OCAD University presents Future Forward at Scotiabank Nuit Blanche

 

Monday, September 12, 2011 - 4:00am

Exhibition part of university’s 135th anniversary celebration(Toronto—September 12, 2011) OCAD University presents Future Forward as part of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche on Saturday, October 1, celebrating the university's 135th anniversary by looking backward into the future.

Poised to nurture creative thinkers with a forward-thinking outlook, OCAD U commemorates that visionary spirit by reflecting on what was and what could be. The installations in Future Forward reclaim an imaginative realm once reserved for fantasy as they negotiate technology's integration into the fabric of society. These sci-fi and cinematic propositions of an imagined future investigate the permeable boundaries between nature and technology, myth and tool, history and potential. What will tomorrow bring: techno lust or future shock? Future Forward provides a timely contemplation in keeping with OCAD University's 135th anniversary. What might the future be in the year 2146?

Future Forward features works by Philippe Blanchard (Canada), H2.0 Collective (OCAD U students Loretta Faveri, Christopher Holborn, Joanne Jin, and Michael Vaughn); Louise Noguchi (Canada); and Kelly Richardson (United Kingdom), on Saturday, October 1, 6:59 p.m. to sunrise. Future Forward is curated by OCAD U's 2011 Curatorial Practice medal winning graduate Farah Yusuf.

"For 135 years OCAD U students, alumni and faculty have helped to weave the fabric of Toronto's world class visual arts, galleries, media art, community arts, design, digital culture and cultural tourism, contributing to the annual $9 billion of cultural GDP in Toronto. Future Forward makes a playful contribution to our understanding of the future through the lens of art and design," said OCAD University President, Dr. Sara Diamond. "We're thrilled to once again be a partner in Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, an event that in its own right makes a tremendous contribution to the cultural and economic health of the city of Toronto."

About the work:

Philippe Blanchard, Cave Rave (2010)
Cave Rave creates a scene where lo-tech high-tech interface in a mythic time.  A mural features cavemen standing together in a circle to conjure a magical flame. Projected between them is the psychedelic glow of Apple's "Flurry" screensaver. Through this playful juxtaposition, Blanchard poses the question: Are technologies magic as it was envisioned in the past?

Louise Noguchi, Shanghai Dragon (2008)
Enter a space where pink Styrofoam towers act as set pieces to our collective memory of popular culture. Here, Noguchi explores the artifice of the heroic landscape in Hollywood films with forms suggestive of Luke Skywalker's home planet of Tatooine or the stalagmites of Superman's Fortress of Solitude. Evoking an imaginary land somewhere between the metropolis and an alien frontier, Shanghai Dragon asks us to consider the need to manifest the reality of the film in life.

Kelly Richardson, The Erudition (2010)
Holographic trees malfunction and flicker in the desolate lunar landscape of The Erudition.  In this haunting speculative scene, Richardson asks us to consider the technological landscape and our increasingly mediated relationship with nature.

H2.0 Collective, Human 1.0 vs. Human 2.0 (2011)
Through wearable technology, H2.0 Collective explores how technologies have become extensions of the social creature. In Human 1.0 vs. Human 2.0 the collective anthropomorphosizes garments to embody distinct personalities: bashful, lustful, anti-social and joyful.  By encoding socio/biological cues into technologically enabled costumes, they propose an artificial evolution of the human toward its next generation model.

Future Forward is presented as part of a year-long celebration of 135 years of imagination at OCAD University. For more events and information, visit www.ocad.ca/135.

Artist biographies:

Philippe Blanchard
Philippe Blanchard is a Toronto-based artist, animator, teacher and curator.  His diverse academic background (film production, digital visual effects, studio arts) has culminated in recent years in an interdisciplinary art practice combining animation, installation, live performance, drawing, painting and printmaking.  He also works as a commercial animation director, principally for Toronto-based studio Head Gear Animation.  His recent curatorial projects include Shape Shifters, an animation screening on the theme of morph and morphing in contemporary culture, and Mass Hypnosis, a collaborative installation event combining printmaking and animation.

