Events

Join exhibiting artists Sung Tieu, Alex Turgeon, and Amanda Chwelos for an in-person panel discussion about their practices and new exhibitions.

Saturday, July 6, 2 -3 pm

www.saag.ca/events/articulations-with-sung-tieu-alex-turgeon-and-amanda-chwelos

Sung Tieu

Sung Tieu (b.1987, Hai Duong, Vietnam) lives and works in Berlin. She has held solo exhibitions at Kunstmuseum Bonn; Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig (2021); Nottingham Contemporary; and Haus der Kunst, Munich (2020). Her work was included in the 34th Bienal de São Paulo and has been exhibited at Museion, Bolzano; Kunsthalle Basel (2021); Museum Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt; GAMeC Museum, Bergamo; and Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2020). Tieu is the recipient of the Frieze Artist Award 2021 and the 2021 ars viva Prize. She also received the audience award for the 2021 Preis der Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

Alex Turgeon

Alex Turgeon (b. Kjipuktuk/Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice investigates formal relationships between poetry and architecture. His overall work focuses on how the structures of language and architecture inform the queer subject as built environment. Turgeon’s practice finds interdisciplinary form through concrete poetry, sculpture, drawing, video, and performance, embodying a radical ethos rooted in the methodologies of printed matter—framed as a distributive tool and political method for making and occupying space. He received his BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design and an MFA from Rutgers University. His work has been presented in part at the Tate (Liverpool); Akademie der Künste and KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin); Kunsthalle Zürich; Contemporary Art Centre (Vilnius); and as part of “Poetry as Practice,” an online exhibition hosted by Rhizome and the New Museum (New York). In 2022-2023 Turgeon received a Junge Akademie Fellowship from the Akademie der Künste, Berlin and has participated as an artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts, (2011), Rupert (2015), Fondazione Antonio Ratti (2017), Autodesk Technology Center (2019) and is a forthcoming resident at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (2024-2025). His exhibition Waste Land at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery marks the artist’s first institutional exhibition in Canada.

Amanda Chwelos

Amanda Chwelos (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Edmonton-amiskwaciwâskahikan. Her work aims to understand complexities of her own identity and existence through an exploration of themes surrounding introspection, banality, anxiety, and acceptance. Driven by a material-based practice, she works primarily in drawing, painting, and sculpture.

Amanda holds a diploma in Fine Art from MacEwan University (2017) as well as a Bachelor of Fine Art in Art and Design from the University of Alberta (2019). Since graduating, Amanda has remained an active member in both the Edmonton arts community and the broader Albertan artist community. Her work has been subject to many group exhibitions including The Mirror, The Echo, The Panopticon (2023) at The Esplanade Arts & Heritage Center in Medicine Hat, Fully Realized (2022) at Latitude 53 in Edmonton, and Salvage (2022) at Lowlands Project Space in Edmonton. In 2022, Amanda exhibited her first solo exhibition titled Easter Eggs for Conversation at Soft Gallery in Edmonton, AB.

[DIF Program IV: Artist Talk]

Scenes from Artistic Chroniclers

International Partnership in Support of Arts Creation(ISAC) | Canada-Korea Connections

About the event

• Date: Wednesday, June 26, 2024
• Time: 7 - 8 pm
• Location: The Memorial Park Library, address 1221 2 St SW, Calgary
• Artist: Chang Hanna, Soyoung Chung, Han Sungpil, Ella Morton, Sanaz Mazinani, Jinny Yu
• Price: Free

We intend to have the artists introduce their representative works and share their experiences from the ICE & FIRE tour.
ICE refers to melting glaciers, and FIRE represents unquenchable wildfires. The focal points that each artist captures from the disaster scenes they experience are likely to be different and are expected to be recorded and blended into their works, creating new artistic landscapes. 
During this talk, we would like to designate the participating artists of this project as ‘Artistic Chroniclers.’ We aim to introduce how these artistic chroniclers document the scenes from their field surveys with in-depth reflection on environmental ecology.

 

Who we are

'Debris from Ice and Fire(DIF)' is a global art project conducted with the support of the International Partnership in Support of Arts Creation(ISAC)’s 『2022-2024 Canada-Korea Connections』 driven by the partnership between the Canada Council for the Arts and the Arts Council Korea. 

The DIF would like to bring contemporary visual artists from Canada and Korea, who have been continuously conducting in-depth research and reflection on environmental ecology, to explore the climate change-induced natural disaster sites in Banff & Jasper National Parks and to visually interpret the debris collected through exploration, while actively sharing artistic opinions.

SPACE SO(spaceso.kr/, www.instagram.com/space__so), a contemporary art gallery based in Seoul Korea, has been selected for 『2023-2024 Korea-Canada Exchange Program』 of ISAC to conduct ‘Debris from Ice and Fire(DIF)’ project.

