Exhibition
12 March – 24 April 2010

Opening Reception
Friday 12 March 7PM

Artist Talk
Saturday 13 March, 3PM

Workshop
Guerilla Gardening 101 | Saturday 10 April 2010, 3PM

SUSY OLIVEIRA

“Your face, like a lone nocturnal garden in Worlds where Suns spin round!”

PLATFORM centre for photographic + digital arts is pleased to present, in her Winnipeg debut exhibition, “Your face, like a lone nocturnal garden in Worlds where Suns spin round!”, by Toronto-based artist Susy Oliveira.

Oliveira’s practice fuses photography, sculpture, poetry and architecture in order to create moments of suspended belief and face questions regarding loneliness, beauty, and the environment in which we find ourselves. This most recent body of work examines the human preoccupation of re-producing nature with fabrications, as we attempt to possess and feel closer to the pleasures it offers without dealing with any of its potential discomforts.

“Your face, like a lone nocturnal garden in Worlds where Suns spin round!” is a body of work that comes together as a simulated garden. This work intends to examine a pervasive preoccupation with replacing nature with fabricated versions of it as well as delving into ideas of digital and technological reproduction. By definition, the garden — complete with its natural components — is a construction made for our own pleasure and consumption. The title for this exhibition is taken from Jean Genet’s novel Our Lady of the Flowers a passage in which he is referring to a fictional lover. In Genet’s quote, the character — Genet himself — is fantasizing about a man with whom he has never had any real contact. He fictionalizes a relationship that seems to draw up emotions that are as intense if not more intense than if the relationship was actual. For this project, I hope to translate the feelings of wonder and awe that Genet relates in this one sentence into my fictional garden.” Susy Oliveira, Artist Statement 2009

Please join us for the opening reception Friday, the 12th of March beginning at 7PM. Refreshments will be served.

Susy Oliveira is an artist living in Toronto. She received an MFA from the University of Waterloo in 2006 and is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design. Her work is represented by Peak Gallery in Toronto. <www.susyoliveira.ca>

PLATFORM wishes to acknowledge the support of its membership, board of directors, volunteers, and staff. “Your face, like a lone nocturnal garden in Worlds where Suns spin round!” is made possible with funding received from Manitoba Arts Council, Winnipeg Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, The Winnipeg Foundation, The Ontario Arts Council, and Toronto Arts Council. Special mention is owed to our colleagues at Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art.

For more information about this exhibition or other PLATFORM programming, please contact the Centre directly: PLATFORM | 121-100 Arthur Street [Artspace Building] | Winnipeg, Manitoba | R3B 1H3 | 204.942.8183 | www.platformgallery.org

Exhibition

15 January - 27 February 2010

Opening Reception

Friday 15 January 7PM

“Asher’s striking, harshly lit portraits of people from her hometown manage to convey a remarkable intimacy in the midst of urban alienation.” -Canadian Art

Please join us for the opening reception Friday, the 15th of January beginning at 7PM. Refreshments will be served.

PLATFORM wishes to acknowledge the support of its membership, board of directors, volunteers, and staff. No Cause for Concern is made possible with funding received from Manitoba Arts Council, Winnipeg Arts Council.

For more information about this exhibition or other PLATFORM programming, please contact the Centre directly:
PLATFORM | 121-100 Arthur Street [Artspace Building] | Winnipeg, Manitoba | R3B 1H3 | 204.942.8183 | www.platformgallery.org

Exhibition
06 November - 19 December 2009

Opening Reception
Friday 06 November   7PM

Panel Discussion: Influenced by  the Lens?
Saturday 07 November  3PM

[Image: Janet Werner, Catgirl 2 and Redhead, 2009]

PLATFORM centre for photographic + digital arts is pleased to present the group exhibition, Added Value, featuring paintings in a variety of media by Stephanie Aitken [Vancouver], Stephen Andrews [Toronto], Chris Dorosz [San Francisco], and Janet Werner [Montreal], guest-curated by former PLATFORM Director, Lisa Wood.

Through the act of painting, these contemporary Canadian artists meditate and comment on the photograph, studying its formal qualities, inherent expectations and pervasive presence in our culture.  For these artists the photograph is a visual artifact in need of analysis.  The artists in Added Value change the conceptual outcome of the source material by translating the subject from photo to paint.  All four artists’ work is embedded with tension between their desire to posses the source material and its subject through painting, and their subversive emptying of the content of that subject, be it a sublime mountain, an image of war, a party snapshot, or an alluring supermodel.  The resulting works expose the gap between the subject and the viewer, mediated by the photographer, the photograph, the painter and the painting.   -  L. Wood, curatorial statement _ Added Value, 2009

Please join us for the opening reception Friday, the 6th of November beginning at 7PM. Refreshments will be served.

PLATFORM wishes to acknowledge the support of its membership, board of directors, volunteers, and staff. Added Value is made possible with funding received from Manitoba Arts Council, Winnipeg Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, The Winnipeg Foundation, and Manitoba Lotteries. Special mention is owed to our colleagues at Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art for their generous in-kind contributions.

