Exhibition // STEPHEN AVENUE LOCATION

EXHIBITION / June 16 - August 21, 2016
OPENING RECEPTION / Thursday, June 16, 7:00 PM | FREE
@ C / 117 8 Avenue SW, Calgary, Canada

CURATED BY
Ginger Carlson & Nate McLeod

WORKS BY
Brittney Bear Hat, Wednesday Lupypciw, MT JR. (Mohammad Rezaei & Joleen Toner), Sarah van Sloten, Heather Kai Smith

PRESENTED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
Sled Island Music & Arts Festival

Cream brings together six artists whose works explore a transition between two forms or ideas, bridging often-divergent conceptual spaces in order to develop a broader understanding of each. Past and present; memory and reality; physical and digital; boundaries found between disciplines, between artist and audience, or between artwork and gallery space. Whether the intention is to develop a deeper understanding of one’s history, surroundings, or society, each artist in Cream demonstrates that these forms are greater than the sum of their parts by employing elements of each to explore themes ranging from gender and identity to materiality, and using diverse mediums including installation, drawing, painting, video, and sculpture.

ARTISTS:
 
Brittney Bear Hat is a graduate from the Alberta College of Art and Design in 2011, where she majored in painting with an interest in collage and drawing. Based in Calgary, her work focuses on identity and belonging. Half Blackfoot and half Cree, Bear Hat makes work about memory and how her personal history is what makes her Native. Her work involves the process of taking her own family photos or personal items and combining them with text, retelling stories and memories. With each piece, Bear Hat is trying to figure out what is hers and what she can call home.
 
Wednesday Lupypciw is a labourer and Astrophysics student. Her occasional video + performance art practice is based in Calgary Alberta.
 
MT JR. (Pronounced Mount Junior) is an ongoing collaboration between Mohammad Rezaei and Joleen Toner. The collective's work lies somewhere between reality and fiction, presenting plastic, utopic -- ideal -- versions of the world that are reconstructed and rearranged with the hopes of escaping the mundane / conforming to the norm. MT JR. aims to make the work that they want to make, not the work that is expected of them. MT JR. has exhibited nationally at POP Montreal, Sled Island Music festival and Xpace Cultural Center.
 
Heather Kai Smith is an artist from Calgary, AB. Exhibiting work across Canada, attending residencies internationally and participating in workshops and festivals throughout North America, Smith’s work is engaged in drawing clues from the past to question subjectivity and loss. She is currently completing her Master’s of Applied Arts at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design. 
 
Sarah van Sloten is an Edmonton-based artist who primarily paints and makes installations. Van Sloten received her BFA from the Alberta College of Art and Design in 2010 in Drawing, and completed her MFA at the University of Windsor this Spring. She has been involved in several exhibitions across Canada.

Image (Above): MT JR., Zoloft Garden, installation view, Royal Canadian Legion, 2014

Image (Title): Heather Kai Smith, It becomes a sea, 2016, coloured pencil on paper, 64" x 48" (detail)