Category: General

Exhibition dates: March 12 – April 16, 2021
Please review our COVID-19 procedures in full here.

Scroll to the bottom of this page to view documentation of this exhibition.

Click here to watch a video walk-through of the exhibition.

Virtual artist talk: Saturday March 20, 2pm CT
ASL interpretation is available by request for Deaf attendees. Requests must be submitted by 5pm on Wednesday March 17 to askmartha@printmakers.mb.ca.

Virtual artist talk: Saturday March 20, 2pm CT
ASL interpretation is available by request for Deaf attendees. Requests must be submitted by 5pm on Wednesday March 17 to askmartha@printmakers.mb.ca.

The virtual artist talk will be delivered via Zoom. To access this event, join the Zoom meeting at 2pm CT on March 20 by clicking on this link: https://zoom.us/j/91741113797 or by using this meeting ID: 917 4111 3797. Zoom’s automatic closed captioning function will be enabled during the presentation. You do not need to download Zoom ahead of time, but you may do so at https://zoom.us.

This event will be recorded. Please turn off your video when joining the Zoom meeting if you prefer not to be recorded.

Exhibition text by Francesca Carella Arfinengo

Reception: TBD

Some lucky Martha Street Studio members will receive an artist poster by April Dean with their next newsletter–renew your membership today!

These events are free to attend and open to the public.

– – – – – – – –

Martha Street Studio is pleased to present Futures Barren/Futures Abundant, a solo exhibition of work by April Dean (AB).

Futures Barren/Futures Abundant builds a connection between the regenerative qualities of plants through propagation from clippings, the generosity of the printmaking medium through disbursement of the multiple, and the potential for humans to better understand themselves as a multiple and regenerative part of a much greater and abundant whole.

Artist statement:

Late-stage capitalism has us trapped in our role as consumer and in fierce and almost constant competition for what is sold to us as limited resources and a threat of scarcity. Looking for ways to resist this narrative, affirm my belief that we are living in a time of abundance, and that there is, in fact, “enough,” I turned my attention to the houseplant as a locus, symbol, and metaphor to work through these ideas. In my art practice and my life outside the studio the houseplant has continued to foster a sense of growing care and value for relationships that exist beyond language. It has also been a constant reminder of the extractive and deeply problematic colonial worldview where ”nature” is something to be owned rather than cared for. Gazing out the window upon a manicured lawn, carefully organized garden or urban park, I’ve been trained all my life to understand the outside, the other side of the window pane, as a separate system and not as one I am inextricably a part of. Can the work of trying to unlearn and relearn better systems of coexistence be accomplished through work in the studio? What does the context of art making have to do with reimaging an abundant future? Does printmaking and all the community mindedness inherent to its practice offer lessons in how to move forward? The works offered in Futures Barren / Futures Abundant  feel fragmented and layered much like these questions, as they keep coming together and then drifting apart, resisting any sense of solid ground but rather forming more questions and framing more views of possible futures.

April Dean is a visual artist living in Treaty 6 territory, in Amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada). Her work has been exhibited across Canada and Internationally in a number of group exhibitions. She is an arts & culture administrator, community advocate, sometimes writer, and often a teacher. With formal training in photographic technology and printmaking, her work is constructed of lens-based and language fragments. In 2012 she was granted a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Fine & Media Art from NSCAD University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She is the Executive Director of the Society of Northern Alberta Print-Artists (SNAP), a non-profit & artist-run centre.

Dean’s work can be viewed online at www.aprildeanart.com and on Instagram @adeanartallthetime.

Exhibition dates: January 15 – February 19, 2021
Please review our COVID-19 procedures in full here.

Scroll to the bottom of this page to view  documentation of this exhibition.

Click here to watch a video walk-through of the exhibition.

Virtual artist talk: Saturday January 23, 2pm CT
ASL interpretation is available by request for Deaf attendees. Requests must be submitted by 5pm on Wednesday January 20 to askmartha@printmakers.mb.ca.

