current projects
November 24, 2009
dream letters for granby october 2009, at 3e imperial, granby québec. 1000 dream letters written and mailed.
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what happens when nothing happens september 2009, at fofa gallery, montréal, québec. traveling group exhibition curated by véronique malo and emily mennerdahl.
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bia/oar (bureau d’investigation d’archives/office for archival review) august 2009, at centre des arts actuels skol, montréal.
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eating oranges after dark ongoing. the work has its own blog.
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transient traces a postcard made from the dream listener project for l’état d’urgence 2008, is now an ongoing obsession of writing, mailing, posting and twittering.
1000 names – la voix de l’est, granby québec
November 23, 2009
karen elaine spencer at sagamie
November 10, 2009
Karen Elaine Spencer
Karen Elaine Spencer
Artiste en résidence / Artist in Residence
English to follow
À travers ma pratique artistique, j’ausculte l’éphémère et examine la trajectoire que nous, en tant qu’êtres transitoires, décrivons dans l’espace. La perspective d’un mouvement linéaire vers l’avant se trouve déconcertée par des gestes performatifs qui semblent ne mener nulle part. Je prends le métro, je flâne, je me promène, je rêve : ces activités s’équivalent toutes en importance. Or, des segments temporels et des répétitions de mouvements sont définis afin que certaines séquences puissent se détacher des autres. Un motif est repris et entretenu dans le temps (souvent pendant un an), permettant d’engager un processus où il n’est plus possible de départager ma pratique artistique de mon quotidien. Je travaille avec ce qui est à portée de main, avec des matériaux qui témoignent de notre existence au jour le jour : carton, oranges, pain, craie. Par le détournement des matériaux, des intentions ou des mouvements, j’interviens dans divers espaces, avec l’espoir de modifier, ne serait-ce que légèrement, la perception de ce qui est possible.
Karen Elaine Spencer vit et travaille à Montréal (Québec) où elle a obtenu une maîtrise en arts de l’Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). En prenant le temps de prendre le temps, l’artiste puise dans l’ordinaire et met au jour le potentiel poétique de l’existence au quotidien. Ses œuvres ont été présentées dans différents centres culturels au Canada et en Europe. Ses plus récentes expositions sont rêves à la poste au 3e impérial (Granby), porteur de rêves à Dare-Dare (Montréal), i dreamt i ran away from home à Visualeyez (Edmonton) et lit de pain à Paris.
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My artistic practice investigates the fleeting and how we as transient beings circulate through space. The notion of a linear movement forward is confronted through performative gestures that lead nowhere. I ride the metro, I loiter, I ramble, I dream. Any one activity is deemed as important as any other and segments of time and repetitions of movement are delineated to separate certain moments from other moments. A body of work is sustained over time (often a year) enabling a process whereby my artistic practice is indistinguishable from my daily life. I work with what is near at hand, materials that speak of our day-to-day existence: cardboard, oranges, bread, chalk. Through a détournement of materials or intentions or movements I intervene into spaces; hoping to shift, ever so slightly, perceptions of what is possible.
Karen Elaine Spencer lives and works in Montréal, Québec where she obtained her Masters in Art at l’Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM.) Karen takes the ordinary events of daily life and mines these for their poetic underpinnings, taking the time to take time. Her work has been presented in art centres throughout Canada and Europe with recent exhibitions being: “dream letters for granby” at 3e impérial in Granby, “dream listener” at Dare-Dare in Montréal, “i dreamt I ran away from home” at Visualeyez in Edmonton, and “lit de pain” in Paris.
viva! art action blogging
September 28, 2009
for the past ten days (september 17 2009 to september 27 2009) i have been blogging for viva! art action. with my trusty note-pad (stolen from my son…) and pen. riding my bike like a maniac (yes; we did have nice weather) because i always thought i was going to be late (not taking into consideration these are other artists…like me…always behind time) and arriving in plenty of time. if you want to check out the blog do so…i am the blogger who starts every post with an exquisitely rendered drawing like the one here.
never happened (lets pretend it): an ongoing performative gesture in the fofa gallery window
September 16, 2009
squished oranges and orange peels on canvas tarp in gallery window.