Philippe Blanchard's animation work has been shown at Rencontres Internationales Paris-Berlin, Festival du Nouveau Cinéma (Montreal), Pop Montreal Festival, Mattress Factory (Pittsburgh), The Kitchen (New York), RISD (Providence RI), Hirshhorn Museum (Washington DC), National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington DC), LACMA (Los Angeles), San Francisco Art Institute, Cal Arts (Valencia, CA), Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston), Impakt Festival (Utrecht NL), Center for Contemporary Arts (Glasgow), the Ottawa Art Gallery, InterAccess and the AGYU.  Blanchard recently completed his MFA in Interdisciplinary Art, Media and Design at OCAD University.

H2.0 Collective
H2.0 Collective is composed of OCAD University Industrial Design and Material Art & Design students Loretta Faveri, Christopher Holborn, Joanne Jin, and Michael Vaughn.  The collective was established in early 2011. They seek to inspire the viewer to think critically about technology and its affect on us as social human beings through wearable garments.

Louise Noguchi
Louise Noguchi challenges her audience with themes that pose psychological questions. Using photography, sculpture, video and other media, Noguchi's concepts confront the spectator's notions of identity, perception and reality.  Her work includes exhibitions at the Power Plant, Toronto, Neuer Berliner Kuntsverein, Berlin and the Deutsches Museum, Munich, as well as exhibitions across Canada, the United States, Europe, and Japan.

Born in Toronto, Canada, she received her MFA from the University of Windsor, Canada and AOCA from OCAD University in Toronto.  She is a professor in Art and Art History, a collaborative program jointly offered by Sheridan Institute and the University of Toronto Mississauga, where she also teaches photography and performance-based art. Louise Noguchi is represented by Birch Libralato Gallery in Toronto, Canada.

Kelly Richardson
Canadian artist Kelly Richardson studied fine art at OCAD University (AOCAD with honours), media studies at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (MFA studies) and Newcastle University (MFA with distinction).

She represented Canada at the first Beijing 798 Biennale (2009), Busan Biennale (2008), Gwangju Biennale (2004) and her work was included in the Sundance Film Festival (2009 and again in 2011 as her work was selected to represent 5 years of New Frontiers at a special event opening the year's festival) and Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal (2008). She has exhibited internationally at various important museums and public institutions, including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in an exhibition entitled The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality and the Moving Image, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Art Gallery of Ontario, and Centre Georges Pompidou.

Her work is represented in the public collections of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo, USA), Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (Montréal, Canada), Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington DC, USA).

Richardson had the honour of being the featured artist at the Americans for the Arts National Arts Awards 2009. The fall 2009 issue of Canadian Art magazine included Kelly Richardson as one of "10 artists setting the pace of contemporary art" and Elle Canada listed Richardson in their Hot 100 for 2011. During its 16-year history, Richardson was the first (and only) Canadian artist invited to participate in the International Artist-in-Residence program at Artpace San Antonio 11.1 (January-March, 2011).

Richardson lives and works in the United Kingdom.

 

 

OCAD University (OCAD U): 135 Years of Imagination
OCAD University (www.ocad.ca) is Canada’s “University of the Imagination.” The University, founded in 1876, is dedicated to art and design education, practice and research and to knowledge and invention across a wide range of disciplines. OCAD University is building on its traditional, studio-based strengths, adding new approaches to learning that champion cross-disciplinary practice, collaboration and the integration of emerging technologies. In the Age of Imagination, OCAD University community members will be uniquely qualified to act as catalysts for the next advances in culture, technology and quality of life for all Canadians.

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Download this release as a PDF file.

