Karina Bergmans’s Ligaments and Ligatures 

This past week Karina Bergmans’s Ligaments and Ligatures opened at City Hall Gallery in Ottawa. Bergmans is a multi-diciplinary artist who in the past has worked on sculptures, public art installations and public interventions. In this series, the artist used reclaimed textiles to create literal interpretations of critical illnesses. Her works include elements of comedy—bright colours, visual puns— and the use of fabric reminds one of stuffed toys and pillows. By using these materials, Bergmans allows us to see and contemplate illnesses and infections without being repelled. Overall, the series is a great way to bring health issues back into public awareness. 

Light and Art at Winterlude, with Ottawa’s Andrew O’Malley

In his upcoming Winterlude art installation, artist, and engineer Andrew O’Malley will allow festival crowds choose a light, and his installation’s gonna let it shine.

For the installation, O’Malley will crowd together 12 cones of varying sizes – he called it a forest – that will be lit up by colourful LED lights. They’ll range from 6 feet tall, to 15 feet tall, and attendees will be able to scan the cones with their smartphones, and influence their colour.

He has yet to decide exactly what colours will be, but O’Malley said:

“I’m gonna create a pallet of nine colours that people can choose. In doing that, I’m playing with the lights, and I’m looking at how the cones light up. I can have cold, icy colours, ’cause its winter, or I can go with a really warm pallet,” said O’Malley. It’ll depend on the mood he wants to create.

“For the actual interaction, the newest colour selected on the phone will be displayed on the three tallest cones, while the previous colours will be distributed around the remaining cones; and every once in a while, one lucky user will be treated to a surprise,” said O’Malley.

The installation is supposed to show how people, especially a crowd, can influence the world through the powerful computers that we call “smartphones”.

“Because it can be accessed simultaneously by anyone with a smart phone, there will also be group play, and dynamics involved with the piece, as people either fight to control it or work together to try and collaborate on a colour scheme,” he said.

A lot of O’Malley’s work deals with the idea that the the natural variation in the environment can be represented in surprising, and interesting ways through technology. And when you start with something as surprising, and interesting as a crowd, who knows where the technology will take you.

Carly Wall

In this poster series, Fig. 3, Carly Wall focuses on the structures of animals. In these works, the start of what is to be a longer series, Wall uses elements of illustration inspired from 1950’s anatomy books. As she states,

“I recently became somewhat fascinated by animal anatomy. While visiting my grandparents I found a vintage 1950’s illustrated animal anatomy book, and that’s where it started. Fig 3. was inspired by an illustration series featured in the book, which I recreated digitally using a tablet. With inspiration from the book, I’m hoping to create a series of posters.”

Crystal Beshara

Cystal Beshara from Ottawa makes works that are based in flora, fauna and architecture. As the artist states,

“I like to tell a story with my work; to create a new perspective and invite the viewer to come up close - to see a memory that they recall, a place or feeling that strikes a chord emotionally, or a world that perhaps they’ve never seen. Sometimes this is done by creating mood through colour, other times it is the angle at which the subject is presented, through composition and cropping.”

Darcy Whyte

Darcy Whyte, an inventor/artist, recently came up with drawing robots that can make portraits. Whyte was inspired to create this work after seeing a painting by Chuck Close. 

“He used color juxtaposition to achieve additive color mixing. I believe the color gamut is actually wider than a printing process or RGB monitor so the piece is very striking. The additive mixing combined with a unique color system gives an experience not seen with ordinary mixing of pigment or even textiles. It helped me realize that a painting robot was doable. And worth doing because it could be used explore different color systems and paint application methods. A machine would take care much of the labor content since it could do overnight and could run for days without a rest.”

On the way to a painting robot, he came up with one that draws. As Whyte describes how the drawing robot works, 

Jennilee Murray

In this series, Animalia/Victus, artist Jennilee Murray combines animals with food. As the artists describes this hybrid, “The series is a fanciful look at what-ifs and curiosities—documenting flora and fauna indigenous to the land of childhood fantasy.”

Murray’s work carries questions, “What if we harvested peas from the tail of a fennec fox? What if neither of these things were seen as food?” Animalis/Victus is not so much a dialogue on the current food situation or any specific way of eating, as it is an innocent, child-like search into the realm of impossibility and suspended disbelief. 

Britta Evans-Fenton’s Bright Smiles

Britta Evans-Fenton’s Hearing Braille

In this work, Hearing Braille, Britta Evans-Fenton, an artist from Ottawa, combines technology and art with a message about communication. As Evans-Fenton describes the piece,

“Hearing Braille is a very subtle and intimate work that requires viewer interaction. A small microphone is placed behind the paper with braille script.  As the viewer runs his or her fingers across the page to feel the braille, they hear their touch on the paper. It makes the viewer extremely aware of their touch, almost heightening that sense on the sheet. It is great, because people will often spend a good amount of time at that work touching the page, almost as if they are standing there reading it, even though most of my viewers can’t read braille. Although the text does not matter to most of the viewers, it does list a bunch of colours that have more physical descriptors in them, such as forest green, lime green or midnight blue.”

This work was fueled by a variety of Evans-Fenton’s interests, such as language, codes and communication. “I use a representation of existing codes such as braille, semaphore and Morse code, taking the code out of context and changing its purpose. I also involve my viewers in my work, including as much interactive elements as I can.”

Evans-Fenton, who currently works as a technician at artengine, an artist-run centre with a focus on art and technology, also brings a focus on technology into her work. As she states, “technology is a big thing for me. It creates a kind of magic for the viewer and is able to help me incorporate all of the other elements together, usually in an installation, as I do consider myself an installation and new media artist.”

Moveable Feast at La Petite Mort Gallery

Moveable Feast is a term borrowed from Ernest Hemingway to reference the memories that follow a traveler. For this group exhibition, Guy Berube, director of La Petite Mort, allowed 20 curators to choose and interpret a piece of art with this theme. As Berube describes the event, 

“Since opening the doors of La Petite Mort Gallery in October 2005, my vision for showing the subversive, the unseen and the ignored has always been a very focused direction, but like any vision, variety is necessary. For that reason, I chose to let 20 people ‘in the art business’ make the selection of one artwork each, with a local artist, with a basic theme, which could be adapted as they saw fit. That was my intention with Moveable Feast.”

The piece above, Canis Study, by artist Victoria Courtney, will be featured in the exhibition. In this work Courtney uses pen and canvas to demonstrate action. As Courtney describes the piece, “This study is a continuation of a series that I have been working on for about a year now. The primary focus was to create a sense of movement and space through drawing slight movements and changes.”

Overall, Moveable Feast will be a great combination of local talent, both on the curatorial and artistic end. Courtney is definitely enthused about the opportunity, “It’s really exciting to be a part of la petite mort’s exhibition. With twenty other pieces I’m looking forward to seeing the other work that will be exhibited. This show will be a wonderful opportunity to see other local Ottawa artists are doing.”