For more information about this exhibition or other PLATFORM programming, please contact the Centre directly:
PLATFORM | 121-100 Arthur Street [Artspace Building] | Winnipeg, Manitoba | R3B 1H3 | 204.942.8183 | www.platformgallery.org

Exhibition

12 September - 24 October 2009

Opening Reception + Artist Talks

Saturday 12 September   7PM

After School Special: a look at pedagogical practices from then to now w/Kristina Lee Podesva

Sunday 13 September  7PM
[Presented by FTW and The Winnipeg Free Museum, 3rd floor Artspace building]

Untitled Palm-Pilot drawing from the Lost Thoughts series / Mike Patten/digital print 2007

PLATFORM centre for photographic + digital arts is pleased to present the group exhibition, As the Sidewalk Bleeds, featuring: Eryne Donahue (Vancouver), Mike MacDonald (Mi’kmaq), Sandee Moore (Winnipeg), bpNichol (1944 - 1988), Mike Patten (Montreal), and Kristina Lee Podesva (Vancouver), curated by J.J. Kegan McFadden.

Featuring a mixture of video, digital prints, computer programmed artworks, and a website, this exhibition explores the creative misuse of digital technologies over the last twenty-five years. In his curatorial statement, McFadden [PLATFORM's Director/Curator] claims:

As the Sidewalk Bleeds begins with a conundrum: as an exhibition, the works presented use advances in technologies to question or repurpose the intended applications of such technologies. What is useful to the larger society is useful in an entirely different way to the individual artists who comprise this group. The fallout of misuse is heavily philosophical. If we re-trace the research and development of so much technological advancement, many stem from the proliferation of war. Battle, in all of its of forms, has led to the development of more household techno-gadgets than we might suspect: the camera (in all variations), the internet, alarm systems, televisions, baby-monitors, cellular phones, and so on …

In gathering work by these six artists under the notion of exploring digital technology as cultural artifact, the goal is to create a dialogue concerning supposed trends in avant-garde applications of technological advancements. Placed in this specific, temporary, framework the individual artistic concerns overlap and produce a larger conversation regarding: geo-politics, globalization, poetry, love, and the incorporation of media in the everyday. With such diverse approaches to digital media, As the Sidewalk Bleeds also presents various political acts. To go against or re-appropriate advances in technology for the purposes of an artwork can be seen as a fundamental act of resistance / revolution / advancement / foresight / etc. Furthermore, each piece acts as a personal meditation on navigating our media-saturated time.
Please join us for the opening reception + informal artist talks Saturday, the 12th of September beginning at 7PM. Refreshments will be served.

Stay tuned for future announcements regarding programming associated with As the Sidewalk Bleeds, including: curatorial tours, artist talks, and poetry readings taking place throughout September and October.

PLATFORM wishes to acknowledge the support of its membership, board of directors, volunteers, and staff. As the Sidewalk Bleeds is made possible with funding received from Manitoba Arts Council, Winnipeg Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, The Winnipeg Foundation, and Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. Special mention is owed to our colleagues at Plug In ICA and aceartinc., and Kamloops Art Gallery for their generous in-kind contributions and technical support.

EXHIBITION

RECEPTION + DISCO PARTY

ARTIST LECTURE + UTOPIAN CONVERSATION

For more information, please contact the Centre directly: PLATFORM | 121-100 Arthur Street | Winnipeg, Manitoba | R3B 1H3 | 204.942.8183 | www.platformgallery.org

::

Clive Holden has exhibited his film and video works both nationally and internationally at venues including the Anthology Film Archives, New York; the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria; the International Festival of Films on Art, Montreal; Kosmopolis Festa Internacional de la Literatura, Barcelona; and the Festival di Palazzo Venezia, Rome. He has lectured and given talks for Kino Arsenal, Berlin; Holland Festival, Amsterdam; the Images Festival, Toronto; the Danish Film Institute, Copenhagen; aceartinc., Winnipeg; the Deutsch-Amerikanische Institut, Heidelberg; the Royal Danish Academy of Art, Copenhagen; and the University of Manitoba School of Architecture, Winnipeg. In 2003, his book accompanying the film project Trains of Winnipeg was short-listed for the Manitoba Book of the Year Award and the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award.

Vicky Chainey Gagnon holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with a concentration in film studies and art history (Concordia University, 1999), as well as a Master of Arts degree in interdisciplinary studies with a specialization in the history and practice of avant-garde filmmaking practices (York University, 2005). She is presently working towards a Ph.D in Muséologie, patrimoine et médiation at UQAM while also working at the Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop’s University, where she has been Curator since 2005. Her current research concerns emerging institutional curatorial practices in Canada. She is the author of several essays on visual and media artists such as Nelson Henricks, Denyse Thomasos, Lucie Chan, and Carla Zaccagnini, and has also been the organizer and curator of numerous exhibitions of Canadian and international art in Toronto, Winnipeg, Montréal and Sherbrooke.

This exhibition at PLATFORM Centre for Photographic + Digital Arts, presented by the WNDX Festival of Film & Video Art and circulated by the Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop’s University, will include the following Utopia Suite segments: Utopia Suite Disco and Ken Dryden, as well as the on-line, on-going community outreach and conversation:Y.O.U. (Your Own Utopia).