For more information contact:

Sarah Mulholland, Media & Communications Officer
416-977-6000 Ext. 327 (mobile Ext. 1327)

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Monday, September 12, 2011 - 4:00am

Exhibition part of university’s 135th anniversary celebration(Toronto—September 12, 2011) OCAD University presents Future Forward as part of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche on Saturday, October 1, celebrating the university's 135th anniversary by looking backward into the future.

Poised to nurture creative thinkers with a forward-thinking outlook, OCAD U commemorates that visionary spirit by reflecting on what was and what could be. The installations in Future Forward reclaim an imaginative realm once reserved for fantasy as they negotiate technology's integration into the fabric of society. These sci-fi and cinematic propositions of an imagined future investigate the permeable boundaries between nature and technology, myth and tool, history and potential. What will tomorrow bring: techno lust or future shock? Future Forward provides a timely contemplation in keeping with OCAD University's 135th anniversary. What might the future be in the year 2146?

Future Forward features works by Philippe Blanchard (Canada), H2.0 Collective (OCAD U students Loretta Faveri, Christopher Holborn, Joanne Jin, and Michael Vaughn); Louise Noguchi (Canada); and Kelly Richardson (United Kingdom), on Saturday, October 1, 6:59 p.m. to sunrise. Future Forward is curated by OCAD U's 2011 Curatorial Practice medal winning graduate Farah Yusuf.

"For 135 years OCAD U students, alumni and faculty have helped to weave the fabric of Toronto's world class visual arts, galleries, media art, community arts, design, digital culture and cultural tourism, contributing to the annual $9 billion of cultural GDP in Toronto. Future Forward makes a playful contribution to our understanding of the future through the lens of art and design," said OCAD University President, Dr. Sara Diamond. "We're thrilled to once again be a partner in Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, an event that in its own right makes a tremendous contribution to the cultural and economic health of the city of Toronto."

About the work:

Philippe Blanchard, Cave Rave (2010)
Cave Rave creates a scene where lo-tech high-tech interface in a mythic time.  A mural features cavemen standing together in a circle to conjure a magical flame. Projected between them is the psychedelic glow of Apple's "Flurry" screensaver. Through this playful juxtaposition, Blanchard poses the question: Are technologies magic as it was envisioned in the past?

Louise Noguchi, Shanghai Dragon (2008)
Enter a space where pink Styrofoam towers act as set pieces to our collective memory of popular culture. Here, Noguchi explores the artifice of the heroic landscape in Hollywood films with forms suggestive of Luke Skywalker's home planet of Tatooine or the stalagmites of Superman's Fortress of Solitude. Evoking an imaginary land somewhere between the metropolis and an alien frontier, Shanghai Dragon asks us to consider the need to manifest the reality of the film in life.

Kelly Richardson, The Erudition (2010)
Holographic trees malfunction and flicker in the desolate lunar landscape of The Erudition.  In this haunting speculative scene, Richardson asks us to consider the technological landscape and our increasingly mediated relationship with nature.

H2.0 Collective, Human 1.0 vs. Human 2.0 (2011)
Through wearable technology, H2.0 Collective explores how technologies have become extensions of the social creature. In Human 1.0 vs. Human 2.0 the collective anthropomorphosizes garments to embody distinct personalities: bashful, lustful, anti-social and joyful.  By encoding socio/biological cues into technologically enabled costumes, they propose an artificial evolution of the human toward its next generation model.

Future Forward is presented as part of a year-long celebration of 135 years of imagination at OCAD University. For more events and information, visit www.ocad.ca/135.

Artist biographies:

Philippe Blanchard
Philippe Blanchard is a Toronto-based artist, animator, teacher and curator.  His diverse academic background (film production, digital visual effects, studio arts) has culminated in recent years in an interdisciplinary art practice combining animation, installation, live performance, drawing, painting and printmaking.  He also works as a commercial animation director, principally for Toronto-based studio Head Gear Animation.  His recent curatorial projects include Shape Shifters, an animation screening on the theme of morph and morphing in contemporary culture, and Mass Hypnosis, a collaborative installation event combining printmaking and animation.

