Category: Exhibitions

Works by Ewa Tarsia (left), Bramwell Enan (centre), and Suzie Smith (right)

Martha Studio Studio is excited to host our 2022 Member’s Show + Sale! 

Exhibition Dates: November 4 – November 25, 2022

All member’s works on display are available to purchase. Pick up a great holiday gift, or add to your collection! This expansive collection of printmaking has something for everyone.

This year’s collection can be viewed in the gallery below.

Contact gallery@printmakers.mb.ca or askmartha@printmakers.mb.ca to inquire for purchasing.

Exhibition Dates: September 16 – October 21, 2022

Opening Reception: Friday September 16 @ 5-8pm

Virtual artist talk: Saturday September 17 @ 1pm CST
ASL interpretation will be provided and live captions will be enabled.
This talk is free to attend and open to the public.

Click here to join the Zoom meeting.

Exhibition Text by Roewan Crowe.

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Martha Street Studio is pleased to present Forlorn Visitations, a solo exhibition by Nat Cann (NB).

Forlorn Visitations is an examination into the depths of New Brunswick, the backroads and little lost places within central Atlantic Canada, the places not along the more tourist-oriented coast, as well as a collection of other visitations made during nationwide residencies. Everything from the playful exploration of Calgary’s need for coffee to fuel the fuel industry to the haunting past of Canada’s involvement in WW2 interments camps. It is as much a celebration of Canadian living as it is a critical deposition on colonial acts.

Artist Statement //

In early 2020, before the world had its collective breakdown, Nat Cann traveled to the Magdalen Islands of Quebec for a two week residency wherein a series of work was fashioned regarding the haunting of the isles, a place of things well painted. The intention with this residency was to find a spirit, that which draws people to places of expulsion, cold waters and winds. In the end, it was a mixture of everything sprinkled in francophone cultural via the Acadian expulsion, and how said migration has claimed this land; particularly, the many lush houses of untameable colors. Houses not painted to match their wild surroundings, rather, to emulate them. And this idea extends to (almost) every corner of the isles. From their boats to the dog’s house, everything has a style all its own, a culture formed and finalized. It was this uncovering of an archipelago’s haunting that sparked an expanding career of residencies and print.

Well Painted Places, the Magdalen visitation, was co-funded through ArtsNB’s Career Development AiR grant and swiftly followed by Adrift, a response to the withering coasts of the Atlantic; and Stelae & Stoic, two printed installations inquiring into places whose settler history/industrial narrative has been either upheld or repurposed for the needs of new industries and leisure. These works lead to more residencies in relation to the original Magdalen visitation, and so on and so on. What has accumulated over the past few years has been a collection of residency works wherein, and in chagrin to the pandemic, a similar methodology has been told, visitations to multiple different places so as to document and uncover what haunts said location. Be it Calgary’s coffee culture fuelling the fuel industry or Port Union, Newfoundland’s simple existence as a collection of lonely red boxes, every town has a tale to tell.

Artist Bio //

Nat Cann (he/him) is a printmaker focused upon the haunting of lands – ideologies and industries keeping afloat Canadian notions of colonial heritage. This printed matter, often a mix of past and present examined through modern photography and archival photos is paired with installation as a means to further query the haunting of a place. Nat’s work has been exhibited across Canada and has been consistently supported by ArtsNB’s funding programs and the Canada Council for the Arts. Nat obtained his BFA from Mount Allison University (2012) and now resides in Saint John, New Brunswick, a colonial coastal city upon the unceded territory of the Wolastoqiyik peoples.

Nat can be found online at nattcann.com and on Instagram at @nattcann

Exhibition documentation by Sarah Fuller, below.

Exhibition Dates: Friday July 29 – Friday, September 2, 2022

Opening Reception: Friday August 5 @ 5-8pm

Virtual artist talk: Saturday August 6 @ 1pm CST
ASL interpretation will be provided and live captions will be enabled.
This talk is free to attend and open to the public.

Click here to view the Artist Talk

Exhibition Text by Alyssa Bornn.

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Martha Street Studio is pleased to present Floral Overload, a solo exhibition by Cynthia Dinan-Mitchell (QC).

