Ceiling Trampoline

Originally uploaded by Andrew Hunter1

Nathalie Quagliotto’s MFA thesis exhibition will be on display may 4th through May 22nd in the main RENDER exhibition space in East Campus Hall. Quagliotto’s sculptural practice is rooted in taking everyday pre-fabricated objects linked to childhood and disrupting their associated habitual function to the point in which they present tense situations for adults. When approaching and experiencing these manipulated forms, the works present a method for people to deal with psychological and social dilemmas in association with the self and in association with others through play. The Maturity Playground includes a sculptural series of reconfigured playground structures..

Manuel Saiz, Parallel Paradises: Japan, 2007

Originally uploaded by Andrew Hunter1
Exhibition Dates: February 24-March 21

RENDER’s Curator-In-Residence Barbara Hobot’s exhibition of videos by artists Manuel Saiz, Rachel Scott, and Lyntje Vorsteveld is now on in the East Campus Hall exhibition. Please join us a the opening reception this Thursday, February 26 from 6 to 8 pm.

Break It Down is a presentation of five videos by artists Manuel Saiz, Rachel Scott, and Lyntje Vorsteveld. Collectively, their works use popular music and dance to playfully critique notions of celebrity. The videos use aspects of vulnerability, humility and introspection as vehicles for celebrating the pathetic and strange - characteristics that are often rejected by contemporary culture.

The works in Break It Down offer an alternative to the booty, bling and bravado that is prevalent not only on TV and in cinema, but also in my local club or karaoke bar. Lyrics and choreography embrace sexual prowess, wealth and super hero invincibility. While these are not new occurrences in music and dance, they nonetheless continue to shimmy their way into my consciousness and affect the way I think about music’s capacity to inspire, entertain and inform.

There is much to be admired in the power of celebrity, the eye-candy offerings of amped up music videos, and the ability for tunes to transform you or me into a dynamo in 3 minutes, 24 seconds. But how can these modes of communication be manipulated to tell a different story? How can a new visual language or aesthetic be explored through the acceptance of weakness rather than the hailing of power?

The videos in this exhibition clear a little room for the far-from-cool parts of life: the instances of embarrassment, irrepressible honesty, and downright pathos we all come to experience. The videos, although different in their tone - some funny, others more sombre - use popular music or dance as a springboard for expressing the not-so-celebrity aspects of life, in all of their significance and awkward allure.

- Barbara Hobot, RENDER Curator-in-residence

VisitDominionSmall.jpg

Originally uploaded by Andrew Hunter1

RENDER is currently installing a new version of Seth’s exhibition Dominion at the Dundas Museum & Archives. Part of a tour of public galleries and museums organized by RENDER, the Dundas Dominion project will open on Friday, February 6th and will run until March 31st following which it will travel to the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown, P.E.I. On Friday February 27th, the Dundas Museum & Archive will host Seth in conversation with Andrew Hunter (RENDER Director/Curator) at the old Dundas Town Hall. For more information on Dominion in Dundas visit: www.dundasmuseum.ca

Susan Detwiler: dogswalkme

Crystal Mowry: Twilight of an Empire

January 8th through February 14th, 2009

Opening reception: January 8th from 5 - 8 pm

RENDER is pleased to present two new solo projects by Susan Detwiler and Crystal Mowry. Detwiler’s dogswalkme and Mowry’s Twilight of an Empire continue RENDER’s strategy of commissioning artists to develop new works through an informal residency program, to critically engage with the history of gallery and museum practice, and to respond to social, cultural and environmental dynamics in the Waterloo Region. These new projects are the result of an ongoing dialogue that will continue with Detwiler developing a second site intervention for the University of Waterloo campus in the fall of 2009 and Mowry producing a new work for the atrium of the UW School of Architecture.

