Visual and Critical Studies Thesis Symposium 2019

Friday, May 3, 2019 - 1:00pm

Students in the BA (Honours) Program in Visual and Critical Studies will present their thesis projects in a public symposium.

Friday, May 3rd, 2019
1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.
100 McCaul St., Room 325

This is an opportunity for OCAD U students, faculty, and community members to see the exciting work that our graduating cohort are doing on the cutting edge of art history and visual culture.

Please join us in celebrating their accomplishments!

2019 VCS THESIS CLASS
Lex Burgoyne
Kiera Charbonneau
Dallas Fellini

Venue & Address: 
100 McCaul St., Room 325
Website: 
https://www.facebook.com/events/601878740321362/
Email: 
folas@ocadu.ca
Cost: 
FREE
White text "VCS Symposium 2019" on abstractly painted teal and blue background.

Meet the Digital Futures

Friday, April 5, 2019 - 10:30am to 12:30pm

Please join the Digital Futures Undergraduate Program for the Second Annual Meet the Digital Futures event!

Meet the Digital Futures is an opportunity for students and faculty from the Digital Futures program and the greater OCAD community to engage with the thesis projects created by this year’s graduating undergraduate cohort. This informal exhibition includes the launch of the websites created by each of the students and the works created as part of their thesis.

This event is co-hosted by the Digital Futures Undergraduate Program and the Centre for Emerging Artists & Designers.

Venue & Address: 
Centre for Emerging Artists & Designers, 115 McCaul St., 3rd Floor.
Cost: 
FREE
"Meet the Digital Futures" written to look like neon lights

"Smooshes, Slabs & Slices: Entanglements in Ceramic" by Pam Nelson

Monday, August 13, 2018 - 1:00pm to Monday, August 20, 2018 - 5:00pm

Smooshes, Slabs & Slices is a thesis exhibition of sculptural, ceramic-based assemblages that capture moments of transformation in progress. A raw material is made precious, a lump of solid clay is smooshed, a slab is in motion. Each object is fabricated in a bricolage manner of a collection of unlikely material actants, and transformed through digital and hand made processes. At a foundational level, these objects tell a story about physical forces exerted on materials, the results of which reference a range of geologically and culturally-entangled contexts around ideas of displacement, transformation, permanence and fragility. This practice-based research was created through a diffractive methodology which encourages method to emerge from meaning and vice versa.

 

Reception:

Thursday, August 16, 6-9PM

 

Venue & Address: 
Graduate Gallery, 205 Richmond St. W
pam nelson thesis exhibition

Traces Retraced: Reconstructing Identity

Saturday, April 7, 2018 - 12:00pm to Wednesday, April 11, 2018 - 5:00pm

A quite whisper between two old men in the corner of the room belies a word you’ve never heard before, but somehow it sounds familiar. The crows caw at the sounding of a bell and the smell of burning firewood fills the room, they trigger a memory that oddly, you can’t recall ever experiencing - so you retrace your steps.

 

Traces Retraced is an autoethnographic study comprising installations of burnt wood objects, wood prints, charcoal drawn projections and an Camera Obscura with its eye on the world. The works investigate notions of coming to know my Indigenous identity through the lens of my own journey from unconscious to consciously knowing who I am in relation to my Métis and Anishinaabe roots. The works ponder and comment on memories both real and imagined, evoking archetypes of my ancestry in an contemporary context. 

Venue & Address: 
Graduate Gallery, 205 Richmond St. W.
Traces Retraced

Ceramic 3D Printing and Up-Cycling: Imagining the Possibilities

Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - 12:00pm to Sunday, April 8, 2018 - 5:00pm

 

“We are living in strange times indeed; evil clowns prowl the streets, lurk in dark alleys and lead our governments.  Yet, I’m convinced that we have an opportunity, right now, to make a change.  Combinations of 3D Printing, Hackerspaces, the Maker Movement and Upcycling provide the tools, locations, partnerships and motivation to create an alternative economy.  As we stand on the precipice of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, we have an opportunity to move beyond simple (and sometimes deceptive) Sustainable Design, towards genuinely holistic Regenerative Development.      Together, we can do it.” 

 

Samantha Sherer is a Registered Psychotherapist and a Master of Design candidate at OCADU.  Her interdisciplinary career in arts-based psychotherapy, studio ceramics and development work with artisans has led Samantha to investigate the intersection between Design and Community health. Her practice led research includes assembling an open source Ceramic 3D printing system to serve as appropriate technology for the Maker Movement.  She is intent on sowing open source Additive Manufacturing technology in the Global North and fostering its transplantation to the Global South, so that it will seed community and stimulate Regenerative Development.

