HOLD FAST 20th Anniversary – ART CRAWL
The Art Crawl is the highlight event of HOLD FAST Contemporary Art Festival taking place in downtown St. John’s on the evening of Saturday, September 21, from 4-8pm. At this event downtown St. John’s comes alive with artistic performances delivered at various outdoor and indoor locations across the city. Featured festival artists and locals alike present performances, exhibitions, video screenings, interventions, and more!!! Check out the projects by our featured festival artists below!
4-8pm a free shuttle win run between Eastern Edge and Signal Hill on the hour, every hour!
Teresa Connors – From the Edge
Location: MUN Signal Hill Campus, 100 Signal Hill Road
Time: ongoing starting at 4pm
From the Edge is one of a series of audiovisual installations that explores the environment of East Coast Newfoundland. The work expands on my use of environmental data-sets as an artistic device to create nonlinear artworks for public engagement. The creative system is coded to live-stream data off the Smart Alantic St. John’s Buoy, which is located just north of Cape Spear and 1 kilometre offshore. The buoy is capable of measuring and transmitting a variety of atmospheric and surface conditions including: surface temperature; wind speed and direction; wave height, period and direction; as well as current speed and direction. From the Edge live-streams, then parses these data-sets to trigger and shift parameters of the audio visual work, which continually evolves depending on the transmitted measurements.
Lucas Morneau – Werk Out
Location: Bannerman Park
Start Times: 5:00pm, 6:00pm, 7:00pm
Using the aesthetics of camp and comedic satire that references camp icon Richard Simmons, Werk Out is a series of 20-minute jazzercise classes hosted by The Queer Mummer. As the instructor, The Queer Mummer uses over-the-top dance moves to queer public spaces, forcing the public to confront queerness.
Craig Francis Power – White Trash Diner
Location: TOSLOW, 183A Duckworth Street
Time: ongoing starting at 4pm
FRANKIE PEE’S FOLK ART EMPORIUM AND WHITE TRASH DINER: WHAT’S BETTER THAN FOLK ART AND WHITE TRASH FOOD TOGETHER IN ONE PLACE? NOOOTHING!!!!!–ACTUALLY THAT’S NOT TRUE BC THERE’S MUSIC TOO BUT NOT LIVE MUSIC THO (MOSTLY MERLE HAGGARD AND ELVIS PRESLEY). COME ENJOY SOME SMALL PLATES FROM OUR MENU INSPIRED BY FRANKIE’S (AND HIS FRIENDS’) UPBRINGING(S) WHILE CHECKING OUT THE HOOKED RUGS AND VIDEOS FRANKIE PUT TOGETHER WHILE ARTIST IN RESIDENCE AT EASTERN EDGE GALLERY. SODA POP, COORS LITE, JIM BEAM, AND COLD WATER AVAILABLE TO DRINK. WHITE TRASH SMALL PLATES (NOTHING OVER LIKE 5 BUCKS OR SO)–INCLUDING NAN’S BALONEY TACOS –BUY SOME ART TOO IF YOU LIKE EVERYTHING MUST GO
Ethan Murphy – What’s Left and What’s Gathered
Location: Eastern Edge Gallery, 72 Harbour Drive
Time: ongoing starting at 4pm
What’s Left & What’s Gathered is an exchange between my deceased father and I that explores the relationship between identity and loss through collaboration with the absent body. This photographic series examines a conversation between us ten years after his death by visualizing various strategies that create a dialogue between us. This body of work operates around two central questions; What is left physically to observe that informs the way you think about a person once they are gone? How does the gathering of objects, ideas and values impact your perception of them? I am interested in how loss can lead to creativity and resilience over time.
Arianna Richardson – Consumption Therapy Demonstration Chamber
Location: Park outside of Eastern Edge Gallery
Start Times: 4:30, 5:30, 6:30, 7:30
In a brand new performance work, ‘The Hobbyist’ will be presenting a hypothetical and absurdist new self-help technology: The Consumption Therapy™ Chamber. Consumption Therapy™ is an adult-sized, inflatable plastic ball that is half-filled with plastic recycling that has been collected by the community. It aims to cure an individual of the drive to consume goods at the rate encouraged by our plastic-obsessed, klepto-capitalist society. ‘The Hobbyist’ will be immersed in plastic detritus, demonstrating this new technology throughout the night.