Susan Detwiler lives in a rural area on the edge of a maple forest. Her art practice is based on her interactions and observations in the surrounding natural environment. For years she has maintained a daily walking practice which takes her through feral field, swamp and woodlot. With dogswalkme, Detwiler continues to explore the terrain at the fringes of development: the farm fields, fallow land and abandoned industrial sites often ignored or left idle within the intense suburban sprawl and urban infill of the region. Detwiler’s valuing of these places as sites of potent personal engagement runs in stark contrast to the dominant definition of land use “value” in the area. Working with simple head-cam technology (carried by herself and her dogs) Detwiler’s multi-perspective video records the complex interactions between artist, dogs and the landscape they traverse. The placement of the head-cams frames part of their faces making them appear like peculiar creatures in a strange terrain. There’s a magical, otherworldly quality as they maneuver through forest, field and quarry with no clear sense of purpose or destination. Detwiler offers a psychogeographic exploration that challenges current land use practice and positions the pace of the body, the cadence of unaided human movement through the landscape, as the critical platform for understanding the immediate environment.

Crystal Mowry’s Twilight of an Empire is inspired by a number of historical accounts of Ota Benga (later known as Otto Bingo), a Congolese Pygmy brought to the United States at the turn of the 20th century with the purpose of being in an Anthropological display at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. But it was the month of September in 1906 when he lived among the chimps and orangutans in the Bronx Zoo that will always be the most curious part of his story. For that brief month he attracted thousands of visitors to the zoo and incited hot debates about race in America.

Twilight of an Empire is an open-back diorama comprised of essentially two versions of the same scene, separated by conflicting sight lines. There is the diorama/object version and the live video signal visible on a monitor. Neither the diorama, nor the video stream, aim to provide a factual account of the story. Rather, Mowry hopes to situate viewers somewhere between the lived event and a document.

Twilight of an Empire is a bit like a set for a film of overlapping moments in history that implicate ideas of savagery and civilization. As with her earlier works, Mowry is interested in the discrepancies between different accounts of historical events, and the room that can be created for uncertainty depending on how the event is framed. Within Twilight of an Empire is an unlikely mash-up of architectural structures: a larger Victorian Glass House (inspired in part by a 1905 image of the Atrium at the Bronx Zoo) houses a modernist “monkey house” which borrows characteristics from the architecture of Le Corbusier and a Robinson Crusoe inspired treehouse.

Rothschild Demolition

Originally uploaded by Andrew Hunter1

@UW School of Architecture
7 Melville Street South, Cambridge
Saturday, November 22nd, 1:00-4:00pm
Free Admission (limited seating)

RENDER is pleased to present renowned Canadian cartoonist Seth in conversation with the American cartoonist and graphic novelist Chris Ware (moderated by Jeet Heer). Best known for his works Jimmy Corrigan and Building Stories, Ware is an irregular contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times, and McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern. Seth is the cartoonist behind the painfully infrequent comic book series Palookaville. His books include It’s A Good Life If You Don’t Weaken, Wimbledon Green, Bannock, Beans and Black Tea, and Clyde Fans Book One. Last year he serialized the story George Sprott (1894-1975) in the New York Times for 25 weeks and will appear in an expanded form as a book in the spring of 2009.

Seth and Ware’s conversation will be preceded by an audiovisual presentation prepared by Ware and This American Life radio host Ira Glass entitled Lost Buildings concerning the demolition of Chicago architect Louis Sullivan’s buildings and one person’s efforts to save them.

Also, don’t miss the related exhibitions Seth: Dominion (and its sister city of Beaver) at RENDER - University of Waterloo, Seth: The North Star Talking Picture House at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery and COMIC CRAZE at Cambridge Galleries Queen’s Square.

Ongoing Ideal Forms

Originally uploaded by Andrew Hunter1
Artist and curator Crystal Mowry is currently in residence at RENDER. Mowry will be developing a new installation work over the coming months to be displayed in the 2009 winter term at our main space and at other sites on campus.

NarhwalBooks

Originally uploaded by Andrew Hunter1

Dominion City is the elaborate, ever expanding, work-in-progress of the renowned Canadian cartoonist Seth. An imagined place combining elements of numerous early modern Canadian cities, Dominion City captures the spirit of the booming small metropolis at a time of community boosterism and growth that, to the contemporary eye, can seem at times quaint and alien. It is a place that embodies the confidence of many Canadian cities in the post Depression and World War II era when the North American economy expanded, manufacturing spread, and many cities were characterized by a level of civic engagement (through service clubs and politics) unheard of today.

