Zoe Dougherty’s exhibition Virago! is a depiction of female rage through mark making techniques with paint, dominant and confrontational female figures, and motifs of blood. The women exhibited imply and exude aggressive intent or recovery from rageful outbursts, highlighted with vibrant, overwhelming colours. Blood and wounds envelop and frame the women to allow them to exist in their agony, persisting through anger and torment. Virago! is for the suppressed anger in women that longs to emerge.
My work reflects my experience as a Christian woman, exploring themes related to shame, harmful narratives surrounding sexual purity, the objectification of women’s bodies, and the male gaze within the church. I seek to celebrate women’s bodies in my work, and to allow space for women to exist and express themselves authentically.
Kayla St-Pierre:
Kayla St-Pierre is a visual artist who works mainly watercolour and oil paint. She is currently enrolled at University of Guelph for their Studio Art program. After participating in the Guelph Emerging Artists program with an exhibition at the Boarding House Gallery, she has gone on to exhibit her work at Lalani Jennings Gallery and Zavitz Gallery.
The Juried Art Show (JAS, pronounced “jazz”) is an annual exhibition of artwork from the undergraduate students of the University of Guelph’s Studio Art program. Run annually since 1968, JAS is entirely student-run, and is one of the oldest art shows of its kind in Canada. It is a long-cherished tradition of the University, a capstone of community celebration for the school’s emerging artists, and platform for professional development. The Top Ten Show is an exhibit of the ten award-winning artworks selected by the JAS jurors.
This years top ten artworks are by the following artists: Julianna Wright, Hannah Pecyna, Marjan Kaviani, Kali Stadke, Jaida Strand, Nevan, Nerine Cavadias, Wendy Bishop and Avery Riley Mckay, Emma Lippert and Neluka Ameresekere, and Anna Golding.
This body of work emphasizes experimentation and risk-taking. After having a static and predictable method of art-making for the past few months, I decided to use this exhibition opportunity to push myself to do something different. Perhaps this was a stupid decision, but we all make those every now and again, don’t we? Recently in my work I have been referencing art historical paintings as a way to get the paint onto the canvas. Additionally, with this body of work I tried to do something different or use a new technique in each painting. As I said before, this is kind of an experiment, people.
The most obvious difference between these paintings and my past work is the absence of ornamentation. Removal of the ornament has been suggested to me multiple times ever since last semester. I’ve decided to use that feedback to challenge myself. It forces me to focus more on the marks. Their size, their speed, their shape, their palette, how they might interact with each other. With the ornamentations it was easy to hide bad decisions, and with some of my old work I can’t help but be reminded of the saying: “lipstick on a pig”.
Here, everything is out in the open. There’s not a lot of room to hide.
Sarah Fabrizi is a painter from Oakville, Ontario. She is in her final year of the Arts and Sciences program at the University of Guelph, studying Studio Art and Biology.
Colleen Alcorn (they/them) is a queer, non-binary, Guelph based artist who creates work that focuses on tension and spaces between. Working primarily with wood, metal and fabric in various combinations, their mixed-media sculptural assemblages aim to provoke and bring forth questioning. Through their work, they desire to create balance whilst exploring themes of identity, interpersonal connections, upbringing and commonly shared experiences of queer individuals.
Included in this show are 10 attempts to find a feeling.
One that comes at night when you are alone and vulnerable.
You look behind you as if there is someone following.
There is nothing else here. There is no one there.
“The void was seen as a place of possibilities rather than realities, an imaginary space not governed by any known laws, filled perhaps with God—the unknowable, the unrepresentable, and the indescribable, empty, infinite nihil.”
Elina Gertsman. The Absent Image: Lacunae in Medieval Books. Penn State University Press, 2021, page 33
