Author: Also As Well Too

Announcing this year’s Mentorship group

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This year’s Artist Book Mentorship & Creation Program is underway with a great new group of mentors and mentees. Participants will work together over the period of a year to explore their practice through the artist book genre and create a new work.

Hassaan Ashraf will be mentored by Ashok Mathur:

Hassaan Ashraf is a multi-disciplinary artist who moved to Winnipeg in 2012 to pursue a Master’s degree in Fine Arts. His work reflects on his journey as a displaced artist, dealing with themes of cross-cultural experience, diaspora, homesickness, culture shock, global culture, post-colonialism, politics and the west’s discomfort with alien cultures. To express these ideas, Ashraf draws on his own experience as a Lahori who had never been a part of a diaspora, had never lived as a minority, and had never even been to a foreign country before coming to Winnipeg, Canada. His work reexamines everyday experiences he had during his life in Lahore, including customary modes of transportation, pastimes like kite flying, the Urdu language, and everyday life with the convenience of live-in servants. These practices, which were a part of a daily routine, ended when he came to Manitoba.

Ashok Mathur is a writer, artist, and cultural organizer, currently Dean of Graduate Studies at OCAD University in Toronto. He has published numerous books of creative fiction and has also published/produced various book-works in multiple forms.

 


Mariana Muñoz Gomez will be mentored by Patrick Cruz:

Mariana Muñoz Gomez is an emerging artist and writer based in Winnipeg, MB/Treaty 1 Territory. She is a co-founder of zine and curatorial collectives Sappho Zine Collective, Carnation, and Calling Card, and is part of the Mujer Artista Collective. Mariana‘s visual practice is situated at the intersection of identity, place, representation, and language. These topics are negotiated through manipulating familiar forms and employing strategies of interference within a variety of media including text works, screenprints, photography and video. Her work is informed by intersectional feminism and topics of diaspora and displacement.

Patrick Cruz is a Filipino-Canadian artist living and working between Toronto, Canada and Manila, Philippines. Cruz studied Painting at the University of the Philippines Diliman and received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University of Art + Design and holds a Master of Fine Arts at the University of Guelph. In 2015, Cruz won the national title for the 17th annual RBC Canadian Painting Competition and has presented work across North America, Europe and South East Asia. Cruz is the founder of Kamias Special Projects, an artist-run space in Quezon City, Philippines that hosts the Kamias Triennial; an educational week-long event that serves as a platform for cross-cultural exchange. To date, Cruz has produced numerous projects, curatorial initiatives and collaborative performances including 29 solo exhibitions and 44 group exhibitions. Cruz’s recent solo and group exhibitions include Franz Kaka (Toronto, CA), Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver, CA), Mo_space (Manila, PH), Plug In ICA (Winnipeg, CA), Art Gallery of Alberta (Edmonton, CA), Nanaimo Art Gallery (Nanaimo, CA), The Art Center of Chulangkorn (Bangkok, TH), Or Gallery Berlin (Berlin, DE), Vargas Museum (Manila, PH), Nada NY (New York, USA) and Material Art Fair (Mexico City, MX).

melannie monoceros will be mentored by Erika DeFreitas:

melannie (mg) monoceros is a poet and artist exploring polysensory production through text/ile, performance, and installation. They live and work on the traditional land of the  Anishinaabe, Métis, Cree, Dakota and Oji-Cree Nations, otherwise known as Treaty One territories/Winnipeg, MB. They have presented work at the Mayworks Festival Toronto, ON (2015), Buddies in Bad Times Theatre Toronto, ON (2016), the National Arts Centre Ottawa, ON (2017), and the Dawson City International Short Film Festival (2018). monoceros was honored with the Sharon Wolfe Artist in Residence at Tangled Art + Disability (2014) and was a VONA fellow with mentor Staceyann Chin (2014). They have since been awarded grants from the Canada, Ontario, and Toronto Arts Councils in 2016, 2017, and 2018. melannie has enjoyed being a guest lecturer at the Yukon School of Visual Arts, Concordia University, Ontario College of Art and Design, and Ryerson University. melannie’s writing has appeared in The Peak, Make/Shift Magazine, and When Language Runs Dry. Currently melannie is at work on a project titled “a n c e s t o r a d i o”. Tuning the Ocean, the first of the series, exhibited as part of TSG: Uprising at the Gladstone Hotel Gallery in 2017. During the winter of 2018, melannie was on residency on the Tr’ondek Hwech’in First Nation/Dawson City, Yukon as part of The Weight of Mountains filmmaking residency. melannie is gracious to have been awarded the Canada Council for the Arts Composite Grant to continue and complete their film and literary projects. They also look forward to participating in the Foundation Mentorship Program at MAWA (Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art) beginnning Fall 2018.