The virtual artist talk will be delivered via Zoom. To access this event, join the Zoom meeting at 2pm CT on January 23 by clicking this link: https://zoom.us/j/95136860177 or by using this meeting ID: 95136860177. Zoom’s automatic closed captioning function will be enabled during the presentation. You do not need to download Zoom ahead of time, but you may do so at https://zoom.us.

This event will be recorded. Please turn off your video when joining the Zoom meeting if you prefer not to be recorded.

Reception: TBD

Exhibition text by Lauren Lavery

These events are free to attend and open to the public.

– – – – – – – –

Inversion engages with the anxiety, fear, and speculation about the future of the planet by imaging the world if the Anthropocene reaches its predicted negative climax of uninhabitable climate change, shrinking biodiversity, and unsustainable development. Imagining what remains after the projected extinction of humanity, the work explores the idea of systemic failure by examining the relationship between the biologic, environmental, and man-made. Blurring the lines between the human body, the natural and the manufactured landscapes, the exhibition traces a speculative history of the Earth from creation to destruction, questioning and emphasizing the role of human industry through the conspicuous absence of people.

Artist statement:

My combined interest in psychology, anatomy, and memory has previously led me to explore the concept of embodied memory in my practice. Embodied memory is the idea that the human body physically records experiences and trauma in its cells, tissues, and genes. Recently, I have begun to examine the similar ways the environment and the human body processes and remembers trauma. Paralleling the system of the human body to the ecosystem, my work attempts to compare how both the Earth and body retain deep forms of memory in the atoms, molecules, and structures they are composed of. The idea that the environment has memory raises the question of the permanency of damage and pollution caused by human industry in the current epoch of the Anthropocene.
 
My work explores the anxiety, fear, and speculation about the future of the planet by imaging the world if global warming reaches its predicted negative climax of uninhabitable climate change, shrinking biodiversity, and unsustainability. Drawing inspiration from early anatomical illustrations, earth science diagrams, industrial and urban architecture; my prints, print-based installations and drawings engage with our anxieties, fears, and speculations about the health of the planet and the viability of the human species. The work explores the idea of systemic failure while drawing parallels between the biologic, environmental, and man-made.  The layering and juxtaposition of these references creates speculative landscapes that are simultaneously strange and familiar, ruined and animate, geologic and bodily.

Jill Ho-You is an Assistant Professor in Print Media at the Alberta University of the Arts in Calgary, AB. Her practice explores the intersection of trauma, embodied memory, and the environment through a mixture of print media, bioArt, installation, and drawing. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including solo exhibitions at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and The New Gallery in Calgary, AB. She has participated in numerous group shows such as at the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, Japan; International Print Center New York, USA; and the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Art, ROC.

Ho-You is the recipient of grants from the Canada Council for Arts and Alberta Foundation for the Arts and has participated in residencies at Open Studio in Toronto, ON, the University of Windsor, ON and St. Michael’s Printshop in St. John’s, NL. 

Her work can be viewed online at www.jillhoyou.com and on Instagram @jrhoyou.

Exhibition Dates: Friday September 4 – Friday October 9, 2020

Opening Reception: Friday September 4, 5-8 pm
Visitors must bring and wear a mask while inside the building. Be prepared to wait outside the building if space is not immediately available upon your arrival. There will be no food & drinks at receptions until otherwise noted. Please review our COVID-19 procedures in full here.

Virtual Artist Talk: Saturday September 19, 2pm
ASL interpretation will be provided for this event via Zoom. This artist talk is free to attend and open to the public. To access this virtual artist talk, join the Zoom meeting at 2pm on Saturday 19 by clicking this link: https://zoom.us/j/97525705942 or by joining the meeting using this meeting ID: 975 2570 5942. You do not need to download Zoom ahead of time, but you may do so at https://zoom.us.

Exhibition Text by Jaime Black

These events are free to attend and open to the public.

– – – – – – – –

Martha Street Studio is pleased to present Solar Noon, a solo exhibition of work by Leigh Bridges (MB).

