Paul Butler's Collage Party
Paul Butler’s Collage Party
September 2 – October 14, 2006
Following the success at Ziehersmith (New York), The Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (Toronto), Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain is very pleased to present Paul Butler’s Collage Party. Participating artists include: Paul Butler (Winnipeg), Stéphane Gilot (Montréal), Adad Hannah (Montréal), Keith Jones (Victoria), Drue Langlois (Winnipeg), Shawna Mcleod (Winnipeg), Mike Patten (Montréal), Manon De Pauw (Montréal), Christine Redfern (Montréal), Seth Scriver (Toronto), Adrian Williams (Winnipeg), and Johannes Zits (Toronto).
From August 29 – September 1, the gallery was closed and transformed into a temporary studio for the invited artists. It creates an informal environment where artists can freely connect, exchange ideas and make work. The gallery opens to the public on September 2nd with the resulting works created during the event. The next nomadic workshop will take place at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery of the Alberta College of Art and Design de Calgary in Calgary at the end of September.
Paul Butler states:
I started hosting Collage Parties as a way to recapture the art school energy I was missing after graduating from The Alberta College Art and Design in 1997. I gather a variety of collage materials, invite a number of friends to join in, and make art for no other reason but to have fun. Over the past 9 years, the Party has grown exponentially. I have been invited to host them all over the world including Norway, Scotland, London, Los Angeles, New York and Berlin.
The Collage Party format allows me to experiment and do things I wouldn¹t normally do in my own studio. There are always new people joining the party and as a result, I am constantly being exposed to new ways of thinking and working. The Collage Party also provides an amazing venue to promote the work of all the other artists (both emerging and established) who participate. This art-making process is informal, fun and rigorous all at once.
The Collage Party is popular and beneficial because it provides a venue for artists to connect and exchange ideas with not only each other, but with critics, curators, dealers and collectors from local, national and international art communities. The creative and social environment facilitates the coming together of diverse sectors of the art community. Collage parties function as creative incubators for all involved.
The gallery and Paul Butler are grateful for the support of the Winnipeg Art Council, the Manitoba Arts Council and the Canada Council for making this event possible. For more information or to schedule an interview with the artists please feel free to contact us.
Biographies of the artists
Paul Butler (Winnipeg)
The Winnipeg-based artist and curator, Paul Butler, employs an assortment of found images to create simple, yet ingenious collages that hold poignant remarks on the contemporary society. Butler makes subtle alterations on magazine pictures or shopping bags, by employing various colors of masking tape and paper, as well as poignant phrases, which illustrate the incongruity abided by the contemporary culture. His graphic compositions, hand torn papers and tape, suggest a dichotomy between the artist's hand and the industrial produced images. Filled with social comments, Butler's collages evoke a calm and pure formal composition, which gives a direct and clear point of view. Born in 1973, Butler has a varied practice that includes exhibiting his own work, as well as hosting the Collage Party, a touring experimental studio where various artists gather to collectively make art. He also directs the operations of othergallery.com, a nomadic commercial gallery. He has overseen Collage Parties all over North America and Europe including Berlin, London, NYC, LA, and Montreal. Butler currently lives and works in Winnipeg. For more information on Paul Butler, please visit: www.theotherpaulbutler.com
Stéphane Gilot (Montreal)
Stephane Gilot develops architectural and participative installations in which the video and performative component is central. The interventions are designed according to context and transform the space by mainly taking into account its architectural and ideological characteristics, as well as its metaphorical potential. This practice is often characterized by the use of play activity, thus laying emphasis on the rules governing interpersonal relationships and social structures. Centered on the notion of path or itinerary, it seeks to create within a given space a situation-fiction which presents the spectators with various constraints and possibilities. Stephane Gilot is a Montreal-based artist who arrived in Canada from Belgium in 1996. He has exhibited extensively in Canada (Montréal, Toronto, Vancouver, Banff, Québec, Baie-St-Paul) and abroad (Belgium, France, Spain, the Netherlands, England, Serbia, Findland, Germany and Brazil). He holds MFA from the University of Quebec (Montréal). For more information on Stephane Gilot, please consult: www.paulpetro.com/g/gilot.shtml and www.ccca.ca/
