Melanie Colosimo / John G Hampton
MELANIE COLOSIMO – STAY AS YOU WERE WHEN YOU HAD LEFT
JOHN G HAMPTON – DIAGRAM 2
JAN. 14 – FEB. 25
Through a series of pen and ink drawings referencing houses found in the Maritimes, Melanie Colosimo explores homesickness, nostalgia, and a longing for the kind of intimacy and connectedness associated with distant places we call “home.” Paralleling the distortions used in the drawings, Stay As You Were When You Had Left includes a 2-channel animation that “walks” the viewer through a street scene that undergoes subtle shifts and changes, suggesting the dangers of how these places are remembered through a nostalgic lens.
Read the exhibition essay by Mike Landry.
John G Hampton presents Diagram 2: an installation of photographic and digital prints that play with perception, reproduction and how artwork is framed through display strategies and conceptual practices. The works themselves depict subjects that recede into whiteness, destabilizing their status as “objects” and rendering their meaning ambiguous in a move to allow the constructive act of viewing to hold authority over the content created.
Read the exhibition essay by Lee Henderson.
Artist Talks + Opening Reception: January 14 at 3pm
About the artists:
Melanie Colosimo is an interdisciplinary artist, originally from Southeast New Brunswick,
but has lived the last several years between Halifax, Nova Scotia and Windsor, Ontario. Her work employs drawings, miniatures and stop-motion video to negotiate the space around
construction/creation and themes of nostalgia and dislocation. She received a BFA from Mount Allison University in Sackville, NB and an MFA from the University of Windsor, in Windsor, ON. Her work has been exhibited and screened in galleries and festivals across Canada such as the Art Gallery of Windsor and the Atlantic Film Festival. Currently she is the Exhibitions Coordinator at the Anna Leonowens Gallery.
Melanie would like to thank the Nova Scotia Department of Communities Culture and Heritage, Sigi Torinus, Shaun Raymakers, Hugh Stewart, the Gallery Gals and her ever supportive family
John G. Hampton is an Artist/Curator from Regina, Saskatchewan. He is currently the Canada Council Aboriginal Curator in Residence at Neutral Ground Contemporary Art Forum, and a member of the artist collective Turner Prize*. In the past year he has exhibited both as a solo artist and with Turner Prize* at LIVE Performance Art Biennial in Vancouver, Visualeyez Festival in Edmonton, Open Space in Victoria, the Ottawa Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Regina, and the First Nations University of Canada Gallery in Regina. Hampton is also an active writer and social health researcher/filmmaker. Jonathan would like to thank Pavitra Wickramasinghe and Maskull Lasserre.
John would like to thank Jason Cawood and the Saskatchewan Arts Board for assisting in the production of this work as well as funding his travel to St. John’s.