Solar Noon is an installation of large silkscreened, laser-cut prints including pop-out designs that fold into paper sculptures, a series of offset printed die-cut posters, and a video animation. In this work, the subject of solar energy technology serves as an interface between Leigh Bridges’ ongoing investigation of atmospheric landscape, light, and colour in painting and experiments in use, imagination, and improvisation in design. Employing modes of production which range from highly precise commercial fabrication to intuitively composed hand-silkscreened monoprints, the work aims to express a love of material and to create dialogue between refined structural processes and the spontaneous agency to make, build, and connect. The exhibition synthesizes approaches central to design and painting through printmaking, framing, and reflecting landscape via overlays of geometric form to connote a practical, intimate, and evolving relationship between user and environment.

Leigh Bridges is an artist whose interdisciplinary practice builds on the legacies of romanticism and modernism to explore the possibilities surrounding DIY designed technologies in relation to idealism and use. Bridges lives and works in Winnipeg and holds a Master’s degree in Fine Arts from the University of Victoria. Bridges has exhibited widely in Canada and Europe, most recently at AGAlab Atelier Grafisch Amsterdam, Plan Z (Miguel Hernández University, Altea Spain), Arebyte 17 with Become Become (London UK), Paul Petro Contemporary (Toronto), and Gallery Simon Blais (Montreal). Her work is part of several private and corporate collections, including Bank of Montreal, Toronto Dominion Bank, and Global Affairs Canada. Bridges holds a position of Assistant Professor of Art and Design at the University of Manitoba. She is represented by Paul Petro Contemporary in Toronto.

The artist gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and financial assistance provided by the Manitoba Arts Council.

For more information about Leigh Bridges, please visit www.leighbridges.com.

Artist Statement:

The starting point for Solar Noon is a series I completed while in residence at AGAlab (Amsterdam’s Grafisch Atelier) in April 2019. While there, I created eight large silkscreened, laser-cut prints which I imagined would represent landscape “reflected” on solar panels and also connect with ideas of atmosphere and light developed in my painting practice. I intuitively combined my own bitmapped landscape photographs and colour blends with linear schematics, some of which were popped out and folded into sculptures. I was interested in the optical pleasure of physically layering the ink, producing unexpected results in composition and colour while enjoying material idiosyncrasies. The act of printing, transporting large screens and moving physically around the work, as well as the optical resonance built up was also critically important to the sense of specificity implicit in these monoprints.

I developed the Energy Collector die-cut posters using a more meticulous, almost wholly digital process while referencing instructional manuals and commercially conceived off-the-grid technologies. I’ve framed these “prototypes” as a small edition and have presented the offset printed piece as a stack in the gallery, with some available for viewers to take. With this work, I’m interested in “design dissemination,” exploring the more widespread distribution possible with commercially printed multiples.

Finally, the Solar Array animation picks up on the unfolding and installation of the imagined technology, once again employing “instructional poetics” to show the array’s solar alignment and the sun’s stoic movement across the sky. Here I was interested in the atmospheric details, the small sounds, and the shifting lighting conditions. This work engages with romantic imagery while pondering the ameliorative potential of design and technology, framing the landscape while suggesting an intimate and evolving connection with the environment.

We are glad to continue the Annual Members’ Show + Sale this year in a new format: this year, we will divide the artworks submitted by members into small groupings, featuring them in a virtual gallery as well as a weekly rotation of featured artworks at Martha Street Studio. Each member may submit one artwork that is unframed, two-dimensional, and up to 11×17″.

The work-drop off period is now open until August 8. Download a submission form by clicking here. 

The opening reception for this year’s Members’ Show will be held in conjunction with the reception for Leigh Bridges’ solo exhibition, Solar Noon on Friday September 4, 5-8pm.

Depending on the number of works submitted, the 2020 Members Show + Sale may be ongoing over a number of months, which means the opportunity to sell artwork submitted will run for the same amount of time. Please review our submission form for further details.

Exhibition Dates:
Thursday July 9 – Friday August 21, 2020

Opening Reception: Thursday July 9, 5-8 pm
Artist will be in attendance. At this time we are allowing up to nine visitors at a time in the gallery during opening receptions. Visitors must bring and wear a mask while inside the building. Be prepared to wait outside the building if space is not immediately available upon your arrival. There will be no food & drinks at receptions until otherwise noted.

