Fall 2015 — 7 Art objects and images were planted in the Marylin I. Walker Building in St. Catharines. These were made in a flurry of all night studio sessions with current students of Brock University so as to bring more life into the then fresh and sterile space.
Yearly Archives: 2015
16 posts
Mural created for Garden City Food CO-OP in 2015
Brock University Alumni Exhibition
Sarah Beattie, Candace Couse, Alicia Kuntze, Ben Mosher, Carrie Perreault, Bruce Thompson
Curated by Emma German
Tracing the histories of artistic practice, particularly those of emerging artists, can reveal the unexpected. In doing so, patterns emerge in the exploration to find similarities between gaps, and success within the haphazard. Coming to the realization of a conclusive body of work is an evolving process that shifts over the course of an artist’s career, as the world shifts around them. The uncertainties and anxieties of the world today compel artists to question the role of their practices and their roles as mediators. Shifting Practices, the inaugural visual arts exhibition at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts VISA Gallery, is a study of varying stages of artistic and professional practice amongst six alumni from the Department of Visual Arts: Ben Mosher (2015), Sarah Beattie (2012), Carrie Perreault (2012), Bruce Thompson (2011), Alicia Kuntze (2010), and Candace Couse (2008). In retrospect, this exhibition examines their practices chronologically, from the concepts that each explored in the Honours 4F06 course until the present.
Having graduated from the Visual Arts program in the spring of 2015, Ben Mosher is the most recent alumnus in the exhibition. He was actively present during the move of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts from the Brock University campus into downtown St. Catharines. Lines of Reference is a culmination of the artist’s ongoing investigation into the histories of the site throughout the duration of the move. The artist generated a barcode based on the letters “MIWSFPA” and referenced a series of colours from around the building.
Drawing on the past and present, the colours become visual codes for the site, and the verticality of the lines respond to the architecture of the building. Mosher’s practice has consistently explored the gaps between the digital and physical worlds, but this work takes a new approach to this practice in a renewed attempt to blur the translation between digital and analogue. These text-encoded lines were initially introduced to the wall using a projector, and then meticulously taped and painted by hand. Rendering the barcode by hand results in a slightly imperfect outcome, an element that was absent from the digital barcode. The result is a non-scannable code that exists in an alcove of the gallery, a space that is often overlooked.
Similar in its search for the handmade within the vast context of the digital age, Mosher’s Drift Assembled (01/09/15) explores the idea of storage, archiving, and the artist’s own memories of growing up in Nova Scotia. Using sentimental items and found wood lends the weight of the historical context that is embedded in these objects. Since their original display in the 2015 Honours exhibition, A Temporary Stay, at Rodman Hall Art Centre, the artist has manipulated and reworked these assemblages to create new possibilities.
– Student Monitor (https://visagallery.wordpress.com/2015/09/24/shifting-practices/)
In the month of August 2015 I was invited to Red Clay in Upper Economy Nova Scotia for the White Rabbit Arts Festival. Over the course of the two week residency I created a series of work based on simple gestures in a ravine by a stream.
Silently Laughing Rocks (Series of 100~) 
The Height of a Tree and the Height of Me 
Where the Light Was at 11 O’Clock 
The Length of My Foot and My Stride 
I Still Have Life Inside Me
Solo show in a series of one night stand exhibitions.
Curated by Marcie Bronson and Stuart Reid
Matt Caldwell, Ben Mosher, Kerri Oleskiw, Jillian Suta
March 28 to April 12, 2015
Bato Bazarov, Kate Mazi, Alexandra Muresan, Nancy Nigh
April 18 to May 3, 2015
Presented in two chapters, this exhibition displays the work of selected graduating Brock University Visual Arts students. Occupying Rodman Hall’s third floor studios during the academic year, students in the Honours Studio course are mentored by professors Duncan MacDonald and Shawn Serfas, learning how to develop a focused body of work from concept to public exhibition.
Such exhibits from the Department of Visual Arts are a key part of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts’ mandate in building connections between the community and the breadth of talent and creativity at Brock University.
The Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts is relocating in the summer of 2015 to its new, state-of-the-art teaching, production and performance facility in the heart of the City of St. Catharines.
This work explores the idea of storage, and archiving channelled primarily through my own memories of growing up in rural Nova Scotia. Using found wood from homes in Ontario and the shoreline of Nova Scotia lends their weight of historical context embedded within these objects. These works contain either an item from my personal history or a bit of writing that is intended to be kept secret. Each item is surrounded by a circle, encasing the object there by saving it.
We Drift —
Tides carrying us
some this way
and Some
that
Image Making (Slowed 1,000,000%) attempts to replicate the production of digital imagery through the process of RGB encoding of pixels. A multi disciplinary piece ranging from video to installation and durational performance. I attempted to complete the typing out of a jpg image file from an instagram of a postcard of Niagara Falls. 32,400 values in total which I typed out during the two week duration of the exhibition.
Above the work desk was a didactic video work showing a row of values from the corresponding image and a live streaming video of Niagara Falls.
Installation View – A Temporary Stay 
Installation View – Desk 
Falls on Red – The original image to be typed.
Binary forms the basis for all our modern communications, signals of on and off running through microprocessors being encoded and decoded at lightning fast speeds. In human language we represent these concepts with the 0 and the 1. Meaning that these two integers in the correct sequence can generate digitally all content that could ever be created by our current processes. In this work these figures recline, as if at rest.
In February of 2015 I was checking my junk email folder and noticed some odd messages residing there. Rather than deleting them I wondered what I could use them for.
Spam is usually generated content with approximately 100 billion spam emails being sent a day from just over 100 spammers there can not be much interaction between the spammer and the messages they relay. With no interjection the program can reference and cull from any online source imaginable creating surreal strands of data as words.
MIGRATION
Brock’s Visual Arts Club
On display from March 4-6 2015
Closing Reception Friday 6 March 7pm-9:30pm
The Brock University Art Club in conjunction with Brock University, will be hosting its annual Juried Art Exhibition at the Niagara Artists Centre. Traditionally, the jurors are two professors chosen from the Brock Visual Arts department, this year the jurors are Donna Akery and Kristen Patterson. They have selected a total of twenty student works for this show.
The Brock Visual Arts program will be relocating their studies to the downtown area of St. Catharines in fall of 2015. The Juried Exhibition of 2015 is titled “Migration” inspired by this move. It will showcase a selection of artists from Brock’s Visual Art Undergraduate Program as they make a transition to their new downtown home to further
strengthen their relationship with the arts community.
*****Come out on Friday March 6th between 7pm – 9:30pm for the closing reception of Migration. There will be refreshments and the awards for select works will be announced at 8pm.*****
Where the light gets in, 2015, found painting and chair
Limitless: A Painting Exposition of Brock’s Up and Coming Artists
VISA 3P04 and VISA 4P04
Niagara Artist’s Centre
354 Saint Paul Street, Saint Catharines
On display Friday 13 February – Monday 23 February
Opening Reception
Friday 13 February at 7:00pm