Erika DeFreitas is a Scarborough-based artist whose practice includes the use of performance, photography, video, installation, textiles, works on paper, and writing. Placing an emphasis on process, gesture, the body, documentation, and paranormal phenomena, she works through attempts to understand concepts of loss, post-memory, inheritance, and objecthood.

DeFreitas’ work has been exhibited nationally and internationally including at Project Row Houses and the Museum of African American Culture, Houston; Fort Worth Contemporary Arts; Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita; Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery; Platform Centre for Photographic and Digital Arts, Winnipeg; and Gallery 44, Toronto. A recipient of the Toronto Friends of Visual Artist’ 2016 Finalist Artist Prize, the 2016 John Hartman Award, and longlisted for the 2017 Sobey Art Award, she has also been awarded several grants from the Canada Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council. DeFreitas holds a Master of Visual Studies from the University of Toronto.

Workshop: Introduction to Typography for Artists by Ray Fenwick

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Application deadline: Sunday, December 2
Workshop dates: Saturdays, Feb 3, 10, 17, 24, 2:00-4:00pm

When asked to define typography, a common answer is that it is the selection, arrangement and spacing of letters and words. This is all technically true, but typography is so much more than just technical. Typography is language made visible. It is a way of speaking, and of listening. It is our voice in the world and a voice itself, speaking to us constantly, saturating our environments. Typography mediates much of our knowledge and yet, through some form of dark magic, somehow manages to remain hidden to most of us.

The purpose of this multi-part workshop, led by Winnipeg artist/typographer Ray Fenwick, is to drag typography into the light, exploring its history, its form, and its potential for artists. Participants will receive an intensive introduction to the broad world of typography, increasing their sensitivity and understanding while nurturing excitement for both its formal and conceptual gifts. As both an artist and typographer, Fenwick will pull from typographic and design history, but will lean heavily on the work of artists whose use of type is a crucial feature. This will include artists such as Tauba Auerbach, Ed Fella, Dada/Fluxus Artists, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Glenn Ligon, Bruce Nauman, Yoko Ono, Adrian Piper, Kay Rosen, Ed Ruscha, Lawrence Weiner and many more. In all of these cases, typographic acuity has played a pivotal role in creating powerful works of art.

The workshop will be offered as four separate two-hour classes and will consist of short lectures, hands-on individual and group activities, and reading discussions. Also included as part of the workshop will be an extensive package of texts to provide both elaboration on what is discussed and further reading.

It is important to note that this workshop is not meant as an introduction to computer typesetting. There will be no software instruction, nor any use of computers. Those interested in learning these skills after the workshop will be provided with next steps and options for tutorials.

To apply, please send an application including the following materials:

-a paragraph describing your pratice

-a paragraph describing why you want to participate in this program

-3 samples of your work

-CV

This workshop is made possible through the generous support of the Manitoba Arts Council.

Ray Fenwick is an interdisciplinary artist working with performance, video, sound and typography. His work is an often playful attempt to explore unusual relationships with language, voice, and communication. In addition to being an actively practicing artist, Ray Fenwick has over 20 years experience in typography, design and illustration. He has worked on type, lettering and design for clients like the New York Times, Penguin Books, Nike, Oprah Magazine, Random House, Virgin, Drawn and Quarterly and more. He has reviewed books on typography, judged a national Typography competition, and taught introductory Typography at NSCAD in Halifax, NS. As an author he created perhaps the first “typographic comic”, Hall of Best Knowledge. The book, published by Fantagraphics, made several “Best Graphic Novel” lists and earned a nomination for “Best Avant-Garde Graphic Novel” from The Canadian Cartooning Awards. His most recent book, Mascots, was published January 2011, also published by Fantagraphics.

Image:
L: Clay tablet, Mesopotamia, 3100-2800 BC
R: Tauba Auerbach, “How to Spell the Alphabet”, 2005

the house that Whiteness built.

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Also As Well Too presents:

the house that Whiteness built. 
Artist Divya Mehra and writer Amy Fung will be premiering a new collaboration that re-positions the cherished Canadian classic, Anne of Green Gables, in a slightly new light. As a fiercely independent and strong-headed woman, Anne is ostracized by her WASP community for simply being different. Unapologetic for her challenging opinions, work ethic, and dubious background, the house that Whiteness built. re-examines this beloved heroine through an intersectional lens of race, class and gender inequality that continues into the present moment.

