MNG Main Space

better than lasagna...

Sam Lloyd :^)

04.19.2024 - 05.06.2024

Reception April 19th 7-9PM

Sam’s work as a queer and trans artist originates from a largely conservative city, where he aims to challenge societal norms and explore the relationships between object, process, concept, and context. Through humour and a solitary artistic approach, he reflects on his personal history and cultural identity to create artwork that communicates his experiences and perspectives.

At the core of his artistic practice are his Garfield paintings, where he depicts the iconic cartoon character in sexual ways or explores his sexuality in a queer context through the use of text, bright colours, and provocative poses. The inclusion of sculptural elements, particularly in the form of phallic imagery, serves as a blunt confrontation and a rejection of conservative artistic norms. It is important to note that Sam’s work is not about a cisgender man making genitals, but rather a trans man creating a trans dick, reclaiming control over his sexual and gender identity

Elevating the Paper Object

Collaborative project curated by Jonathan Creese

3.4.2024 - 3.22.2024

MNG LRT Space

Through the medium of an 8 ½” x 11” sheet of handmade paper, art students, university faculty, and staff at the institution were confronted with the result of one artist’s process and challenged to enact a manipulation upon it. Conventional labour and material relationships were encouraged to be upended, resulting in a myriad of approaches to the understanding of the paper object. The work as a whole embraces fluidity, not only in terms of the physical material as it traversed manipulation through the hands of various possessors, but also in relation to its contextualisation. The resulting objects transcend the threshold of a material of potential -that is utilitarian and ambiguous- to one of fixed function and purpose as an art object: this further assisted by the positioning of the object within the exhibition space. -Jonathan Creese

The call for MNG jury members opens December 4, 2023!

Meet and discuss art with your peers, eat snacks, and have input on what will be shown in the gallery spaces this winter semester!

Please note: jury members are required to commit time to reviewing all MNG submissions, taking notes on submissions, and meeting with the MNG Coordinator and other jurors to discuss each application.

Deadline for applications is January 8, 2024 at 11:59pm.

Find out more and apply at: https://www.marionnicollgallery.ca/submissions

Call for Submissions

Submissions for the Winter exhibition season are now open! Calling all AUArts students of any year or major and recent alumni [within last three years]. Show your work in either our Main Space or LRT Window Space here at AUArts! 〰️

Learn more: https://www.marionnicollgallery.ca/submissions

Email mng@auarts.ca if you have any questions or need assistance with the application process.

MNG Main Space

11.4.2023 - 12.22.2023

Scoring the MNG

by Marsel Reddick

Scoring the MNG is a durational performance where a musical score is composed on a piano inside of the Marion Nicoll Gallery (MNG) as an exploration of translation and interpretation. The characteristics and architecture of the MNG guide the composition process, and the score is written directly onto the walls of the MNG throughout the duration of the exhibition. Compositional parameters are extracted from observations made in and around the gallery related to the language of music. For example: the MNG’s cubic/square shape might be represented through use of quartal harmony, four-note chords, shell chords (to create a sense of containment/spatiality), and avoiding the antithetical circle of fifths. The work becomes an ongoing process of attempting to translate one non-verbal language (architecture) into another (music) to underscore a relationship between the two.MNG Main Space

Reception December 8, 2023 at 7pm

iloveyou_worm explores relationships between program and user. Using video game characters from the turn of the millennia and repurposing them as moments of reflection, this exhibition aims to uncover moral compromises while existing in a digital landscape. As technology and social media have evolved, so have the adaptive strategies deployed by its most invested users…Why do I act differently online than at the dinner table?

Kyle Anderson-Nguyen is an interdisciplinary artist based in Mohkinstsis/Calgary who works with

representations of self in the digital age. With a focus on transferring the digital experience into the physical world, he aims to bring renewed forms and unique contexts that reflect the preferred digital-based communication of the modern world.

Please join us for this exhibition's closing reception during Gallery Crawl on the evening of November 10th!

The MNG's first LRT exhibition will be Plundering Through the Pond of Perplexing Memory Soup by Matthew Springer

MNG LRT Space September 7 - October 9

This series of works explores our minds relationship in managing memories and how they degrade or become recontextualized throughout time.

All images are abstract fractions of both positive and negative distorted memories collected over the years. “Infinity Clocks” are placed throughout the works as markers of different periods of time that start to meld together over time past. Obscured with multiple arms they show that our perceptions of memories are skewed the more time progresses. Some memories become so recessed in our minds that we fill in new details that never existed. It may even seem like it was all just a dream.

More info https://www.marionnicollgallery.ca/

9/05-10/20/2023

The Zine Zone is an exhibition in celebration of independent publishing and the DIY aesthetic. Zines can be community-makers, direct communicators, and street educators. They’re the original tools of political agitators, helping radical ideas spread without approval. They’re also the most accessible, easily replicable means of creative expression. Not simply the domain of anarchists any longer, the zine is home to the hearts of poets, photographers, painters, and illustrators. A zine can be a collection of emotions, thoughts, and dreams…or it can be a silly little treatise on sunflowers. The Zine Zone is a space to relax, collage, and spit out some thoughts onto a page you can shove into the hands of friends and strangers. It’s my hope that this exhibition will support an existing network of zinesters keeping a very special art form alive, and encourage those new to the format to play around and try something new. Please enjoy.

