Presidents’ Alumni Awards, the Emerging Alumni Awards and the Indigenous Community Alumni Awards. This year, Fine Arts has four recipients honoured in two of those categories.

Presidents’ Alumni Award: Maureen Gruben

Tuktoyaktuk-born and -based Presidents’ Alumni Award recipient Maureen Gruben (Visual Arts BFA, 2012) is an Inuvialuk artist who’s passionate about bringing awareness to the Arctic environment through her art. A mature student and mother when she came to UVic, her works incorporate an array of materials from polar bear fur, beluga intestines and seal skin to vinyl, Styrofoam, bubble wrap and metallic tape, linking daily life in the western Arctic and global environmental concerns. Gruben’s art has been exhibited across North America and Europe, and in 2021 she was long-listed for the Sobey Award, considered Canada’s most prestigious art award for emerging artists.

When asked how her experiences at UVic contributed to her success, Gruben says “UVic was where I was really introduced to contemporary art and performance art. That introduction alone opened up so many ideas, doors, new ways of thinking and understanding that was not so traditional. It made me work outside a lot in the environment and not so much in the gallery space. It was really huge for me.”

And what’s her advice to a younger person who is possibly uncertain about their future?

“They just need to get out there and try and explore and find out what their passions are because most people don’t know early in life,” she says. “You have to go and try a few different things before you figure out what you like.”

Read more about Maureen Gruben, including the differences between living in Tuktoyaktuk and Victoria

Emerging Alumni Award: Taiwo Afolabi

Taiwo Afolabi (Applied Theatre D Phil, 2020) has dedicated his life to using theatre as a tool for social change. A prolific scholar and an applied theatre practitioner, the Nigerian-born Afolabi researches, teaches and creates participatory theatre as a means of community engagement to explore themes of education, migration, displacement, climate change, inclusion and diversity.

After graduating from UVic, Afolabi began his tenure-track position at the University of Regina’s Theatre Department where he is an assistant professor; he currently holds the Canada Research Chair in Socially Engaged Theatre, and is the founder and director of the Centre for Socially Engaged Theatre (C-SET).

His research interests lie in the areas of applied theatre and policing, social justice, decolonization, art leadership and management, migration and the ethics of conducting arts-based research. Taiwo is a senior research associate at the University of Johannesburg (South Africa) and the founding artistic director of Theatre Emissary International. His academic studies combined with lived experience of issues of race, equity and inclusion have made him a much sought-after speaker, writer, teacher and faculty member.

While his professional accomplishments are many, he’s most proud of the connections he’s be able to make, the relationships he’s built and the opportunities to engage with people. “Whether it’s in devising a play in the community, writing a paper or doing a workshop, it’s ultimately about the people I’ve been able to touch and who have touched my own life,” he says.

Read more about Taiwo Afolabi, including his favourite memory of being a UVic student

Emerging Alumni Award: Sarah Jim

Sarah Jim (Visual Arts BFA, 2019) is a visual artist of mixed ancestry from the small village of Tseycum in W̱SÁNEĆ. She works in the field of environmental restoration. Her creations reflect and advocate for the beautiful territory that the W̱SÁNEĆ have stewarded since time immemorial. Her art has been displayed across southern Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands and garnered numerous awards.

A common thread throughout Jim’s work—which includes a territorial acknowledgement plaque for a public library, T-shirt designs, street banners, multiple murals around the territory and native plant signs at the Horticulture Center of the Pacific and UVic’s community garden—is her desire to use art to create awareness and celebrate the historic and ongoing relationship between the W̱SÁNEĆ people and the land, sea and sky.

She says she’s most proud of merging the field of environmental restoration with her artistic practice. “At the very end of my UVic time, I started working in the field of environmental restoration and falling in love with the native plants, foods and medicines we have here and Indigenous ways of being,” she explains. “In my very last painting course, I made this piece that was all native plants with Coast Salish elements, and I was really happy with it, and my teacher said that it was the best thing I made all year and I should have been doing this the whole time. That was a really big turning point for me and my career.”