Venue & Address: 
Ignite Gallery, 165 Augusta Ave
Ceramic 3D

Coenesthesia: Affect as an Aesthetic of Healing Through Hybrid Reality Art

Monday, April 23, 2018 - 10:00am to Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - 6:00pm

Coenesthesia pairs, a virtual reality (seen through an HTC headset) in which the immersant explores an organic space of internal body parts, spatialized sound and proprioceptive aesthetics (the aesthetic of one’s sense of embodiment, motion and position), with an interactive environment of projection in which a meditation pod acts as a tool for channelling positive energy into the virtual world, creating a positive feedback loop of affect. Coenesthesia aims at forming a connection between a VR immersant, their internal organs and their internal sense of self while enabling another player to connect to the system and the immersant. By incorporating key elements from cognitive neuro prosthetic studies, which include touch synchronisation, paired with visual and auditory synchronisation and proprioceptive alignment, the work explores the aesthetics of the senses and the roles of synaesthesia and analogy, interpreted through affect, this work explores how hybrid multi modal media art can enable the exploration and affective engagement with one’s embodied interiority?  It aims at empowering people to feel a connection with their internal physiological and psychological being. 

Venue & Address: 
The Open Space Gallery, Black Box Lab, 49 McCaul St.
Coenesthesia

In Visible Lines

Wednesday, April 11, 2018 - 1:00pm to Sunday, April 15, 2018 - 6:00pm

Dasha Valakhanovitch has an agile practice that ranges between painting, drawing and sculpture. Her work stems from manufactured landscapes and material exploration. In her thesis exhibition, In Visible Lines, she addresses the complexity found within the familiar realm of the line. In her work, line, in the form of gesture and form, represented by traces of paint and clay sculptures are woven together in a visual display. Her research explores how lines govern our landscape and questions its limitations. Drawing connections between land and human interaction with the abstract nature of lines, Valakhanovitch, invites the viewer to reflect and engage with her interpretation of line. Valakhanovitch earned her B.F.A in painting and drawing from Concordia University. She has exhibited in Toronto, Montreal, France and Belgium. Her work can be found in the Art Gallery of Ontario's Art Rental & Sales Gallery, Lonsdale Gallery and AIMIA  corporate art collection.

 

 

Venue & Address: 
Ignite Gallery, 165 Augusta Ave
In Visible Line

"You’ll Distract the Boys!"

Saturday, April 21, 2018 - 1:00pm to Sunday, April 29, 2018 - 6:00pm

You're invited to immerse yourself in the culminating thesis exhibition and book launch of Toronto artist and MFA candidate Tara Krebs. "You’ll Distract the Boys!" is a non-linear storybook in which you assume the lives of various women and girls, and respond to common experiences they face. After every scenario presented, you are tasked with choosing how to proceed from a pair of possible responses. Each selection will affect the outcomes and potential consequences of these choices, and determine the direction of your narrative path.
During the exhibition, pages from the book will be displayed throughout the gallery so that guests can physically navigate the story. By confronting the narrative in public space, visitors' choices will be visible to others, and open to critique and judgement - resembling more closely what the characters might experience themselves.

"You’ll Distract the Boys!" addresses the deeply-imbedded influence of patriarchy on the discourse around women, and how it dictates the impossible standards of how they should look, speak, and behave. The goal of this project is to examine how literary role-play can be used as a pedagogic tool, and inspire compassion toward the lives of others. It also aims to provide a sense of solidarity to North American women and girls by acknowledging their diverse realms of experience.
Opening reception is Thursday, April 26, from 6:00pm-10pm, with an interactive live reading at 7:00pm. The exhibition runs from April 21-29. Visiting hours are 1:00pm-6:00pm, Wednesday to Sunday. The narrative will also be available for sale in book-format throughout the run of the show.
As this book/exhibition deals with topics such as body censorship, gender construct, and sexual violence, some readers/visitors may be sensitive to the content. Off-hour viewings can be arranged for women who require a safe space to view the work alone. If you would like to request a private viewing, or have any other questions, please contact the artist directly at hello@tarakrebs.com.
 

Venue & Address: 
Ignite Gallery, 165 Augusta Ave
You'll Distract the Boys!

"very fine people on both sides"

Saturday, April 14, 2018 - 12:00pm to Monday, April 16, 2018 - 5:00pm

In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released 94 Calls to Action following a national inquiry into residential schools. Of these 94 Calls, five actioned for the creation of monuments intended to commemorate and honor residential school sites, survivors and the children who were lost. What began as an exploration into what these proposed monuments could look like from an Anishinaabe perspective, soon turned into an investigation of how monuments function within the discourse of reconciliation and decolonization. How they operate as tools of Indigenous erasure and how they can be coopted as tools to assert Indigenous presence. And finally, how monuments physically manifest online discourse and ideologies in the push for (de)colonization/(re)conciliation and the push back against it. This is an exploration of the monument as apparatus used by “very fine people on both sides.”

Venue & Address: 
Graduate Gallery, 205 Richmond St. W.
very fine people on both sides

OCAD U 3MT March 6th- APPLY NOW, DEADLINE EXTENDED until March 5th!

In three minutes or less convey the essence of your Thesis or MRP to a panel of judges and a diverse audience using only a single slide.

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