Adad Hannah (Montreal)
Adad Hannah is best known for his series of videos, entitled Stills, which have recently been presented at venues worldwide including the National Gallery of Canada, La Casa Encendida (Madrid), WRO 05 11th International Media Arts Biennale (Poland 2005), G39 (Cardiff 2005), Viper Basel (2004), Optica (2004), Loop 04 International Video Art Fair (Barcelona), SeNef Festival/Ilmin Art Museum (Seoul 2004), Big M, Mediakunst Tour (Groningen, Amsterdam, and Nijmegen 2004), and Artists Space (New York 2003). In 2004 he won the Images Festival Installation/New Media Award (Toronto). Adad challenges the relationship between photography, film, and performance by representing movement through mostly static videos. His work references the 19th Century popular culture of tableaux vivants. Adad Hannah was born in New York in 1971, and currently lives in Montreal. His work will soon be shown at Ikon Gallery (Birmingham), Seoul Metropolitan Museum (part of 4th Media Art Biennial), Vancouver Art Gallery, and Monash University Art Gallery (Australia). For more information please consult: www.adadhannah.com
Keith Jones (Victoria)
From a young age, Keith Jones has been devoting himself to drawing, reinventing spaceships, ant farms and cars, and evolving into an outsider, cartoon style. His depictions are inhabited by countless characters of diverse proportions, where the comic strip spreads out into one intricate narrative. Inspired by comic books, Keith Jones observes the urban life and expresses his comments with great detail and sensitivity. Born and raised in Victoria B.C., Jones lives in Montreal and is currently working on a new book, tentatively titled Systems of Metric Matter: Scenes from a Periodical Empire. His book Bacter-Area, was published recently by Drawn & Quartely's Petits Livres series of tiny affordable art books with comics bent. He is represented by othegallery.com. For more information, please consult: www.nobodyland.com
Drue Langlois (Winnipeg)
Drue Langlois, together with other University of Manitoba Fine Arts students, formed in 1996 The Royal Art Lodge, a Winnipeg-based artistic group, who mainly concentrates on collective drawing. Langlois surfaces from the darkness to assume a solo career and develops a unique imagery inspired by comic books and science fiction. His watercolours evoke one instant from the storyline, illustrating a crucial action. His characters are inspired by action figures and reveal the unlimited possibilities of his imagination. The narrative quality of his paintings also includes a dream like aspect, which is enhanced by a lyrical expression. Drue Langlois is an accomplished draftsmanship, who uses accurate perspectives, beautiful transparencies and complex renderings of colors. Born in Winnipeg in 1972, Drue Langlois has pursued his education at the University of Manitoba, the Winnipeg Film Group and the Winnipeg Canada Video Pool. He has received in 2001 the Canada Council For the Arts, film production grant and the City of Winnipeg grant; in 1999, the CSIR Radiant Dissonance Award and in 1996 the School of Art Award from the University of Manitoba. He has had exhibitions in Germany, Italy, United States and Canada. He lives and works in Winnipeg. For more information on Drue Langlois please consult: www.angelfire.com/comics/druelanglois
Shawna McLeod (Winnipeg)
Part of the acclaimed Supernovas exhibition of 2006 at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Shawna McLeod’s drawings and paintings are constructed by free-association of images. She uses her memory as a guide in order to create complex and distinct compositions, where freshness and fantasy congregate. McLeod acknowledges the process of art making, by leaving traces of her corrections, which give an underway aspect to her work.Born in 1978 in Winnipeg, Shawna McLeod has received her BFA from the University of Manitoba in 2002. Since then, she has lived in Saskatoon and Toronto, and is currently pursuing her MFA at Concordia University in Montreal. "Loneliness, love, destruction and magic are all themes I explore in my work. But my drawings are not earnest; sincerity and irreverence co-exist within. I am working on a series of drawings on ripped-out sketchbook paper (perforations included), which retain a diary-like quality. Most of them fall into three categories: the self-portrait, the “doodle,” and a combination of both. The decorative pieces, the baroque doodles, are like free-association poetry; I begin with one image and then embellish and elaborate until finished. I love memorizing and inventing patterns. My active hand becomes a channel for nervous energy, which is why I often refer to them as doodles. Editing is another important part of my work; the process always remains visible. For instance, I use white-out in a deliberately obvious manner – its blue-white contrasts with the off-white paper I choose. Often I will smear it or layer it thinly so it only veils the “mistake” (thus revealing the ghost of my prior intent and only half-retracting it), or I will accentuate a blob of it by adding an outline or a shadow."