Floral Overload inverts the hierarchy of art through an overflowing installation as anachronistic still-life, inviting viewers to delve into the worlds of printmaking, ceramics and decoration against the backdrop of botanically-scented wallpaper. Over a screen of flora and fauna, Dinan-Mitchell intervenes with successive layers of elaboration; varying from monochrome works to highly saturated hand-painted silkscreens and printed ceramic plates exploring the artistic genre of still life, Dinan-Mitchell appropriates and updates this historically pictorial genre, declining it in several states and scales.

From contour drawing to installation, Dinan-Mitchell uses the codes and rules of composition of traditional vanities: the central point of view, the narrow frame and the closed composition, set against some of her favorite objects. Jewelry, ornate porcelain, books, skulls, flowers, insects, fruits and corals are therefore interwoven and symbolize sometimes the vanity of wealth, power and knowledge, sometimes the mortal destiny of human life. To these classic elements and conventions of the still life, Dinan-Mitchell integrates a visual vocabulary of her own.

Artist Statement //

In Cynthia Dinan-Mitchell’s work, we, as viewers, are impelled to revisit whole swathes of art history, and to reconsider styles, genres and techniques we would normally think of as incompatible. In her syncretic approach, Dinan-Mitchell brings together a wide range of influences and methods: the baroque, 17th-century Dutch still life painting, the chiaroscuro, contour drawing, etching, Japanese and Western film aesthetics, screenprinting, ceramics, sculpture, and other, more recent elements such as surrealism and botany.

Dinan-Mitchell fully owns the decorative nature of her installations, inverting the hierarchy of low and high art. Indeed, she designs intimate and familiar mise-en-scènes where strangeness, freedom, seduction and humour can truly coexist. Audaciously time-travelling, gleefully conjuring up anachronisms and provoking impossible encounters between incongruous objects, Dinan-Mitchell constantly throws us off the scent.

Artist Bio //

1977, Cynthia Dinan-Mitchell works and lives in Quebec City where she explores silkscreening, ceramics and painting.  She has a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts (BFA) from Concordia University (Montreal, 2002) and a Masters in Visual Arts from Laval University (Quebec City, 2007). She has been awarded several grants and prizes including Plein Sud (2011).  Her work has been shown in several artist run centres such as Open Studio (Toronto), CIRCA art actuel (Montreal), and TRUCK (Calgary).  She has also shown her work in major events including La Manif d’art (Quebec Biennale 2017) and Orange 5 (2015). She has participated in residencies in Thailand, Australia, Germany and Belgium.

Cynthia can be found online at cynthia-dinan-mitchell.com and on Instagram @cdinanmitchell

Exhibition documentation by Sarah Fuller, below.

Exhibition Dates: Friday, June 10 – Friday, July 15, 2022

Please review our COVID-19 procedures in full here.

Virtual artist talk: Presented Saturday June 11 at 1pm CDT via Zoom.

Click here to watch James’s talk on Vimeo.

Exhibition Text by Jillian Groening.

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Martha Street Studio is pleased to present HorizonLine/BaseLine, a solo exhibition by James Boychuck-Hunter (AB).

HorizonLine/BaseLine engages with graphic symbolic iconographies, asserting an interest in the derivation of certain graphic sensibilities that surround us, but often go unnoticed. Central themes include the function of visual communication – both as intended, as well as the colloquial interpretations that develop through practical engagement – and communications conventions that mutate over time and as media technologies and processes change. HorizonLine/BaseLine occupies itself with examining structures that inform communication and considers the formal components of signification in abstract and broadly general terms.

HorizonLine/BaseLine hybridizes printmaking techniques, combining etching, woodcut and lithography into experimental constructions, assembling objects from component parts of printed materials. These works utilize a plurality of materials including printed paper, etched and folded steel, cut granite, wire, and steel bar.

