Welcoming Artist in Residence, Jem Woolidge!
We are so excited to have a new artist in residence in the studio! Please give a warm welcome to Jem Woolidge! Jem will be with us from June 1 – July 13, during which time he will also be presenting a workshop at Lawnya Vawnya (check out this link to register).
Jem Woolidge will spend his residency developing a collection of garments for musicians, inspired by the camp aesthetics of performance spectacles and stagewear, and in collaboration with local performers. Inspired by designers like Bob Mackie describing Elton John as a ‘Male Showgirl’, his costume methodology is inherently queer, colorful, silly, and imagery-based. He is interested in the ways in which garments can disarm both the wearer and the viewer, and create a more permissive environment to perform and be an audience in.
“I was fascinated by the social permissiveness of stage performance. You can ‘get away with’ wearing anything under the prerequisite of performance, including draggy, campy, tacky garments. In contexts where dressing in a gender nonconforming manner in a casual setting would potentially cause a stir, stage performance is an outlet where things can go unquestioned. Historically, costume designers would dress their subjects in high camp, effeminate garments, and from Liberace to Twisted Sister – their oftentimes conservative fan bases would watch and applaud.”
Jem Woolidge is an emerging artist based in Tiohtià:ke (so-called Montreal). Jem is a costume designer, cartoonist, and textile artist with interests in participatory performance and illustrative storytelling. Forefronting playfulness as an entry point into his work, Jem invites viewers to engage with art objects through games, jokes, and dressing up. Jem has exhibited at Artspace in A National Test Market (2017), the Art Gallery of Peterborough in Presently (2021), The Anna Leonowens
Gallery in I O U (2022), and the Khyber Centre for the Arts in Ephemeral Love (2022). He was featured by the Art Gallery of Ontario as part of their Inner Space series in 2023, and became an artch fellow during the 2024 cohort.