today was the third day of performing my “ongoing performative gesture.” today was not a day of tenderness and i felt disconnected from my actions.
rather than:
sit on the stool and slowly take the orange into my hands and pierce the skin and insert my thumb and squish the juice out of the orange and tear the orange apart and let the orange pieces drop to the ground and hold my hands out in front of me and let the juice drip off and then dry my hands in front of the fan to then bend down and pick another orange to pierce the skin,
i fumbled around and squished some oranges quickly and tried to reconnect with the gestures, but then i went down onto the floor and took the light in my hands and began directing the light at the orange pieces on the floor and inspecting the dried flesh and skin and then i started to give each piece of orange its place and thought about violence and how it can start out as tenderness and how tenderness can shift to violence and the fan blew air over my body and the light was warm on my hands and it became o.k. to do this quiet arranging of orange pieces rather than doing what i had thought i should be doing.
no-one hears the sounds of oranges squishing and juice dripping other than me.
Labouring the Land
Marie-Michelle Deschamps and Michèle Lacombe
Gallery and black box:
What Happens When Nothing Happens
Independant Study Group (ISG) Véronique Malo and Emily Mennerdahl
The artists included in the exhibition are:
Chantal Durand, Anna Jane McIntyre, Tamara Henderson and Jon Knowles, Jacinthe Lessard, Sean Montgomery and Eric Simon, Diane Morin, Taien Ng-Chan, Lina Persson, Meghan Price, Jerry Ropson, Karen Elaine Spencer and Christin Wahlström.
Vernissage Friday 11th of September 2009, 5 à 7
Karen Elaine Spencer
Will present an ongoing performative gesture in the ST. Catherine Street window.
FOFA Mini-Skool
Saturday 12th of September 2009
13:00-16:30
We are sharpening our pencils to mark the start of the year. The FOFA is proud to present two exhibition projects that examine art, labour, learning and cultural perceptions of each with distinct methodologies and outcomes.
Please join the FOFA Gallery and FASA as we join together to present an afternoon of presentations, discussions, and interchange. The Independant Study Group and collaborating artists: Anna Jayne McIntyre, Chantal Durand, Taien-Ng-Chan, Fake It ‘Til You Make It (Eric Simon and Sean Montgomery) along with Marie-Michelle Deschamps and Michèle Lacombe, will host a series of events beginning at 1:00 and finishing up with a round table talk at 3:00.
“What Happens When Nothing Happens” is curated by Veronique Malo and Emily Mennerdahl, active members of the Independant Study Group (ISG), a nomadic artist collective. The curatorial project was conceived whilst working together in Gothenburg, Sweden.
The exhibition “What Happens When Nothing Happens” presents a variety of artists that are based in Montreal and Gothenburg. Although the participating artists vary in media, approaches and art practices they share a creative process that dialogues in its shapes, mediums and forms. The aim with the exhibition is to explore what happens in between, before, and after projects are conceived. Presented in the gallery are unedited ideas, sketches, drawings, thoughts, trials; everything and nothing that happens meanwhile something is being made.
Timetable and PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:
13:00 Artist’s talk
Chantal Durand works with sculpture, drawing, printing and installation whilst exploring the relation of uncanniness we maintain with our body.
13:30 Artist’s talk
Taien-Ng-Chan is a writer and film/videomaker who has written drama for stage, screen and radio. Taien incorporates daily travel (walking, riding the bus) as part of her art practice.
14:00
Fake It Til’You Make It, a collective that met at an amateur lumber jack competition consists of artists Eric Simon and Sean Montgomery. They will be giving a performative talk about “fake” artists and their inspiring art practices and work.
15:45 pause café
15:00 Round Table
The curatorial collective, Independant Study Group (Veronique Malo and Emily Mennerdahl) and collaborative artists Marie-Michelle Deschamps and Michèle Lacombe will discuss the expanded notions of studio practices and practice based research and explore the ideas within collaborative processes. Each of their distinct projects acknowledge, celebrate and display the labours inherent in art practices and put into question both ways of seeing and the attribution of value of time spent in, on, and around the stuffs of art. After short presentations on their practices , FOFA Director, jake moore will join them, and you, for discussion.