Mike Patten (Montreal)
Originally from Regina, Mike Patten lives and works in Montreal. He holds a BFA in painting and drawing with a minor in art history from the University of Regina. Patten has participated in solo and group exhibitions nationally at artist run, commercial, and university galleries including Neutral Ground (2005), Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain (2006) and the University of Bishops (2006). Patten is interested in themes of identity, memory and interpersonal relations through painting, drawing, electronic media and digital video. For more information on Mike Patten please consult: www.mikepatten.ca
Manon De Pauw (Montreal)
Manon De Pauw creates performative and poetic situations inspired by the choreographies of our daily lives. Her art practice includes single channel videos, video-installations, live performance, photography and interactive devices. In her work, the body becomes the instrument of creation, exploring the potential of movement and of the still image. Her research focuses on the acceleration of life, human-machine relationships, productivity, and the social role of the artist. Her work has been shown in numerous exhibitions and festivals in Canada, Europe, and Latin America. She completed her BFA at Concordia (1996), and her Masters in Visual and Media Arts at UQÀM (2003), where she taught as a part-time teacher. She now teaches in the Photography department at Concordia University. She lives and works in Montreal.
Christine Redfern (Montreal)
Christine Redfern has medically dissected, physically created and artistically explored human bodies. In one form or another, they have always been the starting point in her varied productions. Whether in movement, as in the catwalk performance she directed of Carole Baillargeon’s recycled textiles that was part of a runway show featuring Quebec’s haute couture designers; or at its creative and destructive zenith in the photographs of her naked and nine months pregnant, holding guns and wearing a skull mask. She focused on our mortal nature in the video she directed and produced in New York of artist Lesley Dill’s performance I Dismantle that revolves around Emily Dickenson’s line “A single screw of flesh is all that pins the soul”. People have been the subject of innumerable paintings and drawings from a cellular level to larger than life-size. Sometimes she realistically renders the physical form, other times fruits or even dried flowers have stood in as evocative substitutes in both two and three-dimensional installations. Besides her bodyworks, Redfern has written about the arts for over six years for the Montreal Mirror, as well as freelance for Canadian Art, Border Crossings and recently the Globe and Mail. She is a graduate with honours from both the Biomedical Communication program, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Ontario and the Studio Arts program, Faculty of Fine Arts, Concordia University, Quebec.
Seth Scriver (Toronto)
Inspired by cartoons, comic books and graffiti, Seth Scriver mainly concentrates on drawing, as well as animation and video. His works on paper hold a cartoonist style, evoking a humorous, yet incongruous view of the world. Seth’s art making is based on his subconscious, where personal experiences and family stories come alive. His visual aesthetic indicates a fantasy world, populated by uncanny creatures living in a frenzied world. For the show Imploder, Seth has illustrated and animated stories of northern Canada as a sequel to his last show Weird Woods. Born and raised in Toronto, Seth Scriver has attended the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and received an interdisciplinary Bachelor of Fine Arts. He is currently living and working in Toronto. For more information, please consult: www.peanutbreath.com
Adrian Williams (Winnipeg)
Adrian Williams's art works originate from found objects, which grow to be the core of the piece. He attempts to bring back to life old, forgotten and disregarded objects, in order to give them a new aesthetic and to assemble them into a stunning composition. Born in 1974, Adrian Williams is one of the founding members of the internationally celebrated art collective, The Royal Art Lodge. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Manitoba and has been working as an artist and musician in Montreal since 1997. Williams has participated in many group exhibitions, most recently Supernovas at the Winnipeg Art Gallery and Ask the Dust at The Drawing Center in New York.
Johannes Zits (Toronto)
Challenging the representation of the body and intimacy by the mass media, Johannes Zits explores the theme of private spaces versus public consumption. His multimedia art works include collage, painting, video, installations and projections. Recently, Zits has been working on a series of international performances entitled Body Prints. In front of a live audience he paints naked bodies with a glue-like substance, makes a print from them, and then creates a collage from magazine images chosen by the owner of the body print. From the possible multitude of images offered in pop culture, Zits is presenting a unique depiction of the body and how it is rendered. Born in 1955, Johannes Zits earned a BFA with Honors from York University in 1984. He has shown extensively both nationally and internationally. He has also attended international residencies in Banff, Taipei, Paris, Rotterdam and Berlin. Some recent exhibitions include Fotogalerie (2000) Vienna; Parkhaus (2002) Berlin; Manifestation International D'art De Quebec (2003) Quebec City; Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, (2003) Toronto; Musterhaus (2004) Berlin; Biz Art (2006) Shanghai.