Inner Currents: Weaving us Together
Laurence Savard Gagnon, Princesse, acrylic on wood, 60 x 24 inches, 2024, Photographed by Mara Zapata
On a quiet Thursday evening, the intersection of St. Hubert and Villeray was brought to life. Attendees of the Inner Currents vernissage spilled out onto the street from the brightly-lit Villeray Art Society, humming with energy and vibrance. The exhibition, organized by the undergraduate ARTT 399 class, features all members of the class: totaling fifty artists. Upon entering the densely-packed exhibition space, artworks of all forms occupied the gallery’s walls, plinths, and floors, inviting the eye in every direction.
Joined together under the title of Inner Currents, this exhibition manages to join together works that may initially seem disparate, due to the sheer volume of artworks, and the diversity of mediums, including but not limited to photography, ceramic, textile, painting, bronze, and video. However, as the title suggests, there are inner currents running through each artwork, like invisible woven threads linking one piece to the next. Only through joining them under one roof can these strands be illuminated, creating a conversation between artworks and the space they inhabit. This connection is mirrored through the collaborative process allowing the exhibition to come to fruition; people are joined as artists and organizers sharing community and classroom.
In my view, all art is, in some way, a self-portrait. It is a reflection of the producer’s interests, research, material explorations and relationship with oneself. Artworks are extensions of ourselves, and as such, have the abilities to form connections—whether that be with people, other artworks, or the space itself. In an attempt to summarize the vastness of work presented at Inner Currents, I will present and synthesize the work shown in terms of thematic categories.
The first current I was immediately struck with was an interest in femininity and its multifarious presentations. Gagne and Colangelo approach this from a photographic perspective, capturing the multiplicity of the feminine experience and its complicated relationship with the male gaze, through acts of defiance and celebration; Sanchez and Price address this through paint. In a similar question of identity, Boucher, Patrissi, Godin, Savard-Gagon, Gauvin-Dufresne, Doerksen and Melchor all engage with nostalgia and wonder. From tenderly drawn images of childhood dolls to abstracted renditions of personal photographs, these artists offer reflections on what once was, and how memory shapes the people we are constantly in the process of becoming.
Georgia Mansey, Eve, How Could You?, mixed media collage, 24.5 x 15 inches, 2023, Photographed by Mara Zapata
In contrast to dreamy depictions of childhood memories, Dufort, Larouche, Kantola, Mansey, and Brochet root us in our bodies, reimagining and deconstructing skin, flesh and bone across a number of mediums, including paint, paper, textile, and photography. Yang builds off of this bodily exploration in vague biomorphic forms manifested in cool swathes of blue paint, while Stokoe-Catzel brings a bio-surreality to a rendering of an imagined space reminiscent of insectoid formations. The uncanny intermingles with the embodied anxieties of perception in the relationships between the works of Buchs, Stein, Nosenko, Charbonneau, Stringfellow, Pan, Grant-Gabriel, Di Fruscia, Chae, Lemieux, Laverdure, Stokoe-Catzel, Fanoni, and Li. From a dead-eyed plush tiger captured in a photograph to the haunted stare of a Hans Bellmer-esque doll painting, the uncanny (or at times the abject, after Kristeva) intermeshes with the politics of the gaze in this diverse range of artworks.
Further rooted into embodied experiences are the material explorations of Larochelle, Novak, Parker-Christmas, Deen, Crowhurst-Smith, Craig, Mont-Louis, and Augusto. Metal, fabric, wood, ceramic, and more are brought into conversation as the viewer is engaged in multisensorial artistic experiences. Smooth, polished bronze surfaces invite a sense of cold contemplation while recycled material combinations simultaneously reject and invite touch. Paradis’ warm quilt swaying gently with the breeze of passersby invokes an intimate labour of love, while Macdonald, Vachon, and Wong embody pictorial intimacies in photography and drawing. Louis bridges the two- and three-dimensional in mirrored, affectionate imagery. Desveaux abstracts a garden into a space of introspective intimacy.
Micha Paradis, Sangs Composés, silkscreen on dyed fabric, 69 x 67 inches, 2024, Photographed by Mara Zapata
Smelsky-Rémillard and Chanezon capture motion in still and moving images, while Ozer, Trudeau, and Sierra-Fajardo explore religion and the realm of the spiritual, referencing life and death, God’s will and word.
In sum, this exhibition is a means for bringing forth those once-hidden inner currents that weave together the artworks of fifty student artists, stimulating conversation between the artworks, viewers, and the space itself. As artists, organizers, collaborators and students, the ARTT 399 class highlights the interconnectedness of art and identity, the importance of collaborative efforts in student art spaces, the power of the exhibition space and its capacity for bringing art and people in community with one another.