Post-Mortem Survey for Making Art Work 2020-21
Thank you for participating in the Making Art Work professional development workshop series co-presented by Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre, Union Gallery, and Agnes Etherington Art Centre. We are looking for feedback from participants of the program to inform future professional development programs. The survey should take no longer than 10 minutes to complete. Your answers will be anonymous. Thank you for your time!
Current
Soft Sensing
Greta Grip and Lee Jones
State of Flux Gallery at Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre
May 17th - July 19th
In this exhibition: Soft Sensing at Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre, we explore knitting as a data recording medium. Here audiences will both create and unravel knit stitches through active participation and sensors in the environment. Our exhibition will have three methods of participation: (1) human unraveling by manually pulling on the knitted panels to unravel them by hand, (2) walking in front of our unraveling machines that sense human movement, and (3) walking into areas of the building with sensors that measure movement and will cause rows of stitches to be made on mini knitting machines.
The Life of a Party is a series of knitting machines that respond to the physical activity in the gallery space, creating several long-knitted party streamers. As individuals walk by the sensor it will knit a row on the streamer, tangibilizing the movement of individuals through the space. With the colour of the yarn changing each week, we will be able to see the ebbs and flows of movement through the building. In contrast to most recording methods, our record of this exhibition will be an imperfect, tangible, soft, colourful, knitted party streamer.
The goal of our Unraveling series is to use making and unmaking to reflect on collective feelings around a period of time, to break them down and take them apart in order to better understand them. As individuals approach the installation, their presence will be sensed through ultrasonic sensors that then spin a motor to wind up the knitted panels until they fully disappear.
This artwork series makes use of the physical affordances of machine knitting. Knitting is a process that uses a single yarn that is manipulated into looping knots to create a textile. Due to this fabrication method, machine knitted panels can also be unraveled by pulling the end of a piece and turned back into a spool of yarn. Machine knitting specifically is influenced by the history of computing. With her hacked knitting machine Greta makes image graphics in binary colours, with two stitches: a knit and a purl stitch that can be translated into binary 1s and 0s, are then automatically stitched as a pattern on her machine. By unraveling these graphical knitted panels, new layers are revealed underneath to create a slow textile video.
This project has been produced with the support of Artengine.
Meet the Artists
The Shape of Memory
Alexandra Majerus
Window Gallery at Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre
May 17th - July 19th
Whenever I visit my mother in Barbados, she tries to purge things from the family home, including, during one trip, shoeboxes of heavily damaged family photos from the 1980s. The tropical humidity had damaged the poor quality one-hour print photos sticking them together and mottling them with mildew. A collection of small uneven bricks, they contained the narrative of my youth, portraying family and friends - some no longer alive - and landscapes of a more isolated, pre-internet time on the island.
The Shape of Memory comprises four sections: Fragmented, Constructing, Traces, and Recollecting. They consider what lost and illegible photos represent and explore the meaning of home, particularly when the concept of home has become ambiguous, how we perceive the past and recreate memories through photographs and how the damaged photos become a metaphor of the imperfection of human memory. The unpeeling and re-layering of the "photo bricks" tells a story of loss due to migration and climate that is common to many.
Fragments consists of enlarged scans of the archival family photographs paired with photo collages and abstracted drawings of my family tree located throughout the Caribbean based on my DNA. Fragments mimics how our memories can be both lucid and completely inaccurate pairing memories together incorrectly. In Constructing, the photo-bricks are used to create new memories. Traces documents the backs of the photographs and honours women, often the archivists of families. Recollecting is a contemplative video of the images and memories being pulled apart.
Meet the Artist
Growing Together: Seeds of Connection
Kyara Andrews, Oriana Confente, Tania Craan, Géorgie Gagné, Jill Glatt, Narmin Kassam, Eastal Law, Kathleen Morris, Abby Nowakowski, Michelle Peraza, Erin Roundsky, and Taylor Tye.
Main Gallery at Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre
May 17th - July 19th
Growing Together: Seeds of Connection brings together a diverse group of artists whose work reflects on the vital interdependence between nature, sustainability, and community. At a time when environmental and social systems face increasing strain, this exhibition offers a space to contemplate the intricate balance between human life and the natural world—and the ways in which we care for both.
The works on view explore themes of ecological preservation, communal resilience, and the quiet strength of shared stewardship. Through a range of media and artistic approaches, the exhibition invites viewers to consider how our individual and collective actions shape the environments we inhabit and the relationships we build within them.
From intimate reflections on land and lineage to expansive visions of interconnected futures, Growing Together highlights the power of art to inspire reflection, cultivate empathy, and nurture change. This exhibition is not only a celebration of creativity, but a call to tend to our world—and each other—with intention and hope.
