Julie Lequin / Janice Yan Yan Wu
JULIE LEQUIN – TOP 30
JANICE YAN YAN WU – KNITTING MACHINE
MAR. 6 – APR. 17
An ode to turning 30, artist Julie Lequin has assembled Top 30: a 3 channel video installation with two independent soundtracks. On the right channel she has invited various young women to memorize, sit and sing a song she has selected – one song for each of her thirty years. On the left channel one hears highlights/downfalls that occurred that particular year in the artists life. The middle channel is silent, and depicts various audio technology according to the ‘fashion’ of the time. Funny and just a little bit nerdy Julie’s work is all about Julie.
Read the exhibition essay by Sean Michaels.
A craft performance and technology mash-up. In Janice Yan Yan Wu’s Knitting Machine, the immateriality of a craftperson’s process is illuminated when a knitter’s finger movements are mimicked by the kinetic dance of found objects. In this performance/installation, wine racks, motors and circuit boards are employed to conciliate the movement of the hand and body while the performer knits. The traditionally silent, immaterial movements of the maker become the starting point for contemplating time and experience thus shifting the focus from the hand made object to the process from which it is derived.
Read the exhibition essayby Barbara Sutherland.
About the artists:
Julie Lequin (born in Laval, Quebec in 1979) is a French Canadian artist. She received a BFA from Concordia University (Montreal, PQ) in 2001 and an MFA from Art Center College of Design (Pasadena, CA) in 2005. Julie’s multidisciplinary practice interweaves personal history with fictionalized events and circumstances in a manner that constantly blurs the line between the artist as individual and the artist as self-consciously constructed persona. Julie’s first book and DVD project was published in 2007 by 2nd Cannons Publications. In 2008, Julie was awarded a fellowship from the California Community Foundation and residencies at Yaddo, Art Omi, and Macdowell Colony. In 2009, she exhibited at the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum in California, White Columns and Horton & Liu gallery in New York City. Julie is currently based in Quebec where she is working towards her next solo exhibition at the Darling Foundry in Montreal.
Janice Yan Yan Wu’s work explores pattern, accumulation, and the value of handwork. Her investigations are often derived from her love of cloth and cloth-making processes. She has attended the Haystack Mountain School of Craft in Maine, USA, and participated as artist in residence with the Calgary Allied Arts Foundation, the Banff Centre for the Arts, and was recently a residence fellow at the Vermont Studio Center in Vermont, USA. She is a recipient of project & research grants from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. Janice Yan-Yan Wu currently lives in Montreal where she studies cabinetmaking by day, and sews hot water bottle cozies for a living by night.
Janice would like to acknowledge The Alberta Foundation for the Arts for its generous support of this project.