Her advice to younger people uncertain about their futures? “Just take a chance, because you never know where you’re going to end up. That’s essentially what I did. I started doing markets. I had the audacity to try to sell my things, and a lot of my friends and family supported me. And then even strangers were supporting me, too. Put yourself out there and don’t be too shy because people are going to judge you no matter what, so you might as well just do it.”

Read more about Sarah Jim, including the best advice she was ever given

photo: Simon Pauly

Emerging Alumni Award: Josh Lovell

Barely in his 30s, Victora-born Josh Lovell (Performance BMus, 2015) is already a major player in the international classical music scene. Described by the Guardian as “a handsome-sounding tenor with a warm, liquid voice and easy high notes,” he studied at UVic’s School of Music from 2010 to 2014 before attending the University of Michigan on a full scholarship to complete his Masters of Voice Performance.

The winner of numerous awards, Lovell is currently an ensemble member of the renowned Vienna State Opera house Wiener Staatsoper. He has performed all over Europe at prestigious venues such as Teatro alla Scala Milan, the Glyndebourne Festival (UK), Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Bolshoi Theatre, helping raise the profile of Canada on the international stage. He also maintains an important connection to his home, returning to perform with the Vancouver Symphony, Pacific Opera and the Victoria Symphony, where he continues to inspire future generations of performers.

He felt his time at UVic “rounded me as an individual: it wasn’t completely focused on my studies. There was time to make connections with colleagues and friends, and attend the many events that were going on around the campus. UVic really felt like a community while I studied there. Even though I grew up in Victoria, UVic felt like a different city, another country. It was a zone all unto itself where I felt welcome to take part in all that was offered and challenged to learn all that I could.”

But he hesitates to name any one achievement of which he is particularly proud. “As your experience builds with every single performance, so develops your voice and artistry. Because of this, there is no single defining moment of arrival; there is no exact moment of ‘making it.’ All you can hope for is that you develop well enough to be noticed by the most famous companies in order to be hired by them.”

But Lovell does consider himself “very fortunate” to have been able to perform at a very high level since finishing his education. “This entire journey goes back to UVic,” he says. “None of this would have been possible without my teacher, Benjamin Butterfield.”

Read more about Josh Lovell, including the skills he feels are essential to his career

Nominate a remarkable grad!

The UVic Distinguished Alumni Awards celebrate the remarkable achievements of UVic graduates. Nominations for the 2024 Distinguished Alumni Awards are open now through Oct. 13, 2023. You can nominate an outstanding alum here.

Explore all 16 of UVic’s 2023 Distinguished Alumni Award Recipients.

Creating a Certain Kind of Space: Charles Campbell

by | Mar 20, 2023 | Art History & Visual Studies, Award, Events, Visual Arts

When the Faculty of Fine Arts announced the creation of a new annual donor-funded lecture series focused on activism and the arts, the selection committee were faced with an onerous task: who to select as the first guest? While a number of options were presented, the committee ultimately—and unanimously—endorsed internationally acclaimed multidisciplinary artist Charles Campbell as the inaugural speaker in the Lehan Family Activism & the Arts Lecture Series.

Jamaica-born but Victoria-based, Charles Campbell is an artist, writer, curator and educator whose artworks—including sculptures, paintings, sonic installations and performances—explore aspects of Black history, especially as experienced in the Caribbean region. The recipient of the Shadbolt Foundation’s 2022 VIVA Award and the 2020 City of Victoria Creative Builder Award, his practice animates the future imaginaries possible in the wake of slavery and colonization.

As such, Campbell is an ideal choice to kick off a series focused on how the arts can be a catalyst for change in advancing the understanding and goals of various social justice topics. His March 23 talk, “Sometimes in the Middle of the Story: Art & Changing Fictions,” explored how his work examines and disrupts the fictions embedded in our colonial reality.