The MNG is proud to present the Zine Zone exhibition! Created in celebration of independent publishing and the DIY aesthetic. Zines can be community-makers, direct communicators, and street educators. They’re the original tools of political agitators, helping radical ideas spread without approval. They’re also the most accessible, easily replicable means of creative expression.

Up from September 5th to October 20th.

The Zine Zone is a space to relax, collage, and spit out some thoughts onto a page you can shove into the hands of friends and strangers. We hope to see you attend and enjoy!

#ProgramMarionNicollGallery #AUArtsSA #AUArts

#EmergingArtists

Call for Submissions

Submissions for the Fall exhibition season are now open! Calling all AUArts students of any year or major and recent alumni [within last three years]. Show your work in either our Main Space or LRT Window Space here at AUArts! 〰️

Learn more: https://www.marionnicollgallery.ca/submissions

Email mng@auarts.ca if you have any questions or need assistance with the application process.

Open: August 4 - September 12, 2023

Deadline: September 12, 2023 11:59pm

This is an excellent opportunity to exercise critical discourse, get experience sitting on a fine arts jury, and critique work outside of class with a group of students from various departments. Volunteering to be on the MNG jury also looks great on a CV!

Apply here!

Lailey Newton + Nicole Jones

March 27th - April 11th

MNG Main Space

'Misremembering Space: Vacant Bodies' deconstructs concepts of space, memory, and one's relationship with their surroundings through the use of architectural imagery and pattern. Lailey and Nicole’s work aims to analyze the relationship between the body and shelter through the lens of the memories contained within these specific locations. To achieve this, they focus on images of familiar areas by utilizing local Albertan imagery, including rural landscapes, farmhouses, and brutalist architecture. These locations are then distorted by projecting images and patterns to create new and unsettling spaces that disorientate the viewer with their bright colors and unattainable geometries. These distorted structures blur the line between romanticized and overlooked architecture by dissecting and reconstructing fragments of memory. A lack of presence or witness in these works makes this loss of memory all the more isolating, investigating how the body interacts with space by highlighting its absence.

Images courtesy of the gallery and Nicole Jones.

For full info and more images, please visit marionnicollgallery.ca.

Lauren Jacobson

MNG LRT Space

March 27 - April 11

"Love, Laugh, L’CHAIM! is an exercise in pulling text upwards from a two dimensional plane into three dimensional forms. Constructed through a paper mache process, the material which composes the word is the substrate on which words are traditionally written. The effort required to construct words into physical space mirrors the effort required for us to speak about things when they are distant from us. I use this process as an allegory for my Jewish identity, which is not totally lost, but distanced from me, historically stripped from my family by force, and requires me to reach outwards to understand my own culture, my own identity, my own past. Because work which discusses identity often necessitates a heaviness of tone, I instead investigate these themes through kitsch and humour: how does laughter factor into survivorship?"

This image "chai" courtesy of the artist.

For more information and images, please visit marionnicollgallery.ca.

📸 Sign up for Photo Doc Days on March 17-19 in the Marion Nicoll Gallery!

Professional photo documentation at affordable prices for students

• $2-$5 per photo set!

• 2D, 3D, and artist portraits available!

Good documentation is super important for your portfolio and can make all the difference when applying for markets, gallery shows, residencies and even grants!

Sign up by March 10 via jotform.

📸 Sign up for Photo Doc Days on March 17-19 in the Marion Nicoll Gallery!

Professional photo documentation at affordable prices for students

• $2-$5 per photo set!

• 2D, 3D, and artist portraits available!

Good documentation is super important for your portfolio and can make all the difference when applying for markets, gallery shows, residencies and even grants!

Sign up by March 10 via jotform.

Learn more

Learn more

Now Hiring: MNG Coordinator

The Marion Nicoll Gallery (MNG) Coordinator is responsible for overseeing the day-to-day operations of the gallery, and for ensuring that programming is communicated and adequately promoted to the community.

• Learn more at https://www.auarts-sa.ca/classifieds/jan2023/marion-nicoll-gallery-coordinator

• Closing Date of Opportunity: 1/23/2023

Call for Submissions

Submissions for the Winter 2023 exhibition season are now open! Calling all AUArts students of any year or major and recent alumni [within last three years]. Show your work in either our Main Space or LRT Window Space here at AUArts! 〰️

Learn more: https://www.marionnicollgallery.ca/submissions

Apply at https://form.jotform.com/223347181548257

Deadline EXTENDED TO January 16th 2023

Email mng@auarts.ca if you have any questions or need assistance with the application process.

Call for Submissions

Apply through our online form. Deadline to apply is September 26th.

Calling all students and recent alumni (within last three years). Submit your work to show in either our main space or LRT window here at AUArts! Open to all years and all majors.

Call for Jurors

Apply through our online form. Deadline to apply is September 26th.

