ÕÅ°ÙÇÇÅ®ÓÑÂãÕÕ

A catalyst is a force beyond reckoning. It embodies strength, power, and an unwavering will to move forward — to push ahead and reach for something beyond the present.

A catalyst is confident, energizing the world with vitality, purpose, and assertive direction. It does not accept ‘no’ for an answer.

A catalyst sparks something new with determination, following its intuition wherever it leads.

It is only fitting that the second year Visual Arts students at ÕÅ°ÙÇÇÅ®ÓÑÂãÕÕ have chosen Catalyst 25 as the title of their graduating exhibition.

In this exhibition, Sarah-Mecca Abdourahman explores the complexities of memory and nostalgia in her everlasting search for a connection to her parent’s homelands, Somalia and India.  A longing for home that can bring grief and joy.  Delving into these contrasting emotions, Abdourahman’s work moves between themes of haunting and healing, evoking the bittersweet.  Her yearning is woven into the fabric of multimedia-painted blankets and installations which allude to both the innocence of childhood, and its nightmares.

Since its inception in1992, the Faculty of Fine Arts Biennial has showcased the varied practices of teachers from the Department of Fine Arts, offering students and the community the opportunity to glimpse their work outside of the classroom.

Their contributions to this exhibition span a variety of media—painting, sculpture, photography, mixed media, and the written word, among others—illustrating a profound engagement with both traditional practices and new technologies.   At the core of the many explorations that this exhibition offers are complexities surrounding the environment (both natural and built);

NOW EXTENDED UNTIL JANUARY 17th!  

Featuring the work of: Lucas Berry, Joshua Bubis, Zikai Chen, Dean Daltirus, Ashley Dumas, Renaud Duplessis, Jhosua Farid Pinzon Euan, Manekha Gadiano-Dimaano, Carol Hallak, Zhichao Huang, Xenia Jeffery-Off, Jasmeen Kaur, Dua Khan, Zachary LeMenn, Adèle L’Heureux-Hubert, Jordan Markle, Benjamin McAuley, Zachary Mercier, Cody Neglia, Michael Picardo, Hugo Santamaria and Trevon Shand.

ÕÅ°ÙÇÇÅ®ÓÑÂãÕÕ’s Department of Professional Photography presents Continuum, an exhibition featuring the work of students approaching the end of their three-year program. 

This exhibition brings together the work of 11 of Dawson’s most recognized Visual Arts Alumni with that of their former teacher—artist, writer, and curator Giuseppe (Joe) Di Leo.

Celebrating the reciprocal and circular journey between mentor and mentees, the exhibition will focus on the multi-faceted forms of drawing: abbreviated gestures, sketches schematics, faithfully rendered recordings, executed in a range of treatment and approaches on any surface.  Revealing the multiplicities and meanderings of human existence, these artists present drawing as a means to  probe, record, and conger vivid expressions of imagined and complex realities.

in between you and me is a solo exhibition of select works by Vancouver-based emerging artist Cassia Powell.

This body of work develops themes exploring what writer Gavin Butt refers to as a ‘social activity which produces and maintains the filiations of the artistic community,’ namely – gossip. Using soft-sculptures and oil paintings, in between you and me explores intimacy, vulnerability, story-telling, and worldbuilding through painting and fibres-based installation.

The Warren G. Flowers Art Gallery is proud to offer it’s first ever summer artist residency to alumna Sylvia Trotter Ewens (Fine Arts, 2014).  Sylvia will utilize the time and space to advance paintings and work on projections in completion of her MFA (Painting) at Concordia University.

She writes, ‘This is a body of work pulling from writings I’ve made on my time caregiving and experiencing loss after my mother’s passing. In these writings I used the garden as an allegory for these experiences as I tackled the memories of this time through writing and painting as a means to congeal its memory. 

Following the path of a two-year intensive Visual Arts program is not an easy task. Students are asked to be vulnerable, to open themselves up, to do things they have never done before. They are challenged and pushed to their creative limits. All their hard work, talent and ambition have culminated into Expo 24: Visions Unveiled, a thoughtful, inspiring, and creative exhibition.

Exhibiting students:  Chloé Amblard, Leo Anderson-Aubin, Maya Aupin, Orly Benyaminov, Isa Bernales, Carolanne Blais, Olivia Bourque, Catherine Buckley, Emma Chaaban, Emy Croteau, Simone Deschênes, Sofiane Dupuis, Aïyana Faye-Giard, Hailey Gardner, Dinesa Ghosh, Keana Hétu, Zihao Ji, E.A.

ÕÅ°ÙÇÇÅ®ÓÑÂãÕÕ’s Journey’s Program proudly presents Living Perspectives, an exhibition of selected works from 20 Indigenous students highlighting their research-creation findings through photography, painting, digital illustration, leather making and other art forms.  From photo-documenting the urban moose hide tanning process, to building narrative sovereignty through visual storytelling, and completing the hands-on practice of making fish skin leather, these emerging Indigenous creative’s are cracking open the colonial pavement.

Featuring Works by: Phylicia Benjamin, Megan Bosum, Julia Clement, Natasha Doolan, Shayla Etienne, Destinee Hester, Shevaun Jacobs, Phoenix Lahache, Shaylene Louttit-Rupert, Wes Masty Roussel, Melissa Matoush, Stacey Matoush, Zye Mayo-McComber, Demma Montour-Diabo, Lauri Mulucto,  Mark Neacappo, Shirleyann Rabbitskin, Faith Shecapio, Tapisa Tulugak, Kiva Williams, and Jade Whitebean.

Pedestrian Values reflects on economic shifts, labour patterns and development in post-industrial urban cities. Using metal fabrication, casting, and interventionist tactics to alter coded materials and infrastructure found in public space, the installations reveal underlying power structures in urban environments, critiquing capitalist value systems focused on profit and development, exposing how these ideals are built into our everyday environment.

The recurring banknote pattern from the board game, Monopoly, serves as an explicit critique of capital’s control over spatial relations that carries through the exhibition, adorning a traffic barrel, cast coins scattered across the floor of the gallery, and a construction privacy mesh.