Measures of Absence is a group exhibition that brings together the work of eleven artists from across the country. This juried exhibition deals with a variety of themes speaking to commonalities of our collective current experiences. Some artists reflect on encounters of loss or change, others consider feelings of possibility and resilience. Many are concerned with how we individually and socially make space to be together in the world.
Some of the artists ask us to consider our relationship to memory and touch. Some ask how to navigate an inhospitable world. The issue of living through a crisis is also present in many of the works.
The exhibition contains painting, photography, found objects, sculpture, drawing, weaving, mixed media embroidery, and collage and runs until February 28 at Inverness County Centre for the Arts.
Robin Gislain is a photographer and art director from Rwanda, now based in Charlottetown and Montreal. You can find him on Instagram at @iamgessyy. His body of work relates to creating a platform that binds purpose, God, and the beauty of the melanin.
Laura Bucci is an interdisciplinary artist working with interventions, textiles, printed matter, and participatory installations. She holds a BFA (92) from NSCAD and is an MFA candidate (2023) at ECUAD. Her work explores issues of loneliness and belonging and mostly manifests itself in attempts to disrupt the everyday and to make connections with the public through planned and chance encounters. She has shown in Vancouver at community galleries and artist-run project spaces, and recently in Nova Scotia. Several of her projects have also occurred in the public space unaffiliated to a gallery or institution. She is currently trying to find the right manifestation to express the uncertainty of these times while living as an uninvited guest on unceded Coast Salish Territory in Vancouver, Canada.
Ulrike Zoellner (b.1985), is an East German artist living in Vancouver, Canada. Working in a range of scale, from the page to the mural, her practice moves back and forth between painting and drawing and incorporates the art of journaling. Inspired by everyday news and using humour as a catalyst to help digest the heaviness of the world, she depicts the emotions of collective realities with queer aesthetics and bright colours.
Anthony A. Clementi has been an artist, exhibition curator and art educator for more than 35 years. He has had more than 6o exhibitions in North America and Europe. He has taught at New York Institute of Technology, Nassau College, The College of Mount Saint Vincent and Pratt Institute in New York and Mount Saint Vincent University in Nova Scotia, Canada. He has been the Executive Director of the Children’s Museum in Utica, New York. He has curated Exhibitions in Manhattan, Long Island and Utica, New York. Since coming to Canada in 2007 he has exhibited his work throughout the province of Nova Scotia and has lectured and held workshops. He participated in the Capture 2014 Exhibition and had a Solo Exhibition, Critical Incidentat Acadia University Gallery. He presently lives and works in Nova Scotia, Canada with his wife Patricia Caryi.
Jessy Watson is an interdisciplinary artist born and raised in Inverness, Cape Breton. Between mediums she finds language and poetry to be integral, intertwining parts of her practice whether she’s working on sculpture, video, or a piece of printed matter. Within her writing and imagery, shaped and centred by her upbringing in a small coastal town, percolate themes of isolation, anxiety and a search for communication and connection. Since graduating from NSCAD University in 2017 much of her practice has been focused on writing poetry surrounding these subjects in the form of handbound books, interactive websites, and sculptural installations. The work looks at ways of building and dissecting these poems through materials, sound, texture and other visual references. The illustrations offer observational, suggestive sometimes humorous angles to accompany the viewer and the writing.
Clara Congdon is a Montreal, Quebec-based emerging artist whose practice includes textiles, drawing, collage, painting, and artists’ books. She holds a BFA from NSCAD University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Congdon has presented across North America including at Monastiraki and Le Livart (Montreal, QC), Owens Art Gallery (Sackville, NB), the University of Iowa Center for the Book (Iowa City, IA), and Artch, an outdoor exhibition of emerging contemporary art held annually in Montreal’s Dorchester Square. Her work can be found in Broken Pencil Magazine, Emotional Magazine, and her own two series of zines: L’oubli and You Betcha Iris. Congdon’s planned Spring 2020 residency at Can Serrat in El Bruc, Spain is currently postponed due to the ongoing pandemic.
Coralee MacDougall is a keen and observant listener whose wry smile is almost always hinted on her face, as she waits for the next joke to tumble into her mind and out to those around her. She works in paint (with or without wax resist) and felt at The Angel’s Loft, an art studio program for people with intellectual disabilities at L’Arche Cape Breton. Coralee has limited vision and her work is nonrepresentational. However, she is exceedingly thoughtful about her subjects, her colour choices, and how she incorporates her feelings and hopes into her work.
Brandt Eisner grew up in a small community on the South Shore of Nova Scotia, he began creating assemblages as a way to express himself, not only as “art for art’s sake”, but also as a form of self-therapy. He was welcomed into the local art community, and that encouragement motivated him to continue to produce and show his work. He served on the Board for the South Shore Festival of the Arts, and organized art and craft shows in his spare time . He graduated from NSCAD in 2005, and worked at Argyle Fine Art in Halifax, N.S. where he became the Assistant Director. After five years at Argyle, in 2010, he opened Swoon – Fine Art and Antiques on Hammonds Plains Road, just outside Halifax NS. Although a life changing experience, in 2015, he closed Swoon’s brick and mortar location.Today he is the curator at The Ice House Gallery in Tatamagouche as well as curates and assists with local art shows at other galleries. At same time he is just as focused on his own art practice.
Nasim Makaremi Nia (b.1992) graduated with an MSc in solid-state physics in Iran, but she is a painter. She started painting and drawing when she was ten years old. Besides studying school lessons, she participated in art classes and artistic activities. She studied painting and drawing with several teachers and professors. Her physics background helps her in the development of her art. She has shown work in seven group exhibitions. Her work is focused on subjects such as humanity, and the emotions of women and their lives in developing countries. In her work she uses animals as symbols to deal with sexuality with the intent to magnify gender discrimination and censorship. She lives and paints in St. John’s, Nfld.
Jessie Fraser is a craft oriented visual artist working predominantly in the medium of fibre. Her practice considers how photographs, literature and cloth may be combined, to investigate the affective potential of woven cloth and text in site-sensitive installations. Fraser completed an MFA in 2019 at the Alberta University of the Arts in Craft Media. She has participated in multiple residencies, most recently at the Centre for Craft Nova Scotia and has exhibited work in a number of venues throughout Calgary, including group shows at VivianeArt and Stride Gallery. Image, text and textiles, along with photographic and weaving processes are used as sites of intuitive and emotional investigation. Using time as both a process and a material, Jessie’s practice is the process of weaving. She weaves not only with thread but also with historic narratives and atmospheric feeling. She currently lives and works in Kjipuktuk (Halifax).
Tyler Muzzin holds an MFA from the University of Lethbridge. Recent solo exhibitions include This Apparent Magnitude at Trianon Gallery, Lethbridge (2019), Flower Arrangements for the Hillcrest Mine Disaster Cemetery at the Iceland Academy of Arts, Reykjavik (2019), and The Great Dark Wonder commissioned for The City of Burlington’s Public Art Lab (2019). Recent group exhibitions include Of Surroundings at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge (2019), and Eulogy for the Coffin Factory at Nuit Blanche Toronto (2019). A folio of photographs from the Sentinel series was selected for publication in Spring 2019 by 89books, Palermo, Italy. Muzzin’s critical writing has been published by MOMUS (2020) with a forthcoming review in Peripheral Review (2021).