Developed over the past decade, Dominion City takes Seth’s distinct vision of urban space off the printed page and into the format of an installation that serves to both present the artist’s growing collection of model buildings and captures aspects of their interiors (the institutional décor of the city hall, records office, archive and library, for example). As with all of Seth’s works, Dominion City is infused with melancholy and an air of ambiguous nostalgia tinged with a healthy dose of cynical humour. Dominion City is a cartoon space supported by an elaborate narrative vision that includes a detailed history and character studies that can be funny and amusing but equally dark. As Seth often says, “Good comedy is often cruel.” Dominion City sits seemingly frozen at the cusp of the 1950s and 60s and one can imagine many of these buildings crumbling and fading in the voracious urban “renewal” of the 1960s and 70s, a period captured in Dominion’s “sister” city of Beaver.

In addition to the presentation of the city of Beaver, Dominion City is complimented by a second installation at the Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery featuring the North Star Talking Picture House. The KW|AG installation is a working model of Dominion City’s movie theatre featuring a program of vintage documentary films curated by Seth. Visit the KW|AG website for more details (kwag.on.ca). Dominion City will travel to the Dundas Historical Museum and Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown, PEI, in the spring of 2009 and will be the focus of a forthcoming RENDER publication.

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Originally uploaded by Andrew Hunter1
September 20 - October 4, 2008

This presentation of 5 exciting programs seeks to illuminate the little-known early histories of video art in Canada, the UK, and Poland. By examining twenty years of artists’ video from these three countries, it also aims to broaden our understanding of this versatile medium, while charting its transition from the politicized margins of artistic practice to the mainstream.

Canadian artists
David Askevold, Eric Cameron, Colin Campbell, Daniel Dion, Pierre Falardeau, Vera Frenkel, General Idea, Robert Morin, Phillippe Poloni, Alex Poruchnyk, Julien Poulin, Su Rynard, Jayce Salloum, Tom Sherman, Jeff Spalding, Lisa Steele, Rodney Werden, Paul Wong

UK Artists
George Barber, Ian Bourn, David Critchley, Peter Donebauer, Catherine Elwes, Sera Furneaux, Judith Goddard, Gorilla Tapes, Akiko Hada, Mick Hartney, Mona Hatoum, Steve Hawley, John Hopkins, Tina Keane, Steve Littman, Stuart Marshall, Chris Meigh-Andrews, Katherine Meynell, Pictorial Heroes, Marceline Mori, Pratibha Parmar, John Scarlet Davis, Marty St. James, Mike Stubbs, Jeremy Welsh, Cerith Wynn-Evans, Graham Young

Polish artists: Wojciech Bruszewski, Pavel Kwiek, Janusz Kolodrubiec, Zbigniew Libera, Adam Rzepecki, Jósef Robakowski, Janusz Szczerek, Jerzy Truszkowksi

Curators: Lisa Steele and Peggy Gale (Canadian Programs) Catherine Elwes and Chris Meigh-Andrews (UK Programs)
Lukasz Ronduda (Polish Program)

The Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery and RENDER are pleased to collaborate on the Waterloo presentation of this program funded by the Media Arts Section of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Touring and Collaborations Program of the Ontario Arts Council, and Vtape. It also received the generous support of Arts Council England, the Polish Cultural Institute (London), Camberwell College of Arts at the University of London, and the University of Central Lancashire. It is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue edited by Catherine Elwes and Chris Meigh-Andrews.

Dominion 11

Originally uploaded by Andrew Hunter1

We are currently working on a new installation of Guelph based cartoonist and graphic novelist Seth’s ambitious Dominion City project. Consisting of more than 60 model buildings from the fictitious Canadian city that has been at the centre of Seth’s recent Pallokaville/Clyde Fans comic series, the RENDER installation will open in September and will be complimented by a fully functioning installation of the Dominion City movie house at the Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery.

The University of Waterloo’s 2008 MFA candidates present their thesis exhibitions at Render this month. April 7 - 13th, opening reception: Saturday, April 12th from 4 to 7 pm.

• James Olley:  Flat Places and Dynamic Spaces
• Joanna Asha Roznowski:  Fragmenting the Landscape

April 14 - 20th, opening reception:  Saturday, April 19th from 2 to 6 pm

• Cameron McKnight-MacNeil:  The Trumpets
• Monika Raciborski:  Drawing Lines

April 22 - 27th, opening reception: Saturday, April 27th from 1 to 5 pm

• Amy Switzer: word birds