Philippe Blanchard's animation work has been shown at Rencontres Internationales Paris-Berlin, Festival du Nouveau Cinéma (Montreal), Pop Montreal Festival, Mattress Factory (Pittsburgh), The Kitchen (New York), RISD (Providence RI), Hirshhorn Museum (Washington DC), National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington DC), LACMA (Los Angeles), San Francisco Art Institute, Cal Arts (Valencia, CA), Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston), Impakt Festival (Utrecht NL), Center for Contemporary Arts (Glasgow), the Ottawa Art Gallery, InterAccess and the AGYU.  Blanchard recently completed his MFA in Interdisciplinary Art, Media and Design at OCAD University.

H2.0 Collective
H2.0 Collective is composed of OCAD University Industrial Design and Material Art & Design students Loretta Faveri, Christopher Holborn, Joanne Jin, and Michael Vaughn.  The collective was established in early 2011. They seek to inspire the viewer to think critically about technology and its affect on us as social human beings through wearable garments.

Louise Noguchi
Louise Noguchi challenges her audience with themes that pose psychological questions. Using photography, sculpture, video and other media, Noguchi's concepts confront the spectator's notions of identity, perception and reality.  Her work includes exhibitions at the Power Plant, Toronto, Neuer Berliner Kuntsverein, Berlin and the Deutsches Museum, Munich, as well as exhibitions across Canada, the United States, Europe, and Japan.

Born in Toronto, Canada, she received her MFA from the University of Windsor, Canada and AOCA from OCAD University in Toronto.  She is a professor in Art and Art History, a collaborative program jointly offered by Sheridan Institute and the University of Toronto Mississauga, where she also teaches photography and performance-based art. Louise Noguchi is represented by Birch Libralato Gallery in Toronto, Canada.

Kelly Richardson
Canadian artist Kelly Richardson studied fine art at OCAD University (AOCAD with honours), media studies at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (MFA studies) and Newcastle University (MFA with distinction).

She represented Canada at the first Beijing 798 Biennale (2009), Busan Biennale (2008), Gwangju Biennale (2004) and her work was included in the Sundance Film Festival (2009 and again in 2011 as her work was selected to represent 5 years of New Frontiers at a special event opening the year's festival) and Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal (2008). She has exhibited internationally at various important museums and public institutions, including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in an exhibition entitled The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality and the Moving Image, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Art Gallery of Ontario, and Centre Georges Pompidou.

Her work is represented in the public collections of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo, USA), Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (Montréal, Canada), Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington DC, USA).

Richardson had the honour of being the featured artist at the Americans for the Arts National Arts Awards 2009. The fall 2009 issue of Canadian Art magazine included Kelly Richardson as one of "10 artists setting the pace of contemporary art" and Elle Canada listed Richardson in their Hot 100 for 2011. During its 16-year history, Richardson was the first (and only) Canadian artist invited to participate in the International Artist-in-Residence program at Artpace San Antonio 11.1 (January-March, 2011).

Richardson lives and works in the United Kingdom.

 

 

OCAD University (OCAD U): 135 Years of Imagination
OCAD University (www.ocad.ca) is Canada’s “University of the Imagination.” The University, founded in 1876, is dedicated to art and design education, practice and research and to knowledge and invention across a wide range of disciplines. OCAD University is building on its traditional, studio-based strengths, adding new approaches to learning that champion cross-disciplinary practice, collaboration and the integration of emerging technologies. In the Age of Imagination, OCAD University community members will be uniquely qualified to act as catalysts for the next advances in culture, technology and quality of life for all Canadians.

- 30 -

Download this release as a PDF file.

For more information contact:

Sarah Mulholland, Media & Communications Officer
416-977-6000 Ext. 327 (mobile Ext. 1327)