Saturday, November 10th, 7PM at PLATFORM centre for photographic + digital arts, 100 Arthur Street

*No Q+A following performance 

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Amy Fung is a writer, researcher and curator born in Kowloon, Hong Kong, and currently based in Toronto, Canada. She received her Masters in English and Film Studies from the University of Alberta with a specialization in criticism, poetics, and the moving image. Her writings can be found in print and online publications such as Canadian Art, Art Papers, C Magazine, and Frieze, among many more since 2002. Since 2008, her curatorial projects have taken place in museums and galleries across Canada and the UK. Most recently, Fung held the position of Artistic Director of IMAGES Festival, Toronto between 2015 – 2017. She is a co-founder of MICE Magazine and has served on numerous boards and juries across the country. She is currently writing her first book on Canadian art forthcoming 2019.
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Divya Mehra works in sculpture, print, drawing, artist books, installation, advertising, video, and film and is known for her meticulous attention to the interaction of form, medium, and site. Recontextualizing references found in music, literature, and current affairs, her acerbic body of work addresses the long-term effects of colonization and institutional racism. Mehra’s work has been presented as part of exhibitions, screenings, and commissions, including with Creative Time (New York), MoMA PS1 (New York), MTV (New York), the Queens Museum (New York), MASS MoCA (North Adams), Artspeak (Vancouver), Justina M. Barnicke Gallery (Toronto), the Images Festival (Toronto), the Beijing 798 Biennale (Beijing), BielefelderKunstverein (Bielefeld), and Latitude 28 (Delhi). Mehra holds an MFA from Columbia University and is represented by Georgia Sherman Projects. In 2017 she was shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award.

Prairie Modernist Noir: The Disappearance of the Manitoba Phone Booth

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PERFORMANCE | Monday 15 October, 7:00 PM
EXHIBITION | 16 November – 07 December 2018
CLOSING RECEPTION & BOOK LAUNCH | Friday 07 December, 7:00 PM

Also As Well Too — in collaboration withPLATFORM centre — is pleased to announce a new exhibition and bookwork from Jeanne Randolph. The exhibition, titled Prairie Modernist Noir: The Disappearance of the Manitoba Telephone Booth, runs from 16 November – 07 December, 2018. The bookwork (produced and published by Also As Well Too) will be launched at the closing reception scheduled for Friday 07 December at 7:00 PM. Randolph will give an extemporization, the resultant script from which will become the text of the bookwork, on 15 October at 7:00 PM. All these events are free and open to the public.

In rural Manitoba the telephone booth is often the only mid-century modernist structure in the landscape. A building that only one person stands inside will someday seem quaint, if not bewildering. The life of these structures is not only a matter of architectural history. They played a significant role in pop culture and symbolically, in their day, as emblems of modern technology.

Prairie Modernist Noir: The Disappearance of the Manitoba Telephone Booth is an exhibition and bookwork that poetically and visually explores and documents the meaning, history, and architecture of the Manitoba telephone booth. Randolph spent six months exploring the province and photographing the last of Manitoba’s telephone booths with an old obsolete iPhone. Notably, MTS itself has also recently become obsolete, with Bell’s takeover of MTS in early 2017. For the exhibition, Randolph turns these images into a ghostly projection that speaks to the disappearance of these structures.

The accompanying bookwork will be a memorial to rural Manitoba telephone booths as vacant, derelict or obsolete buildings. As with Randolph’s other image/text publications, the captions will convey meditations upon the images of these endangered booths, with attention to the environment of the booths, information and/or psychological musing, stories, and imaginative insight. When none are left, this vivid artist book will be an important contribution to Manitoba’s history of technology in the 20th century.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Jeanne Randolph has been writing, performing for, and contributing to Canadian contemporary visual arts since 1980. Five books of her collected art-writings have been published since 1991. Her fourth book, Ethics of Luxury: materialism and imagination (2007), and her latest book, Shopping Cart Pantheism (2015), addressed consumerist visual culture. Images in Randolph’s books and writings are often selected from a massive collection of photographs she has taken. Randolph has been awarded many national and provincial grants, as well as facilitated numerous art residencies.