 

Artist Statement

HorizonLine/BaseLine stems from an interest in the geometries of letterform and typographical design. Through print, my aim is to ponder and investigate the architectural sensibility of letterforms. In the graphic alphabetic system predominantly used in the West, the Latin alphabet, the baseline functions as a horizon and letterforms generally sit atop the baseline as though they are bearing the weight of their own elements. Using this baseline/horizon line parallel as a point of departure, I consider the relationship between interventions in the landscape, mounds, megaliths, or earthworks generally, their role as communicators in the landscape and if their sensibilities in any way, conscious or otherwise, informed the convention of elements sitting atop a baseline in the manner that we now take for granted.

HorizonLine/BaseLine posits that a vestigial sensibility of architecture and landscape are reflected in our writing system. It is a musing on an alternative system of graphic symbols that asserts an origin in architecture. HorizonLine/BaseLine considers the plethora of lost or abandoned writing systems that collectively resulted in the letterforms that make up the Latin alphabet. 

 

Artist Bio

James Boychuk-Hunter is an artist working in printmaking, drawing and sculpture. He has an MFA from The University of Tennessee in Knoxville and a BFA from the University of Alberta in Edmonton. He has exhibited in the North America, Europe, and Asia.

He has received grants and awards including, a 2019 Boston Printmakers North American Biennial Purchase Prize, first place from in the “CLIP: An International Exhibition of Works on Paper” exhibition, visual arts production grants from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, as well as numerous scholarships. James is currently a sessional faculty member in the print media department at The Alberta University of the Arts, (AU Arts), in Calgary Alberta.

James can be found online at jamespbhunter.com and on Instagram @jamespbhunter

Exhibition documentation by Sarah Fuller.

 

Mother Tongue by Mark Laurin

Extended Exhibition Dates: Friday, February 25 – Friday, April 8, 2022
Please review our COVID-19 procedures in full here.

Virtual artist talk presented March 5, 2022.
Click here to view a recording of the talk on Vimeo.

Exhibition text by Lisa Kehler.

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Martha Street Studio is pleased to present Terra Firma, a solo exhibition by Mark Laurin (BC).

Terra Firma considers the impact of visual mediation on our understanding of the world. Through overlapping and interweaving layers of expressive mark-making, the works in this exhibition explore the codified ways in which we use line to make sense of our environment. Dense layers of descriptive lines are printed on semi-transparent media, often on both sides, to create ethereal and immersive images. Lines float on the surface, hinting at representation but eluding definitive interpretations.

The work hopes to spark a reflection on how we interpret visual language – how we read into it, what we expect from it, and how it shapes our cultural outlook.

Artist statement:

My work stems from an interest in the catalogue of graphics that code our world. Culling from the history of Western mark-making, from engravings to maps to diagrams, I reference line’s role as mediator between the outside world and our understanding of it. Line is a unit of representation: extend it, divide it, curl it and you have altered its meaning. Each character holds shared meanings, allowing for a common language – a system for translating the three-dimensional world onto a two-dimensional plane.

I seek out lines that suggest, among other things, particular textures, movements, or actions and drop them into a spatial void, left to drift without context or representational form. Instead, they build a new ecosystem, colliding and enmeshing with each other to create an atmosphere of fractured meaning and distorted perspectives. Our visual history is broken apart into a landscape of abstract language, one that questions how our visual language is shaped and how it shapes us.

Artist Bio:

Mark Laurin is an artist working primarily in screen print. His work explores line as mediator between the outside world and our understanding of it. Mark holds a BFA in Print Media from Concordia University (2012) and an MFA in Printmaking from Indiana University (2018). Recent shows include a two-person exhibition with Neah Kelly at Atelier Circulaire in Montreal, Quebec, and a solo exhibition at Centre[3] for Artistic + Social Practice in Hamilton, Ontario. He is currently based on Vancouver Island, on the traditional lands of the K’ómoks First Nation.

The artist would like to thank the Ontario Arts Council for their generosity in supporting this project.

Connect with Mark online at marklaurin.ca and on Instagram @marf.laurin

Exhibition documentation by Sarah Fuller.