Independant Study Group (Véronique Malo and Emily Mennerdahl) will present their collaboration, and the process of the curatorial project as indefinite and evolving project rooted in their everyday lives. Marie-Michelle Deschamps and Michèle Lacombe, two emerging montreal artists that both work with process-based conceptual drawing, will discuss the birth of a collaborative project and its potential for extending one’s own practice and personal artistic development as shifts in perspective occur when in relation with another artist, a site, and materials.
The FOFA GALLERY gratefully acknowledges the support of FASA, and the Canada Council for the Arts in the realisation of this project.
what happens when nothing happens
September 6, 2009
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN NOTHING HAPPENS - Independant Study Group
Labouring the Land – Michelle Lacombe and Marie-Michelle Deschamps
FOFA Gallery
Faculty of Fine Arts, Concordia University
Montreal, Quebec
Sept. 8 – Oct. 2, 2009
Vernissage: Fri., Sept. 11, 5 – 7 p.m.
with a Performance by Karen Elaine Spencer
Artists’ talks and Panel Discussion: Sat., Sept. 12, 1 – 4 p.m.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN NOTHING HAPPENS – Anna Jane McIntyre
Labouring the Land – Michelle Lacombe and Marie-Michelle Deschamps
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN NOTHING HAPPENS is an exhibition of works by Canadian and Swedish artists developed by Concordia graduates Véronique Malo and Emily Mennerdahl (Independant Study Group) while in residency in Valand, Sweden.
The exhibition presents a selection of artists’ works that reveal what happens before, during or after projects: unedited and unrealised ideas, sketches, texts, sounds, scribbles, drawings, trials and failures —pendant explorations, transitory ideas and ephemeral works that together form the creative process.
The artists included in the exhibition are:
Chantal Durand, Anna Jane McIntyre, Tamara Henderson and Jon Knowles, Jacinthe Lessard, Sean Montgomery and Eric Simon, Diane Morin, Taien Ng-Chan, Lina Persson, Meghan Price, Jerry Ropson, Karen Elaine Spencer and Christin Wahlström.
Labouring the Land is a collaborative project by emerging artists Michelle Lacombe and Marie-Michelle Deschamps. Exploring the relationship between drawing and labour and landscape, their compelling installation in the FOFA Gallery vitrines herald Labour Day and the return to school.
Gallery Hours: Monday to Friday 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Location:
1515 Ste Catherine Street W., EV 1-715, Metro Guy-Concordia
Montreal, Quebec
Info: http://fofagallery.concordia.ca or 514-848-2424 ext.7962
Free of charge. Everyone welcome.
1991/1992 is damaged and too full
July 31, 2009
Le bureau d’investigation d’archives (BIA) / The Office for Archival Review (OAR) juin – août 2009 / June – August 2009
coordinated by:
at:
Centre des arts actuels Skol 372, rue Sainte-Catherine O. espace 314 Montréal (Québec) H3B 1A2 t : 514-398-9322 f : 514-398-0767 www.skol.ca
is:
a type of residency where i get to be amongst other artists within the space of the gallery and rummage through the gallery’s archives. today i was thinking how certain things can not be archived,
because if archived they will die.
like a goldfish for example, if you put a goldfish in a box and put a lid on the box and then shelve the box, chances are by the time you reopen the box the goldfish will be dead.
likewise if you put a person in a box and then put a lid on the box and shelve the box, by the time you go back and re-open the box the person might be dead …or missing.
archives are dry and do not contain moisture, hence they are not so great for life-forms, just for things that life forms make in the world like: words on paper or words on some other dry support, photographs on paper or slide or disk, audio tapes or c.d.’s, video’s, the occasional plastic bag.
not oranges or orange peels or goldfish.
the post title refers to the sad fact that the box containing the archives for 1991/1992 is damaged and too full.
from pablo helguera to me
July 6, 2009
to:
me!
hi Dream Listener- you just won the artoons caption contest!
i won! i won! i won! (not to brag or anything )
orange dream
July 4, 2009
j’ai rêvé que le concierge de l’hôtel passait l’aspirateur pour ramasser les peaux d’oranges que je laissais tomber sur le tapis.
i dreamt the hotel concierge vacuumed up the orange peels i had let fall onto the rug.