Circulated by:

Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop’s University
2600 College St.
Sherbrooke, Quebec
Canada, J1M 1Z7
+1 819-822-9600, ext. 2260
Curator: Vicky Chainey Gagnon
www.ubishops.ca/foreman/index.html

Exhibition

24 April - 30 May 2009

Reception

24 April, Friday 7-10PM

Artist Talk with DGC~CGA

25 April, Saturday 3PM

PLATFORM centre for photographic + digital arts is pleased to present an exhibition featuring the work of two art collectives — The Icelandic Love Corporation [ILC] from Reykjavik, and The Discriminating Gentlemen’s Club ~ Le Club des Gentilshommes Avertis (DGC~CGA ) from Montreal — in association with Núna (now), a festival celebrating the contemporary artistic and cultural connection between Iceland and Canada,  now in its 3rd year.

Organized by J.J. Kegan McFadden + Freya Björg Olafson, this exhibition brings together lens-based [video and photo] performance pieces that explore constructions of gender, class, and tradition vis-à-vis cultural stereotypes, colonialism, and the slippages of memory and/or mimicry in our contemporary political and global climates.

In their video/photo series, Dynasty [2007] ILC offers a hypothetical, though highly plausible, reaction to the end of electricity due to global warming. They ask the question: What does the modern high-class housewife do when electricity is gone? In response, the ILC take on the roles of three such women, who have escaped from their safe town houses to enjoy the last moments on one of the Earth’s remaining snowcaps. Dressed in their warmest furs, they fish, hunt birds for food, sit by the fire and sing, crochet, and contemplate. Their phones do not work; their laptops are long gone. This is a luxury and a privilege, since most other places are sweltering hot.

In comparison, the DGC offer their hilarious video spoof of an English foxhunt. Dressed in long johns rather than proper breeches, and riding a Styrofoam cut-out of a horse rather than the real thing, this crew follows a taxidermy fox being pulled across a frozen pond. The faux bravado climaxes with a jubilant feast once the creature is ‘shot. ‘

These over-the-top performances of seemingly ridiculous, passé acts of high-society ask the audience to reconsider contemporary traditions and whether, in the instance of climate change or the future of endangered species [animal or human], they maintain relevance.

As part of its commitment to critical discourse,  PLATFORM has commissioned PhD candidate, Laurie K. Bertram,  to write an interpretive essay to accompany this exhibition. Bertram reads the work of these two collectives through a historical lens of the Icelandic Independence Movement and subsequent development of the Fjallkona [a fictional mountain woman-turned-symbolic princess].

Please join us for the opening reception Friday, the 24th of April beginning at 7PM. Refreshments will be served.

For more information about this exhibition, please contact the Centre directly:
PLATFORM | 121-100 Arthur Street | Winnipeg, Manitoba | R3B 1H3 | 204.942.8183 | www.platformgallery.org

For more information on other events happening throughout the Núna (now) Festival, log on to: www.nunanow.com

Bios:

The Icelandic Love Corporation [Jóní Jónsdóttir, Eirún Sigurdardóttir, and Sigrún Hrólfsdóttir; aka: The ILC] are a dynamic Icelandic performance art trio, who have received considerable attention in recent years in their ambitious pursuit to spread their message of ‘Love conquers all. The future is beautiful.’ Performing in diverse locations –spaces ranging from live television broadcasts to barren locations in the interior of Iceland, the ILC are committed to reaching a wide audience. Demonstrating intimacy and surprise they demand reaction in their uninhibited display of extravagance and beauty. Their work is bittersweet, flirting with amateurism and developing affection with their audience. Existing outside the parameters of critical discourse and art history, their work finds more in common with tragic fairytales and everyday pop songs. <www.ilc.is>

The Discriminating Gentleman’s Club ~ Le Club des Gentilshommes Avertis (DGC~CGA) is a private order in the form of an artist collective. The club’s presence is manifest in two distinct ways. The first is a public façade constituted of varied social events, the planting of public gardens, kite flying, film making, sculptural ephemera and the like. The second is a closed aesthetic inversion of the club’s public customs performed to a select audience and regulated by legally binding non-disclosure agreements. The DGC~CGA holds three honorary chapters in Melbourne (Australia), Birmingham (UK) and The Hague (the Netherlands). < www.dgc-cga.org>

Laurie K. Bertram is an intermittent Winnipegger and a history PhD candidate at the University of Toronto. Her dissertation explores the development of Icelandic Canadian culture in the twentieth century via alternate terrains of ethnic expression, including material culture, food, ghost stories, and knitting patterns.

PLATFORM wishes to thank Manitoba Arts Council, Winnipeg Arts Council, and The Winnipeg Foundation for their continued support; as well as Núna [now], The Manitoba Museum, and The Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies at The University of Winnipeg for their sponsorship and assistance with this exhibition.

Exhibition

18 December - 24 January 2008*

Opening Reception

Thursday 18 December 7PM

(Image: Jason Dee, “We’re going for a trip across the water”, 2006)

* Please note the centre will be closed for holidays beginning the 21st of December 2008 until the 6th of January 2009.