HOLD FAST- Artists in Residence
Craig Francis Power
June 11th – July 1st & August 13th – September 21st:
Angry Country Singer with Broken Bottle, Craig Francis Power
Whereas earlier generations of rug hookers depicted a quaint and somewhat idealized version of their lives—mainly decorative rural landscapes—Craig Francis Power‘s work seeks to present a grittier reality: drunks, overflowing garbage bags, ferocious seagulls, pop cultural references, drug paraphernalia, dead animals, and so on. The imagery for his hooked rugs are drawn primarily from his daily life and have a comedic, menacing and satirical edge that undermines the apparent sincerity and naïveté of the rug’s formal qualities.
Teresa Connors
June 11th – August 3rd:
Video Still from ‘Cathedral’, Teresa Connors, 2017.
Teresa Connors will develop an audiovisual relief sculpture that layers field recording material captured off the East Coast of Newfoundland. Included in this sculpture, will be a live audio feed streaming from the St. John’s SmartBay Buoy. This live stream is in conjunction with the project I initiated with Parks Canada and the Marine Institute of Newfoundland called Sonics from our Ocean’s Edge, which will be launched this summer. It includes the attachment of an icListen hydrophone onto the St. John’s buoy, with the aim to develop a phone app for the public to listen to the sonic ecology of this environment. From the Edge will expand the use of the live stream by embedded it into an audiovisual relief sculpture.
Ethan Murphy
August 13th – September 21st:
Ethan Murphy is a photographer born and raised in St. John’s, Newfoundland. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography Studies from Ryerson University. His work links identity and place by reflecting on the psychological impact of Newfoundland’s rural environment. Murphy’s work is concerned with a fluctuating perspective acquired from leaving and returning to the island that enables him to renegotiate his connection to its remote areas. Ethan Murphy is one of our HOLD FAST artists in residence and his research will culminate in an exhibition called What’s Left and What’s Gathered in EE’s Main Gallery for the duration of HOLD FAST Festival from Sept. 18-22, 2019.