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Sobey Art Award 2020 – Atlantic
Photo: Chantal Routhier Photography
Jordan Bennett
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Jordan Bennett is a Mi’kmaq artist from Stephenville Crossing, Ktaqamkuk/Newfoundland, living and working on his ancestral territory of Mi’kma’ki in Terence Bay, Nova Scotia. He has a B.F.A. from Memorial University’s School of Fine Arts — Grenfell Campus, and an M.F.A. from the University of British Columbia, Okanagan.
Jordan's practice involves painting, sculpture, video, installation, and sound. Through these mediums, he explores land, language, the act of visiting, familial histories and challenging colonial perceptions of Indigenous culture, with a focus on exploring Mi’kmaq and Beothuk visual language.
Jordan has participated in more than 90 group and solo exhibitions at venues including the Smithsonian-National Museum of the American Indian (New York), MAC-VAL (Paris), The Museum of Art and Design (New York) Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (Santa Fe), Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, The Power Plant (Toronto), Institut du Monde Arabe (Paris). He was also one of two artists representing Newfoundland and Labrador during the 2015 Venice Biennial, at Galleria Ca’Rezzonico.
Ketu’elmita’jik: Menjino'qasik, 2018, acrylic paint on wood, mounted historical Mi’kmaq porcupine work from late 19th century created by Mary Christianne Paul (Christina, Christy Ann) (Morris), from the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History, with mural, 91.44 x 91.44 x 2.54 cm. Installation view at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax. Photo: RAW Photography Studio
Tepkik, 2018, printed polysilk, aluminum, custom-printed 3M Diamond Grade® reflective facing, 3048 x 1219.2 x 762 cm. Courtesy of the artist. Installation view at Àbadakone | Continuous Fire | Feu continuel at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 2019. Photo: Kevin Belanger
Photo: Camille-Zoe Valcourt-Synnott
Melanie Colosimo
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Melanie Colosimo is based in K'jipuktuk/Halifax, Nova Scotia. She has a B.F.A. from Mount Allison University, and an M.F.A. from the University of Windsor.
Colosimo’s practice uses found materials, construction safety equipment, graphite, and paper to create large-scale sculptural drawings. Her work opens inquiries into the structures designed ensure our collective care and safety, the negotiation of trauma, and the generative power of collective action.
Her work has been presented nationally and internationally at venues including the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Atlantic Film Festival, the Guangdong Museum of Art (Guangzhou), and the He Xiangning Art Museum (Shenzhen). She has participated in multiple residencies at the Centre for Art Tapes, the Banff Centre, and the Vermont Studio Centre. She is Director/Curator of Anna Leonowens Gallery Systems at NSCAD University. In 2016, she was responsible for developing and piloting Art Bar + Projects, NSCAD’s venue for performance art, events and happenings.
What keeps things together, when things fall apart, 2020. Installation view at Grenfell Art Gallery, Corner Brook, Newfoundland and Labrador, 2020. Photo: Melanie Colosimo
Coming or Going, 2019–20, traffic cones, steel, rubber, 449.58 x 449.58 cm. Installation view at Grenfell Art Gallery, Corner Brook, Newfoundland and Labrador. Photo: Melanie Colosimo
Photo: Allison Jalbert
Graeme Patterson
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Graeme Patterson was born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and lives in Sackville, New Brunswick. He graduated from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2002.
Initially self-taught in his development of stop-action animation using miniature figures, his multidisciplinary practice consists of animation, video, sculpture, photography, audio, music, robotics, interactive elements, and performance. Recently, he has focused on the creation of a large sculpture integrating a virtual-reality experience. His practice constructs an alternate reality stimulating reflective engagement with universal themes of longing, loss and recovery, and cultivating questions about dislocation, alienation and humankind’s fraught relationship with the natural world.
His work has been exhibited and screened internationally at the National Gallery of Canada, MASS MoCA, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, and Galerie de l'UQAM. In 2012, he received the Canada Council for the Arts Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award (Media Arts).
Secret Citadel, 2013, stop-motion animation digital still. Courtesy of the artist.
Infinity Pool, 2017, digital photograph, 81.3 x 60.9 cm. Private collection. Courtesy of the artist.
Photo: Samson Learn, Samson Photography
Lou Sheppard
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Of Irish, English and Scottish ancestry, Lou Sheppard was raised on unceded Mi'Kmaq territory, and is based in Halifax/K’jipuktuk. Sheppard graduated from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2006, later studying English and Education at Mount Saint Vincent University.
Sheppard’s interdisciplinary audio, performance and installation-based practice uses processes of translation and metaphor to interrogate structures of power and performativity in data and language. This work often leads to collaborations with communities and with musicians, visual artists and performing artists.
Sheppard has exhibited nationally and internationally, notably in the Toronto Biennial, the Antarctic Biennale and the Antarctic Pavilion in Venice. In 2017, Sheppard received the Emerging Atlantic Artist Award, and an international Sobey Art Award residency in 2018.
Crepuscular Rhythms, 2020, vinyl, eighteen t-shirts worn at dawn and dusk after being sensitized to light. Photo: Wes Johnston.
A Strong Desire: Syntactic Movement, 2019, charcoal, vinyl, gym mats. Courtesy of the artist. Installation view of performance at Audain Gallery/SFU Galleries, Vancouver, 2019. Photo: Blaine Campbell.
Photo: Chris Friel
D’Arcy Wilson
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D’Arcy Wilson is based in Corner Brook, Ktaqamkuk/Newfoundland, where she is Assistant Professor in the Visual Arts Program at Memorial University’s School of Fine Arts, Grenfell Campus. She received an M.F.A. from the University of Calgary, and a B.F.A. from Mount Allison University.
An interdisciplinary artist whose recent work considers the representation of nature in a Western context, Wilson laments colonial interactions with wilderness and the natural world. From her own perspective as a descendant of European settlers in Canada, she interrogates instances in which her culture’s affection for nature has been impeded by its tendency to harm.
A recent participant in the Outdoor School at the Banff Centre, her work has been presented most recently at the Dalhousie University Art Gallery, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Alberta, The Rooms Art Gallery, and the Owens Art Gallery, and was part of M:ST, Flotilla, and the 2019 Bonavista Biennale. She is the founder of the Saltbox Festival of Contemporary Art, Grenfell Art Gallery.
Camptorhynchus labradorius, 2020, archival inkjet print on backlit film, Labrador Duck mount on long-term loan to the Canadian Museum of Nature from the Thomas McCulloch Museum at Dalhousie University, Halifax. Photographed with the permission of the Canadian Museum of Nature
The Memorialist: Museology, 2016, archival inkjet print, 58.4 x 87.6 cm. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Chris Friel — photographed with the permission of the Oxford Museum of Natural History