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Main gallery and black box
What Happens When Nothing Happens : unrealised ideas
Independant Study Group

Chantal Durand
Fake it Til' you Make it
Tamara Henderson and Jon Knowles
Jacinthe L-Lessard
Anna Jane McIntyre
Diane Morin
Taien Ng-Chan
Lina Persson
Meghan Price
Jerry Ropson
Karen Elaine Spencer
Christin Wahlström

Curators: Independant Study Group / Véronique Malo and Emily Mennerdahl
www.independantstudygroup.com

Vernissage: Friday September 11th from 17:00 to 19:00.
Will feature Karen Elaine Spencer in an ongoing performative gesture in the gallery's window.

Artist talks and panel discussion: Sept. 12th from 1 :00 To 4 :30 pm

What Happens When Nothing Happens is a collaborative curatorial project that presents a selection of artists’ works that reveal what happens before, during or after projects: unedited and unrealised ideas, sketches, texts, sounds, scribbles, drawings, trials and failures  —pendant explorations, transitory ideas and ephemeral works that together form the creative process. On exhibit in the gallery are works that demonstrate a thought process and material exploration that takes place when the notion of productivity and finality is still very ambiguous or inexistent. Research situated within the walls of the artist’s studio that may or may not ever be fully materialised. This exhibition explores the realm of the selected artists’ ideas, suspended in a time before they become resolved and made subject to the structures of interpretations and power which exist outside the boundaries of the individual artist.

Evolving from our own artistic practices, this curatorial project is enlightened primarily by an inquiry into methods of creativity and a questioning of contemporary artistic practices in a time when art relates so much to the formalities of research and academia. The Independent Study Group was founded in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 2008 whilst working together at Valand School of Fine Arts. Our main goal as an artist collective is to offer another scene for discussions and presentations of contemporary artworks in a nomadic matter whilst accentuating the importance of process. This exhibition was shown in part in Gothenburg in May 2009 then presenting only Montreal based artists. For this exhibition at FOFA it was crucial for us to present the Montreal artists alongside some new works by Swedish artists. Therefore ten artists are from Montreal and two from Sweden.

The artists participating in What Happens When Nothing Happens vary in media, approach and practice - some are collaborations, others imply personal research alongside more conceptual or process based artists. However all the works are strongly rooted in multifaceted and well-developed art practices where methods of production often interlace and dialogue in their shapes, mediums and forms. Together, the works transform the gallery into a temporary space for transitory ideas.

Artists:
Chantal Durand works with sculpture, drawing, printing and installation whilst exploring the relation of uncanniness we maintain with our body. The sculptures and drawings presented in the gallery are experiments for evolving projects, normally solely encountered within the walls of the artist's studio.  

Fake It Til' You Make It is a collective that consists of artists Eric Simon and Sean Montgomery, both working mostly in painting and drawing. Their collaboration work discusses the professionalism around an artist's career by inventing numerous "fake" artists. By creating invitation cards, posters and artists’ talks they provide us with entertaining information on the lives of these "fake" artists.




Tamara Henderson and Jon Knowles are both working across artistic disciplines and methods. They joined together for this project to work collaboratively to create a sound performance that mixes interview, off the cuff anecdote, live "folie" sound effects, recovered and adapted scripts and nonsense "cut-up" language into a series of 1-hour voice performances broadcast live on the radio.

Jacinthe L-Lessard is an interdisciplinary artist whose projects span various media including video, photography and installation. Her work addresses issues connected to the aesthetics of contemporary dwelling spaces, as well as notions of home and mediation in everyday life. Here, sketches and lists illustrate incomplete ideas, reflections regarding art and visited places.

Anna Jane McIntyre is a multi-disciplinary artist rooted in print media and installation. McIntyre's love of night time spectacle, cheap glamour, the complexity of being human, light and action has resulted in an obsession with the circus arts. Her sketchbooks that are on show are evidence of the strong link between the everyday and art.


Anna Jane McIntyre

Diane Morin is an installation artist who joins her work with kinetic art and new media. For many years she has been creating robotic, site specific and sound installations. For this exhibition, her meticulously schematic drawings of electronic circuits are evidence of ephemeral material explorations.


Diane Morin

Taien Ng-Chan is a writer and film/videomaker who has written drama for stage, screen and radio. Taien incorporates daily travel (walking, riding the bus) as part of her art practice. For this exhibition, her short poetic film sketch is a journey that questions how and where do we arrive.


Lina Persson’s (Sweden) work is a continuous organizing of daily experience and research into narrative frameworks. In this way she explores drawing and writing as a way of structuring the mind. Persson's interests lie in the processes behind both personal and collective histories and how the written word defines us just as much as it describes us.

Meghan Price's practice marries in depth explorations of material and textile construction techniques with the contemplation of less tangible systems. The work on show demonstrates the artists’ small daily victories that add up through a paper trophy made of a collection of to do lists - where materials and day to day living become elaborated on, transformed and organised.

Jerry Ropson practice is focused around drawing based installation and he uses drawing and narrative to construct and document an unyielding attachment to the commonplace. For this instance, looking through the pages of his five black sketchbooks, we are given access to his mental depository where notes on art, music, ideas and desire become materialised through drawings, lists and sketches.


Jerry Ropson

Karen Elaine Spencer is an artist who performs, curates and writes. She is intensely interested in questions that delve into conceptions of who we are and what we do. Karen likes to feel rooted in the ground of the everyday while being attentive to the quiet undercurrents of human relations. Her practice crosses paths with our curatorial means as she shows a series of drawings of performances that never happened as well as providing us access to personal notes and sketchbooks.



Karen Elaine Spencer

Christin Wahlström (Sweden) works with connections that she makes between experiences, people, history and material. In Search for the Holy Flax isalinen cloth that was woven by Wahström’s boyfriend. The artist has later embroidered a map onto it which illustrates a seven year long obsession with flax (the cloth was later used to sit on when the couple traveled across Canada).

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $37.8 million in the arts in Quebec.

© Concordia University