International Partnership in Support of Arts Creation(ISAC, www.arko.or.kr/eng/international/joint) aims to lay the foundation for revitalizing cultural and artistic exchanges between two countries by creating an art exchange fund between the Arts Council Korea(ARKO, www.arko.or.kr/eng) and International cultural and artistic support organizations. ISAC is creating an environment in which artists from both countries can continue to exchange and cooperate. Two-way international collaboration is promoted by signing MoU and matching budgets with overseas institutions, and specific implementation methods with partner entities are approached and customized by country.

ISAC looks to boost creative connections between Canada and Korea by supporting projects focused on artistic co-creation between the two countries. It’s inspired by the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries and is made possible through a partnership between the Canada Council for the Arts(canadacouncil.ca), the Arts Council Korea, and Global Affairs Canada(www.international.gc.ca) 

May 25 - July 20, 2024

Prairie Star Deck is AJA Louden’s first public exhibition of his large-scale tapestries. These large-scale textile works are grounded in ideas of Afrofuturism, a cultural aesthetic that combines science-fiction, history and fantasy to explore the African-American experience and aims to connect those from the Black diaspora with their forgotten African ancestry. An artist known largely for his street-based work in spray paint, over the past 3 years, Louden has been focused on building his own artistic language working in craft. 

In 2022, Louden was invited by Fern Facette to spend 3 months as part of the inaugural Artist in Residence program at Fern’s School of Craft in Edmonton, AB. It was here that Louden learned how to use cut and loop pile tufting guns and was struck by the similarities between how one handles a tufting gun and a can of spray paint. From here, Louden began thinking more deeply about the role of craft in Black communities, and the use of textiles to consider the history of craft in rural Alberta in particular. 

Growing up in Southern Alberta, Louden’s mother had a sewing room where she would produce work for herself and for others. For Louden, this interest in using craft as a medium is a reconnection with his personal history, and building upon his familial memories of domestic craft, Louden was able to incorporate his mother’s crocheted work into one of the tapestries in the show.  

Prairie Star Deck introduces us to the matriarchal society Louden has built. Here, two of the main characters are established as time travelling spacewomen through their life sized portraits Mother and Daughter. These characters will be familiar faces to those who have seen Louden’s recent mural works in Lethbridge and Edmonton. Delving deeper into the story, the tarot inspired work Shame  shows the two figures in a vignette from the larger cyclical narrative about a moment after a balance of power has shifted and a moral crisis begins to create a rupture in their relationship. 

Using craft, a medium historically grounded in Black Prairie communities, Louden considers how the nature of power can hold us in cycles and invites us to think about disparate possibilities where we create room for new futures.

About the artist

AJA Louden is a Jamaican-Canadian artist living and working in amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada).  Through rigorous mark making, constructions and installations, Louden builds stories and worlds that are firmly rooted in both galleries and public spaces, infused by his experience of growing up Black in the prairies. His current work focuses on the cyclical nature of power, inspired by science-fiction and historical paintings. Known largely for his street-based work in contemporary urban muralism, Louden challenges perceptions of the history and culture of unsanctioned public art. 

Louden’s work has been shown in public spaces and institutions across Alberta, including the 2022 retrospective exhibition Black Every Day at the Art Gallery of Alberta that featured his large-scale, site specific installation Constellation. In 2022, he was awarded the Edmonton Artists’ Trust Fund, and he was selected by Faye HeavyShield, Lieutenant Governor 2021 Distinguished Artist, for a unique award from the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Arts Awards Foundation.

Louden’s work is in the collections of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Misericordia Community Hospital.

The artist would like to recognize the Edmonton Arts Council and City of Edmonton, and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, for support of production of the works in Prairie Star Deck. 

www.albertacraft.ab.ca/discovery-gallery-exhibitions/prairie-star-deck

February is Black History Month. A month of remembrance, recognition, celebration and honouring of black Canadians. One of the many ways to take part in Black History Month is through the arts. 

Take the time to engage with the work of black creatives who, in their own mediums, create platforms for us to reflect on the history, accomplishments and contributions of black people in Canada. 

The AFA is pleased to feature artwork for the AFA Art Collection recently acquired through the AFA's Art Acquisition by Application program. 

Artwork from Simone Saunders and AJA Louden were acquired in 2023 and both were selected as Work of the Week in recognition of Black History Month 2024.

Celebrating Black History Month 

Access the Government of Alberta's "Black History Month - Events search" if you are looking for Black History Month events in your community. 

Thursday, March 7, 2024

CAVA presents Nuances by Adrien Veczan in the Exploration's Area and artworks by Karen Blanchet and Greg Hoosier in the Member's Area.

The images presented by Adrien Veczan have a very clear message at first glance.

Giving a reading and taking the time to do so, rather than just glancing at the images, allows us to detect certain contradictions and form our own interpretations, hence the theme of Nuances.

www.galeriecava.com/vernissags