Friday, September 5, 2014 to Friday, October 24, 2014
Opening Reception: Friday, Sept. 5th from 7- 10 PM
Forest City Gallery is pleased to present Tell Me What You’re Made Of, featuring the work of Toronto-based artist Brynn Higgins-Stirrup, Montreal-based artist Mitch Mitchell and London-based artist Scott Chalmers.
About the Exhibition
The artists in this exhibition share a common interest in privileging notions of process over completed forms; accordingly, their works are situated within discourses of materiality and labour. Amongst the pieces presented in Tell Me What You’re Made Of, there is a clear and predominant indication of the artist’s hand, positioning these works within the space of the studio. Further, there is no economy of production here; rather, the artist’s trajectories move away from linearity and towards an affinity for cyclical and repetitive maneuvers, non-completion or irresolution. Subsequently these works resist methodologies of goal-oriented production that are so closely aligned with consumerism.
While each artist’s approach is unique, their focus on process remains a fundamental component of their work and provides an engaging mechanism to question contemporary issues within our society.
In the nuanced drawings of Higgins-Stirrup process correlates to an accumulation of labour, as each piece is constructed through a meticulous and time-consuming technique of hand embossing. Made through a repetitive task of folding, unfolding and refolding, Mitch Mitchell’s soot covered paper conglomerates direct our attention to the ethics of labour and cultures of excess. Process is not immediately visible in the paintings of Scott Chalmers; instead, it is registered through slight, but perceptible layering – evidencing a slow accretion of self-reflexive mark making.
Biographies
Brynn Higgins-Stirrup works and lives in Toronto, Ontario. She recently graduated from Queen’s University with a BFA in painting and sculpture and a minor in art history. During her BFA she took part in a residency exchange at Monash University in Melbourne Australia. She also attended the Bader International Study in East Sussex England to study art history and philosophy. Her current practice focuses on drawing, fiber work and sculpture, specifically considering the impulse to make, in relation to the origin and process of creation. Working both collaboratively (as a part of the team My Face is Your Face with fellow artist David Woodward) and independently, she has exhibited provincially and nationally.
Mitch Mitchell is a multi-disciplinary artist who lives and works in Montreal, Quebec. Mitch holds a Master of Fine Arts Degree (2010) from the University of Alberta, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree (2001) from Illinois State University. Mitch continues to exhibit nationally and internationally, most recently at the Toronto International Art Fair, dc3 Art Projects (Edmonton), and Mouseprint Gallery (Montreal). Mitchell’s studio practice investigates relationships of production, labour, monument, futility, excess and collapse through heavily constructed objects mimicking objects of industry.
Scott Chalmers is a London-based multidisciplinary artist, who recently graduated from Western University’s BFA program. Chalmers was the winner of the ArtLab’s Annual Juried Exhibition in 2014. Exploring a methodology rising from process, the focus of his work surrounds ideas of display and how this can be impeded or disrupted through expectations of surface: concealing, tenuous leaning, needless protection, flopping over. The importance of process is underlined through an unfixed, changeable potential within the organization of display.