 

Exhibition Dates: Friday, January 14 – Friday, February 11, 2022

Virtual Artist Talk – Saturday January 29th @ 1pm

In the exhibition ‘& I’m done with the woods’ Jonathan S. Green employs the use of historical and contemporary imagery from research in both texts and excursions into the landscape. The imagery reproduced in the body of work will appear ambiguous in scale, time, and purpose, and include mountains, forests, cabins, camps and fire – its presence and its effect. The cabin elements will provide a glimpse of human interaction in the natural world. How we have behaved and interacted in the landscape in the past while opening up new ideas for future interactions.

Jonathan S. Green is of Mi’kmaq and Inuit, and settler heritage from Labrador City, Newfoundland and Labrador. He does not know a lot about his Indigenous heritage but is trying to learn more. Green earned an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Alberta. He currently resides in Winnipeg, Manitoba – located on Treaty No. 1, the original lands of Anishinaabe, Ininiwak, Anishininiwak, Dakota, and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

His creative research investigates ideas around landscape and wilderness, bushcraft and survival, camping and shelter in the face of the climate crisis. Most recently, this has manifested in a reflection on the increased incidence of wildfires, particularly through his drawing and printmaking practice. 

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Our current COVID-19 protocols can be found here.
Please call (204) 779-6253 or email gallery@printmakers.mb.ca to book an exhibition viewing appointment for groups.

Please enjoy the online gallery of the exhibition & I’m done with the woods.

All documentation by Sarah Fuller.

We are glad to continue the Annual Members’ Show + Sale this year in an in-person & digitally friendly format: this year, we will feature all of the members work in the gallery, with viewings by appointment/drop-in, as well as in the virtual gallery below. 

The opening reception for this year’s Members’ Show was held December 10th, 5-8pm. As with our recent openings, we will be maintaining physical distancing requirements by restricting the total number of people permitted in the gallery to 5 at a time. Vaccination verification and masks are also required. We encourage you to book your visit ahead of time to avoid a line up.

Exhibition Dates: Friday, October 22 – Friday, November 26, 2021

Opening Reception: Friday, October 22, 2021 5-9 pm

Additional Programming: 
Virtual artist talk: Saturday November 6, 1pm CDT
ASL interpretation is available.

Zoom link click here

Meeting ID: 891 7157 9199
Passcode: 412469

These events are free to attend and open to the public.
Our current COVID-19 protocols can be found here.
Please call (204) 779-6253 or email askmartha@printmakers.mb.ca to book an exhibition viewing appointment.

Exhibition text by katnancy (to come)

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Martha Street Studio is pleased to present florescence, a solo exhibition by Joy Wong.

The grotesque body is one with no beginning or end, and is taking up too much, and one with its environment. In the main gallery, the exhibition is of a body “contaminating” the space. Cut-outs from etchings and lithographs are pasted over each other on the gallery walls, in an expansive collage. In this way, the gallery becomes an activated body, the walls become the surface, the skin. Sculptural acrylic monoprints drape and hang off of copper armatures. The basis of these prints are both loosely referencing bodily imagery (such as wrinkles, puckers, dimples, pimples, etc.) and in ambiguous shapes. This project is also a material investigation, as the ideas of the matrix and multiplicity are integral to the ever-expanding body. The corporeal is highlighted in this project, by the thrusting of the two-dimensional qualities of print into an immersive three-dimensional environment. 
 
Artist statement:
At the intersections of disgust and beauty, decay and decadence, my practice deals with materiality and the physicality of the human body. Personal history informs research about what it means to reckon with a body in space, meditate on the grotesque and abject, and navigate the meeting point of preservation and destruction. My practice has consisted of projects on the human body through a representational or on a phenomenological standpoint. Lately I have been investigating the notion of the matrix, both as the origin of production and the source of multiplication. I am interested in ideas of the grotesque, and in relation to that, the ideas surrounding abjectness, especially from a queer, diasporic perspective. My ongoing research has largely been based on skin – its role as mediator between interior and exterior worlds, and its relationship to the superficial and superfacial of mark-making and printing/painting. The marks on top of and within the layers of skins I create are fragmented and ambulant, with the potential to come together or fall apart. I am particularly invested in production that is in flux- in works that are on the cusp of deteriorating, falling, or ripping, or on the threshold of renewing, blooming, and coalescing.
 