Virtual Artist Talk: Wednesday July 22, 6pm
This artist talk will be delivered via Zoom. To access this virtual artist talk, join the Zoom meeting at 6pm on July 22 by going to this link: https://zoom.us/j/93667519552 or by using this meeting ID: 936 6751 9552. Note that you do not need to download Zoom ahead of time, but you may do so at https://zoom.us. ASL interpretation is available by request. Requests must be submitted by 5pm on July 18 by emailing askmartha@printmakers.mb.ca or calling 204-779-6253.

Exhibition Text by Jean Borbridge

These events are free to attend and open to the public. Please review our procedures regarding COVID-19 before visiting the gallery.

Martha Street Studio is pleased to present Patch, Mend, Piece Together, a solo exhibition of work by Suzie Smith (MB).

The screen printed works in Patch, Mend, Piece Together showcase Suzie Smith’s intuitive and spontaneous practice, engaging with the architecture of the gallery space. Described as an “antithesis” to the typical screen printing process, her process and concept are based on rules and rule breaking and focuses on the physical act of making

Suzie Smith is an artist who works with printmaking and design that expands into sculpture, installation and video. Her work often incorporates the deconstruction and transformation of images and materials in an attempt to create new or multiple meanings. Smith creates systems and structures for her print process that act as a tool to build, take apart and push against. In addition to her own practice she is a founding member of Parameter Press.

Smith has had a number of solo exhibitions across Canada and has been included in group exhibitions in Canada, The United States and Europe. She received her BFA from Concordia University in Montréal (2004) and her MFA from The Glasgow School of Art in Scotland (2011). She has held various arts administrative and teaching positions in the Winnipeg arts community including working at Martha Street Studio for many years.

The artist thanks the Manitoba Arts Council for their generous support.

Find more of Suzie Smith’s work online at www.suzie-smith.com or on instagram at @suziedsmith. Martha Street Studio’s Webstore also features a number of Smith’s prints for sale.

Artist Statement:

Patch, Mend, Piece Together gathers several silkscreened series made with unconventional approaches to print and image making. Both the material and process are key determinants of the works’ meaning and motivations, which explore the possibilities and the power of disassembly and reassembly.

This exhibition brings together various art historical influences including minimalism, abstraction, process, and quilt making, as well as acts of mending and repair. The patterns in the artwork are created by focusing on specific shapes which repeat throughout a series. At the same time, space is created within each piece to disrupt this flow and insert new variations into the patterns. This shifting relationship between similarity and difference permeates much of my work, questioning ideas of uniformity.

To inform my process, sometimes I create arbitrary rules for how a set of repeated shapes may interact; other times I rip patterns apart and then piece them back together in varied ways. The finished pieces become diagrams of a system devised to illustrate a thought or idea. The images resemble landscapes and structures that appear as though they could topple and be rebuilt at any time with a new set of rules.

This manner of printmaking celebrates the medium’s potential by challenging its traditional purpose of creating editions. I am interested in print as a set of parameters and processes that an artwork is sifted through. To create an image as a print, various steps might be taken such as applying or playing with mirror reflection, halftone, threshold, layering, transparency and opacity, and turning an image into a positive or negative, to name a few. These modes of deconstruction are the tools for creating a whole image but they can also act as filters; ways to explore—methodically and spontaneously—the ideas behind the images. This is a very potent quality of printmaking: it is not only an act of creation but an act of thinking.

Over the last year, I have been thinking a lot about my own constructed understanding of the world. Realizing that so much of what has been learned in schools, families, workplaces, and social networks needs to be unpacked, re-examined, and rectified, particularly in relation to issues of in/exclusion and discrimination, quietly informed my work. The acts of re-imagining in this exhibition are metaphors for how structures, including those that affect our societal systems, are not fixed. They are capable of being re-imagined and re-made in ways that are better for everyone.