Media Arts Residency

Video Pool Media Arts Centre Exhibition Series

For the 2018 Media Arts Residency year-end, we are hosting two exhibitions and one presentation:

Jaz Papadopoulos opens up the series with their work A seat closer to the fire, running July 27 – August 11 in Poolside Gallery. Friday, July 27th is a soft launch with gallery hours being 12-5. Friday, August 3rd is the opening reception which falls on First Fridays and that’ll go until 10pm.

Zorya Arrow and Toby Gillies share Poolside Gallery August 16 – 31, showing Sleep & Spring and Home Tropics respectively. Their opening reception will be Thursday, August 16th until 10pm.

To cap things off, Kristin Nelson presents her work Sidney Sydney in Sidney, MB on August 25 at 7:30pm. For those who wish, a chartered bus to Sidney, MB will be leaving from Video Pool at 5PM on August 25. Cost is $25. Eventbrite Link HERE.

Jaz Papadopoulos – A seat closer to the fire

July 27-August 11, 2018

The video installation A seat closer to the fire is part of a broader multi-media work, What We Gave Up to Become White. The title of the show, “A seat closer to the fire,” is from an online conversation debating the ethics of white people practicing paganism. One writer stated, “Your ancestors gave that up for a seat closer to the fire.”

I am interested in the body, as well as the integrated experience of the whole self that counters the mind/body divide. I notice how powers of surveillance and oppression target the body as a site of discipline and as a tool for control. Inspired by the works of Edward Said, James Baldwin, Heathen Chinese, Rain Crow, the work of the Anti-Racist Holy War and the podcast “Seeing White,” I seek to unravel the ways that assimilation (through Christianity, fashion, language, and more) have contributed to the egregore that is white supremacy.

Jaz Papadopoulos is an interdisciplinary artist who works in experimental poetry, installation, video and performance. They are interested in diaspora, gender, bodies, place, memory, grief and ritual. Recently, Jaz completed a residency at the Cartae Open School in Winnipeg, Canada, and performed at Documenta 14 in Athens, Greece alongside Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens. They are a current recipient of the New Artist in Media Art Production Fund at Video Pool. Jaz was born and raised in Treaty 1 territory, “Canada.” They will soon be moving to the unceded Coast Salish Territory known as Vancouver to attend an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia.

Toby Gillies – Home Tropics

August 16-31, 2018

Home Tropics is an experiment in botanical preservation and video. It has been an exercise in translation, an attempt to capture a living object – a dandelion plant, using visual digital-media and to reconstruct it in physical space using sculpture and video projections. The project has been an investigation into the awkwardness of this transition and into the everyday redundancy of using digital media to create an experience readily available just out the front door.

Toby Gillies is a visual artist and art facilitator in Winnipeg, Canada. Toby’s practice is rooted in experiments in drawing and collage – encompassing work in digital animation, ceramic, sculpture, and social practice. The act of meandering and discovery is always present in Gillies’s work. He works intuitively, constructing and deconstructing themes and images as they dictate, giving form to the search and development of concepts.

Toby is the Studio Manager at Art City, a not-for-profit community Art Centre in Winnipeg’s inner city dedicated to providing people of all ages with high quality art programming, free of charge.

Toby is the Artist in Residence at Misericordia Health Centre. Since 2011, he has been working on visual art projects with a diverse population of older adults, many who live with dementia and/or other physical and cognitive disabilities.

In an average day, Toby will spend his mornings making art with older adults, his afternoons making art with children and his evenings working on creative projects alone or with his friends.

Zorya Arrow – Sleep & Spring

August 16-31, 2018

Sleep: This is when rest happens…when no change happens.

And, where is the rest in the waking?

Spring: Destruction and renewal is all around.

Relentlessness? What does it mean to move through the day?

Artistically, Zorya Arrow has a tendency toward making dance, theatre, and film focusing on human politics. She likes to direct things and has created over ten original performance works, being presented by Company Link, Young Lungs Dance Exchange, and Nova Dance Collective. As a performer, Arrow just finished on set acting in Lasha Mowchun’s independent film Scopophobia, and was seen in Theatre Projects Manitoba’s A Short History of Crazy Bone and Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers’ Flesh + Machine this past season.

Arrow holds an Honours degree in Dance with a minor in Theatre and Film from the University of Winnipeg, in affiliation with The School of Contemporary Dancers Senior Professional Program. In addition to receiving Video Pool’s New Artist In Media Art Fund, her film works have screened independently, as well as at The Winnipeg Underground Film Festival, WINX, and abroad. Arrow is spending her summer playing Opheila in The Knavish Hedgehogs’ production of Hamlet for the Winnipeg Fringe Festival, editing, and being outdoors.

Kristin Nelson – Sidney Sydney

August 25, 2018

Sidney Sydney is a sound project investigating the labour of curtains through 10 new compositions by 10 artists from across Canada and Australia using audio recordings of 10 mechanical winches (now destroyed) in the Joan Sutherland Theatre, at the Sydney Opera House, Sydney, Australia. The compositions are accompanied by a video and intermission ‘curtain piano’ at the Sidney Community Centre in Sidney, MB on August 25th, 2018.

Compositions by crys cole, Christine Fellows, hannah_g, Casey Mecija, Gail Priest, Judith Rice, Andrea Roberts, Kelly Ruth, Süss and Roger White.
Piano by Dallas Nedotiafko.

Born in Ajax Ontario, Kristin Nelson received her BFA in Visual Arts at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design (2003) and MFA at Concordia University (2014). Through a process of examination and re-contextualisation, she transforms mundane subjects into larger social concerns. Kristin completed a Riding Mountain Artist Residency (2017), a Canada Council International Residency at Artspace in Sydney Australia (2015) and a residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts (2008). She has exhibited work in Canada at Musée Regional de Rimouski, Parisian Laundry and Skol, and at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, La maison des artistes visuels francophone, Plug In ICA, Actual and RAW Gallery. Her work has shown internationally at Museo Textil de Oaxaca in Oaxaca, México. Work is available through Lisa Kehler Art + Projects and is in private and public collections including Boralex, BMO, the Province of Manitoba and the Winnipeg Art Gallery.