Art Crawl Map
(some locations to be confirmed)
Map Key
1. Eastern Edge – Ethan Murphy: What’s Left and What’s Gathered
1. St. Michael’s Printshop – POP UP – Megan Wells: Don Wright Scholar Exhibition
1. St. Michael’s back hallway – POP UP – Charlotte Hobden: Bend, Wave, Scatter
2. EE Park – Arianna Richardson: Consumption Therapy Demonstration Chamber
3. Other Oceans – POP UP – VR Performance, details tbd
4. TOSLOW – Craig Francis Power – White Trash Diner
5. NIFCO – POP UP – Nickel Film Screening, more info tbd
6. Christina Parker Gallery – POP UP – Will Gill: Foundation of Ash
7. Bannerman Park – Lucas Morneau: Werk Out
8. Signal Hill Campus – Teresa Connors: From the Edge
Interactive Map
Hold Fast 20th Anniversary – Pop-Ups
ART CRAWL- SEPTEMBER 21, 4 PM- 8PM
HOLD FAST Pop-Ups act as supplementary programming for our festival from local artists, businesses, nonprofits and art collectives. Promoting pop-up events allows us to celebrate the diverse creative practises across St. John’s, and deliver even more accessible, meaningful programming, alongside the featured festival artists! This year’s Pop-Up evens are as listed below.
4-8pm a free shuttle win run between Eastern Edge and Signal Hill on the hour, every hour!
Charlotte Hobden – Bend, Wave, Scatter
Location: TBD
Date and Time: September 21, ongoing
Type: Installation
Bend, Wave, Scatter is a material performance that attempts to echo the mysterious qualities that are intrinsic to the perception of colour. By programming a changing loop of RGB LED lights, Hobden presents to the viewer an image of red light cast through a window, and a fluctuating landscape.
Will Gill – A Foundation of Ash
Location: Christina Parker Gallery
Date and Time: September 21, ongoing
Type: Exhibition
A Foundation of Ash is a solo exhibition by St John’s-based artist Will Gill. Stemming from recent travels to wildfire-ravaged regions across Canada, this body of work is a synthesis of ideas and environments that are central to his creative and subjective interests. Incorporating props and staged situations within the natural environment and studio, the images’ themes are reflective and broad-ranging, exploring aspects of destruction, solitude, support, wonder, transcendence and regeneration.
Megan Wells – Don Wright Scholar Exhibition
Location: St. Michael’s Printshop
Date and Time: September 21, ongoing
Type: Exhibition
This event will be a cross between a pop-up exhibition and a game of road hockey, where people can come to play, learn and talk about art and sports. The artist will provide the materials so that participants can create their own imagery for their jerseys through printmaking techniques. This event will draw focus to the individuals within a group instead of the group as a whole, as well as the physical aspect in both sport and art. The show will include prints, sports equipment, jerseys, sticks, and pucks, and viewers will be encouraged to interact with the work by trying on and using equipment provided by the artist.
Various artists (Presented by the Nickel and NIFCO) – Shorts: Time and Place
Location: NIFCO
Time and Place: September 21, 4:00 – 8:00 PM
Type: Screening
A short selection of experimental films curated by the Nickel Independent Film Festival that explore relationships to landscape and place.
Gwaai Edenshaw & Helen Haig-Brown (Presented by NIFCO) – Sgaawaay K’uuna (Edge of the Knife)
Location: NIFCO
Date and Time: Thursday, September 19th, 8:00 PM
Type: Screening
Two families gather for their annual fishing celebration when tragedy strikes, beginning a spiral into madness and revenge. Filmed in Haida Gwaii off the coast of B.C., Sgaawaay K’uuna is the first feature film made entirely in the Haida dialect. Director’s Gwaai Edenshaw and Helen Haig-Brown use the Gaagiixiid wildman of Haida mythology to create a lush, cinematic experience that acts as a powerful piece of cultural resistance.
Lisa Jackson & Mathew Borrett (Presented by Other Ocean) – Biidaaban: First Light
Location: Other Ocean
Date and Time: September 21, 4:00 – 8:00 PM
Type: VR experience
An interactive VR project that illuminates how Indigenous languages can help us understand our place in a reconciled version of Canada’s largest urban environment. In Biidaaban: First Light, celebrated filmmaker and VR artist Lisa Jackson joins forces with 3D artist Mathew Borrett to reimagine a future Toronto from an Indigenous female perspective.
Re-Print/ Réimpression