Artist Bio:
Joy Wong (she/they) is an artist and educator based in Tkaronto/Toronto, who works in painting, print media, sculpture, and poetry. Their practice focuses on the intersections of decay and decadence, and connects material investigations with the shifting physicality of the body. Wong was a finalist for the 2018 RBC Canadian Painting Competition. She was the 2019 Pope Artist in Residence at NSCAD and has held residencies at St. Michael’s Print Shop in St. John’s, Newfoundland, and the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa, Ontario. They have received grants from the Canada Council of the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. 
Wong teaches at NSCAD University and University of Toronto. 

Connect with Joy Wong online at buomhof.com and on Instagram @buomhof.

Martha Street Studio gratefully acknowledges the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council and Winnipeg Arts Council for their dedicated support of our professional programming.

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Please enjoy the online gallery of the exhibition florescence.

all documentation by Sarah Fuller

Exhibition Dates: Friday, September 10 – Friday, October 8, 2021
Please review our COVID-19 procedures here.

Exhibition text by Julia Lafreniere here.

Martha Street Studio is pleased to present gathered together, a curated exhibition by Chloe Chafe, Adrienne Huard, and Mariana Muñoz Gomez.

Curatorial statement:

We would first like to acknowledge that we are on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Ininiwak, Anishininiwak, Dakota, and Dene Peoples, and on the Homeland of the Métis Nation. This is Treaty 1 Territory.

Art existing in public spaces has the power to shape neighbourhoods, to acknowledge the land we live on and come from, and to tell stories. Streets and online spaces become spaces wherein artists use graphics and direct engagement to facilitate communication in their communities amidst challenging political climates. Artists are the voice for movements and they offer access to complex stories by reinterpreting the issues at hand. They use their beautiful and striking images to create change. This exhibition focuses on the effective design that artists Chief Lady Bird, Isaac Murdoch, Lapiztola, Lido Pimienta, and Whess Harman create from a place of care and collaboration. Their power to create dialogue through various mediums is celebrated in and beyond the gallery walls.

An ethos of care, empowerment, and resistance is imperative to identifying and undoing the oppressive mechanisms of colonialism. Working as a musician, artist, and curator, Lido Pimienta embodies these values in her everyday praxis. Through her actions and creative practice, Pimienta explores themes including gender, race, and resilience. Her visual work is as exuberant and playful as her music and shares a boundless joy with her community. As part of gathered together and Wall-to-Wall Culture and Mural Festival, audiences are invited to join a conversation with Pimienta, presented in partnership with The Uniter.

Lapiztola and Isaac Murdoch strive to use their art for positive social change. Each of them have brought an accessibility to activist-based art that surpasses the locale of the artists through the internet, streets, banners, and picket signs. This promotes a powerful message to create unity across diverse audiences. Despite being located across the continent, Lapiztola and Murdoch share similarities using collage-style imagery with bold pop art to capture the viewer’s attention from afar. Their dedication to transferring their skills and knowledge to others unites us in meaningful ways for generations to come. Digital and in-person workshops presented in collaboration with these artists will provide the public with opportunities for hands-on engagement. The workshops are presented in partnership with Graffiti Art Programming and Wall-to-Wall Mural and Culture Festival.

Both Chief Lady Bird and Whess Harman’s art practices focus on the strength and power of their nations while rejecting colonial tropes that aim to disempower Indigenous Peoples. Much of their works are dedicated to taking up physical and conceptual space, within and outside the gallery walls. This exhibition invites them to share their voice on Treaty 1 territory as a way of empowering Indigenous relations all across Turtle Island. Within their illustrative works, they speak to the ways in which they celebrate family and kin, while providing compelling perspectives on the vast and fluid Indigenous knowledge systems that weave together on Turtle Island.

gathered together and associated programs are presented in partnership with Wall-to-Wall Mural and Culture Festival and Graffiti Art Programming, with additional funding from the Winnipeg Arts Council, Manitoba Arts Council and Building Communities Through Arts and Heritage.

Please enjoy the online gallery of the exhibition gathered together.

all documentation by Sarah Fuller