Launch: New artist books by August, Cenerini, Doucet

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Friday, September 14, 7-10pm at 121-100 Arthur Street (PLATFORM Centre)

Please join us for the launch of three new bookworks created through Also As Well Too’s Artist Book Creation & Mentorship Program. This program spurs artist book creation by artists who have never explored bookworks in their practice. For the past year, Winnipeg artists Ian August, Yvette Cenerini, and Hannah Doucet have been investigating the possibilities of form and concept with mentors Steven Leyden Cochrane, Suzie Smith, and Kristin Nelson. The resultant artist books will be on display for the evening of the launch. Full information about each work is below. Artists will be in attendance.

This project has been generously funded by the Manitoba Arts Council.

August

PLUNDER DUPES 3D
by Ian August
40 pages, full colour
Soft cover (perfect binding)
Edition of 100
$5 per book
8.25″ x  8.25″
2018

The National Museum in Baghdad, Iraq, was looted for a 36 hour period starting April 10th 2003

It is not clear how many artifacts were taken, which artifacts were taken, or where they may be in the world

PLUNDER DUPES 3D is attentive to these concerns

Ian August is an artist based in Winnipeg. August’s work is focused on the dialogue between painting and sculpture, often using the construction of structures and models within his painting process. His recent project titled PLUNDER DUPES is an effort to identify and create replicas of the 8000 Mesopotamian artifacts looted from the Baghdad Museum during the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. The duplicated relics are constructed from found items and scraps then used as source material for a series of oil paintings on canvas. The replicas are also being scanned using 3D software and the files will soon be made available for free download online.

August received his MFA from York University, and his BFA, honours from the University of Manitoba’s School of Art. His work has been the subject of many solo exhibitions, including Plunder Dupes, Actual Gallery, Winnipeg; and Re: Build Them, Gallery 1C03, Winnipeg. His work has also been included in numerous group exhibitions.

Cenerini


Chimpanzee’s Tea Party (Rastus at London Zoo)
by Yvette Cenerini
9-page book in frame
9″x9″
Digital prints on 4 layers of Mylar and 5 layers of paper)
2018

Rastus at London Zoo (Chimpanzee Tea Party) is a malleable book. With pages that can be ordered and disordered according to one’s will, the book allows for a reversal of roles, empowering the reader to become composer.  This process is meant to encourage independent thought about how individual book elements interact with one other and about what can be represented by each of the seemingly endless possible combinations. Unlike a typical book, which is static and unidirectional, the story here varies and evolves in relation to the reader’s notions of displacement, captivity, ethics and hierarchy.

Yvette Cenerini is a Winnipeg based Franco-Manitoban visual artist. She studied psychology, zoology and education before obtaining her BFA from the University of Manitoba in 2010. The complexities and intimacies of interspecies relationships has been a recurring theme in all of her work. Cenerini has exhibited in Ottawa, Montréal and throughout the Province of Manitoba and has received grants from both the Winnipeg Arts Council and the Manitoba Arts Council.
head-3 opt2

 

Untitled
by Hannah Doucet
Plastic inflatable
Edition of 3
2018

 

 

Three images, skins, folded and empty of breath.

Through the effects of pharmaceutical steroids my body ballooned before my eyes. I anxiously anticipated, wondering when my body would deflate. But we can never really revert back to the before. We just gradually abstract, shifting away from the original source. How do I reconcile my body’s relationships to its images? As my body shifts and expands can my image as well?

A collective gesture of activation. The images fluctuate through varied states of inflation.  Who holds control in this action? 

Hannah Doucet is an artist, organizer and arts educator from Winnipeg, Canada. She received her BFA Honours from the University of Manitoba in 2015. Hannah has exhibited across Canada, with recent exhibitions at Duplex (Vancouver), PLATFORM (Winnipeg), Gallery 44 (Toronto) and The New Gallery (Calgary). In 2017 she completed a residency as part the Banff Centre for Art and Creativity’s Visual + Digital Emerging BAiR Program as well as a six week residency as Mikw Chiyâm’s artist in residence at Wiinibekuu high school in Waskaganish, QC. She is a co-founder of Flux Gallery and co-founder and active member of Blinkers Art and Project Space.

 

Book Retort with hannah_g

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Thursday, April 5, 8pm at Also As Well Too, 460 Portage Avenue, 2nd floor (Straight ahead off the elevator)

Please join us for a Book Retort by hannah_g, for which she will read an original poem called ‘Reading & Talking’.

Book Retort is an ongoing series at Also As Well Too that invites artists and writers to use performance, discussion, lecture, display, or any other engagement they would like in order to illuminate artist books in the Library’s collection and elsewhere.

