Spaghetti Junction

Spaghetti Junction

April 2010

Robert Clements

Rubber has been poured into porcelain bathroom fixtures filling and making solid the internal void that typically holds water. The white porcelain shell of the fixture is then cracked and peeled away revealing a new, solid rubber core. A urinal, sink, toilette and the connective network of pipes are cast to make explicit the bodily references that are inherent in the design of bathroom fixtures. Flaccid urethane rubber remains evoking a humorous sexual unease as it wobbles and bounces in the moving air of the gallery.

Volumes of water are made solid as the vast, often overlooked, network of pipes that serve to flush away our unwanted excess, as well as the lengths that we go to in order to hide our waste, are encountered.

Phoebe Lo

Concerned with the intersection between natural and artificial environments, my artistic practice examines the characteristics that define objects existent within such settings, and identifies the impact on such objects and spaces as the result of human intervention. Adopting predominantly organic forms as my subject matter, I investigate environmental and social phenomena that evolve when man-made materials are positioned or discarded into nature, as well as the effects of relocating natural entities into man-made spaces or contexts. Some of the prominent themes in my work include elevation, displacement, and the sublime, which are actualized in the mediums of site-specific installation and object-based sculpture. Demanding the viewer's attention to reconsider elements that constitute our surroundings, the audience is invited to evaluate the functions, values, and purposes beyond the boundaries that our societies have conditioned us to realize.

Kailey Bryan

Ripple Me This…

Kailey Bryan is an artist working in sculpture, installation and painting. Her work branches off of her interest in the body and its relationship to both personal and social spaces. Kailey’s current installations focus on the manipulation of everyday architectural materials such as concrete, drywall and various types of flooring. Her pieces Pinch Me and Ripple me This…insert natural and organic forms such as folds and ripples in hard, linear structures. Kailey views this as both critical and poetic, enabling “unnatural” types of movement in the materials. These installations work to change how we perceive the spaces around us, and by extension, how our own bodies and selves relate to those spaces and their methods of production.

Alexa MacKenzie

A Culture for People Who Don’t Live There

In my current practice I explore themes of artificial culture, consumption, stereotypes and spectacle through mixed media and time-based sculpture. A Culture for People Who Don’t Live There is the first part in a series that investigates façades of the tourist location Niagara Falls. As a site of natural beauty it has, in modern times, been exploited for capitalist gain. Not only has the actual waterfall itself been physically manipulated, but the visual experience of Niagara exists more so in reproduced images than the place that is signified. I use pre-fabricated tourist commodities and inexpensive materials to erect this iconic waterfall. The work embodies the dazzle of tourism through a shabby, disheveled style to highlight the tension between the outward presentation of culture and the realities for people who live there.

Joe Phillips

Joe Phillips is an aspiring artist focused on masculinity and sport-related works. The present sculpture he is working on is a bronzed urinal goalie helmet that is presently untitled. The inspiration for this piece stems from his love of hockey as well as Duchamp’s Fountain. This urinal will be a self-sustaining system that cycles the water. This is representative of sport, as athletes cycle water through their bodies. He has designed his mask in a personalized manor, incorporating his favorite artists and his passion for Canadian hockey.

Couzyn van Heuvelen

I am currently focusing my artistic practice in the medium of sculpture. My recent work involves pieces based on found and collected bird skulls. The first work is an oversized woodcock skull that has been sculpted in steel. The original skull was found nearby the artist’s home. A second work depicts a large ptarmigan skull in cast bronze. The ptarmigan skull comes from the artist’s freezer, where the bird was kept as food.

Meghan Scott

As an artist working in sculpture and installation, I am interested in the nature of identity and self-expression within the educational environment. My current installation explores the iconic early twentieth century oak school desk as a symbol of control and reform. By fabricating several identical desks (using traditional methods including dovetail joinery), I engage in the obsessive, cyclical labour of the education system and the process of shaping and in turn, being shaped by the institution. This work offers the viewer the opportunity to contemplate the mutual dependency of the learning institution and one’s own judgment.

Allen Matrosov

What is the purpose of education? We seldom think of this. Briefly, the purpose
of education is to bring about the physical, mental and social development of
an individual. But what happens when our social development is changing at an
indeterminable rate? Are we up to the task to adequately prepare individuals
for the Sci-Fi future of tomorrow? If the main purpose of school is to prepare
an individual for tomorrow, how can we prepare them for tomorrow if, what we
learn today is obsolete by then?

Jeannette Hicks

My sculptures and installations deal with the relation between sensory experience and interpretive mediation. My objects are spawned from worldviews that I have lived out, seen according to, teased out of the background, solidified and often shed. The Metaphysical Junkyard series examines supposedly discarded systems of belief which still emerge in many structures of modern life. The axis mundi is a mythical connection point between the earth and sky found in many cultures across the world. It symbolizes the centre point of the supposedly ordered world, transcendent selfhood and totality and contrasts the outlying regions as chaotic, earth-bound and other.

Simon Black

I like to focus upon the little things we take for granted in our daily lives – stuff we throw away and the endless variety of items lying on the sidewalk – in order to make our everyday something more extraordinary. At the same time, I like to think of ways to take the act of art making out of the studio setting, and incorporate it directly into the public realm. For the class exhibit at DeLeon White Gallery, I will exhibit the documentation from me having travelled to the gallery from my home. When traveling, I will wear a suit made from packing tape wrapped all around my body, the sticky side facing out. I will take means of getting to the gallery as I normally do – bus, subway, street car – except within these means, I will travel by rolling on the ground with my tape suit on from space to space, picking up any debris that lays in my path. The end result in the gallery will show video projection of this act upon the wall of the gallery, along with the tape suit used hanging beside it, showing all the debris that was picked up during my journey.

Margaret Papadatos

“Cleomenes in his madness cut his own flesh into little pieces with a knife ‘till he had sliced himself to death.”

– Herodotus qtd. In Longinus’ “On the Sublime”

Tasha A. Turner

Replicating natural and organic forms, rich in texture, taking them out of their natural environment and bringing into question the origin. Upon realization of the origin of the forms, because of social constructs, frequently creates uncomfortable tensions or embarrassed feelings within the viewing audience. Often works are composed of a collection of organic objects or of casting representations of the body, mostly working in bronze, however plaster, glitter, and paint may be incorporated.

Brittney Katula

Fa’afafine

The work Fa’afine was based on the idea of gender performance. Brittney often battles with the idea that most men act more like a woman then she does herself. The name Fa’afafine comes from a group of people in the Samoan culture who are considered to be third gendered. These third gendered people in our Western culture are what we might compare to as Transvestites but in Samoan Culture they are praised for their indifference. The Fa’ afafine piece is a chastity belt made in bronze incorporating a bronzed jock cup. Brittney enjoys using jock cups in her work because they have a simply form yet symbolize masculinity. The chastity belt is embellished with diamonds and emeralds so that it is ostentatious and luxurious.