You can now watch that talk here: 

Working for social change

When asked if he felt he was a good fit as the inaugural speaker for this series, Campbell pauses before giving a characteristically thoughtful response. “There are a lot people doing good things in the community with regards to activism,” he says. “My work is important in the realm of social change: it doesn’t always strictly meet the criteria of what I’d consider activist work, but it’s definitely in dialogue with that space.”

From his perspective, what’s the difference? “I think of activist-based art as engaging with a very specific outcome: we want something to happen in how people think, or the social context we’re working in—and the more specific that is, the more effective it can be in terms of activism.”

Campbell feels his more socially engaged practice is about “exploring our political and social realities . . . I think my own work is more about creating a certain kind of space rather than leaning towards a specific outcome.”

photo: Lia Crowe (Boulevard Magazine)

Shifting perspectives

By way of example, he points to “Time Catcher”, his recent commission for the Victoria International Airport. Installed overhead in the passenger departure lounge, “Time Catcher” features a series of three-sided suspended vessels invoking concepts of not only time and movement but also ecological and cultural memory; additionally, the text of Octavia Butler’s “Paradise” is also inscribed in Morse code on each surface, acknowledging both our connection to home and the forces of change motivating people’s global movements.

“That airport piece is an interesting example, as it’s made for all kinds of audiences who come through that space,” he explains. “But one of those audiences is Black people coming into Victoria: the city has historically identified itself as an extension of a little British town—there’s no public or visible space for Black people—so that quote is a marker to say, ‘hey, we’re here.’ That’s just a small example of how I’m trying to create that kind of a space, and a little bit of a shift of people’s perspectives on how a space can work.”

Similarly, his upcoming solo exhibition An Ocean to Livity—running April 15-June 20 at the Surrey Art Gallery—foregrounds Black breath as a source of power, repository of memory and site of connection. He touched on similar themes with his contribution to the 2022 group exhibit The Chorus Is Speaking at the Campbell River Art Gallery, which explored how people experience identities of Blackness in Canada.

“My work in that show was really about breath, about what allows us to breathe,” he explains. “That piece really came out of the experiences of 2020, about Black Lives Matter and the murder of Geroge Floyd.”

Exploring Black identities

Following up on her 2022 Massey Lecture series and subsequent essay collection, Out of the Sun: On Race and Storytelling, celebrated author and UVic Writing alumna Esi Edugyan recently spoke out against the idea of a “Black monolith” and encouraged people to acknowledge how complex Canadian identities of Blackness can be—an idea with which Campbell definitely agrees.

“I’m totally with Esi on that one,” he says. “There are a large number of Black identities, and some of them take up a larger space in the cultural field than others. But for a lot of us—specifically in Canada, and more specifically on the West Coast—it really fragments quite quickly. But then the question becomes, how to define that space within the context of the multiplicity of experience and points of view?”

As a Jamaica-born artist on Vancouver Island, that’s a nuanced dialogue with which he is constantly engaged. “I’m very well-connected with the Caribbean arts movement and a lot of my exhibition opportunities have come through that—just not on this side of the continent, since Canada’s massive Caribbean population lives back east,” he explains.

“Here on the West Coast, it’s more about being a capital-B Black artist . . . yet there isn’t one origin story for the Black community here, so there’s an attempt at a kind of pan-Blackness. But I think you can intentionally create more solidarity through different notions of Blackness—it’s not about common identity, it’s about consciously working to create understanding and commonality.”

About the Lehan Family

Meet brother and sister Mel Lehan and Freda Knott: committed West Coast activists and community builders . . . and now, thanks to an anonymous donor, the named recipients of a lecture series established in 2022. Each year, the Lehan Family Activism & the Arts Lecture showcases a distinguished guest presenting ideas on how the arts is a catalyst for change in advancing the understanding and goals of various social justice topics.

This short video tells you more about their family’s commitment to activism and the arts, and how Mel and Freda have worked to build community and make changes in their home communities of Vancouver and Victoria.