Bio:
hannah_g is a writer and artist.

Image:
self portrait

Also As Well Too is an accessible space that can be found by taking the elevator to the second floor of the Buhler Building, moving straight ahead, and then veering slightly right.

Book Retort with Christina Hajjar

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Tuesday, January 23, 7-8pm

Through a diasporic lens, Christina Hajjar will take up several artist books to consider themes of home, time, memory, and ritual. She asks, “what does it mean to be/feel at home?,” as she engages with the intimacies, situatedness, and use of longing in each work. Join us for a talk, a cup of rose tea, and a low-pressure activity!

Artist Books & Multiples:

“Galaxies of Pleasure Galaxies of Healing” by Carmella Farahbakhsh

“I was here” by Monica Mercedes Martinez

“Institute for Durational Futures: brought to you by ESSENTIALHAPPINESSPOSSIBILITY” by Desearch Repartment

summer sometimes by sophie wonfor

Collecting Light by the Pinhole Artist Collective

Flowers and their meanings by Karen Azoulay

Bio
Christina Hajjar is a first-generation Lebanese-Canadian queer femme emerging artist, writer, and organizer. She currently attends aceartinc’s Cartae Open School, co-edits Whiny Femmes, and sits on programming committees at Flux Gallery and MAWA. She has recently completed undergrads in Women’s and Gender Studies as well as Business and Administration. christinahajjar.com

Photo cred:
Christina Hajjar, preserve/decay, performance, 2017. Photo by Carmen Aleman.

Also As Well Too is an accessible space that can be found by going to the second floor of the Buhler Building, moving straight ahead, and then veering slightly right.

Winnipeg Contemporary Poetry Reading Group

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Friday, January 2, 1:30-3:30pm at Also As Well Too, 460 Portage Avenue, 2nd floor (Straight ahead and slightly to the right off the elevator)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are excited to welcome anyone and everyone to join us for a meeting and reading being held by the Winnipeg Contemporary Poetry Reading Group (CPRG) at Also As Well Too.

The CPRG aims to provide public opportunities to poetry-lovers to read and discuss more of the poetry that is going on out in the world, be it contemporary or classic, from emerging or established poets. A different collection of poetry is chosen each week. We spend about an hour reading a collection out loud and use the remaining time to discuss the text together. No preparation required – just join us, pass the book, and engage your poetry brain.

Meetings generally run for two hours, though we are under no time constraints, so come and go as you please. There may be only one copy of a book so be prepared to share.

Book Retort with sophia bartholomew

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Saturday, December 16, 2pm at Also As Well Too, 460 Portage Avenue, 2nd floor (Straight ahead off the elevator)

Please join us for some air and a cup of tea and the latest instalment of Also As Well Too’s serial project Book Retort. This rotating guest-lecture/performance emphasizes an engagement with the artist book and our Library.

Working from 20 written dances found in the book “8 DAYS III / BANANAPANDA”, sophia bartholomew will deliver a performative response to spills, leakages, boundaries and contaminations — moving between Elizabeth MacKenzie and Jeanne Randolph’s book “The Underside of Shadows”, Amanda Earl’s poem “WELCOME TO EARTH”, Femmes Unite! a zine produced by F.A.G PDX, and “WHINY FEMMES” a zine launched in Winnipeg this past October, edited by Christina Hajjar & Jules Hardy.

sophia bartholomew is an interdisciplinary artist whose current projects are grounded in collaborative work with rudi aker, Emma Hicks, and with their maternal grandmother, Klara. This month they are completing a residency at Platform centre for photographic + digital arts, supported by the New Brunswick Arts Board and Manitoba Arts Council’s creative residency exchange.

Book Retort with Noor Bhangu

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Saturday, December 9, 7pm at Also As Well Too, 460 Portage Avenue, 2nd floor (Straight ahead off the elevator)

Please join us for the latest installment of Also As Well Too’s serial project Book Retort (originally titled There’s Something I Want to Tell You…). This rotating guest-lecture emphasizes an engagement with the artist book and our library.

We are so excited to have Noor Bhangu deliver a response on the topic of postcolonial networks and networking. Noor has selected a series of artist books from the Library to discuss how colonization affected the various cultures the artists are located in but also how it formed a commonwealth network that now lets them dialogue and build community together.

Noor Bhangu recently completed her M.A. in Cultural Studies: Curatorial Practices at the University of Winnipeg, with a focus on South Asian and diasporic contemporary art. She is currently an emerging curator based in Winnipeg, Manitoba.