We are currently accepting applications for the Fall 2022 season. This is an excellent opportunity to exercise critical discourse, critique work outside of class with a group of students from various departments and also looks great on a CV!

MNG Presents

Genesis: New Worlds

By Laura Holck

Every object originates from a concentration of energy, matter, imagination and intention. Moving outward from a generative source, planets and stars spill into the universe, inventions flood the marketplace, music fills the airwaves, ideas become corporeal. Everything begins somewhere, springing forth from a creative source and birthed into being. Seeming to arise from nowhere in particular, every genesis heralds the appearance of a new world, evoking awe and wonder at the diversity and power of creativity itself.  

Through photography, copper, ceramic, and organic materials, Genesis explores the frontiers of imagination, scale, and the creative mind that brings new worlds to life. 

See the exhibition in the Main Space Gallery from May 5th-22nd.

MNG Presents

Outside In

By Claire Macmahon

Outside In 2021 focuses on the idea that our self, internally known, has a disjunct from ourselves externally known. By using references to surveillance, I create an experience where the self is understood as an externally perceived subject.

A live video of the audience walking around the gallery is projected into a mirror ball hanging from the ceiling, which reflects the live video, fragmented, onto three walls of the gallery. By detaching the audience's external images and movements from their physical existence within the gallery, this work looks at how our internal or external selves may differ from our self-perception, or how others may view us. This work forces us to look at ourselves as a spectator, thinking about how others may see us and question who we are. 

See the exhibition in the Main Space Gallery from April 19-30

MNG Presents

The Rules of Show and Tell

By Camryn Carnell

This piece is part of a recent shift in my practice towards using more fabric and sewing techniques. I am interested in how humour and heart can be conveyed in these mediums, using garish colours, tactility, and soft sculpture. What is sharp is actually squishy, what is rigid is flexible. Playfulness and soft textures use comfort as an accessible place of confrontation. Distorted patterns and protruding volumes depict a tension between organization and the disjointed. Fuzzy spikes and a fluctuating base disrupt the patchworked base. Tensions between the checkerboard pattern and disorganized volumes propose narratives through their collision.

Referencing personal anecdotes through titles ground my ambiguous forms. In this piece, I recall a time in kindergarten, when I was sent home with a letter from my teacher, requesting that I participate less often in show and tell.

See the exhibition in the LRT Window Gallery from April 19th-30th.

MNG Presents

Wishing Well: I wish I was white

By Juli Song

he artist’s work Wishing Well: I wish I was white is an installation and performance piece that investigates the trading of self in exchange for an ephemeral desire. In the installation, a white ceramic basin filled with water, is surrounded by 777 heart shaped wishing tokens. The folklore surrounding wishing wells is the idea that a person would be granted good luck if they drop a coin or pebble into a well. The act of offering, forsaking an item as a payment for good luck is what compels us to part with items of personal value for the hope of a granted wish (1). The 777 tokens represent the lucky jackpot as an added offering for good fortune: playing into the superstitions of lucky numbers. The audience is prompted by the wishing basin to make an offering they deem appropriate for their wish. Each token is crafted with immense labor and care by the artist, which welcomes participants to engage with the work. In the artist’s performance, they wish into the wishing basin with hopes of granting their childhood wish to be a White person. 

1. Dundes, Alan. “The Folklore of Wishing Wells.” 

See the exhibition in the Main Space Gallery from April 4-15.

MNG Presents

The Void Over the Land 1

By Jonathan Creese

This month’s first exhibition is The Void Over the Land 1 by first year student Jonathan Creese. Viewers can visit the LRT window space at auarts April 4th-15th to see the exhibition. 

Statement: In this body of work, I am exploring some of my first perceptions of Calgary, as viewed from my residence window during quarantine. Little intellectual, emotional or philosophical ideas are imbedded in the works (at least not consciously), and rather they are raw representations of what has been perceived through the ocular sense.

The prints do not try to be accurate to the sky formations observed but rather seek to capture the observed in the way my mind has perceived my vision and how, in the moment of artistic creation, my hands chose to represent the three-dimensional world within the two-dimensional plane. This approach to observation, whilst not conforming to the idealism striven for in representational art, better reflects the position of these works within my artistic practice; as being experimental and searching, much like I am at this moment as I strive to make sense of my new reality. 

See the exhibition in the LRT Window Gallery from April 4-15.

MNG Presents

The Maiden and The Fatale

By Brooklyn Payne

“In my work I am interested in presenting life as theatre, with personal identity being the central performance. Using oil paint on canvas as my medium allows me to create theatrical compositions and tap into the formal relationship that theatrical staging and painting historically share. Through these series of works I was considering female archetypes that appear in Greek myths and the role that these women have in their stories – and further how these fictional interpretations of women transfer to real-world interactions. 

These works are not didactic narratives, they only suggest that a narrative exists. The stories that a viewer constructs will be individual to them and how they interpret the actors’ dynamics, the sets, and the props in conjunction with one another. My theory on what the narrative is, is not the one true interpretation of the story, just as there is no one definitive experience that a person has in their own identity”.

See the exhibition in the Main Space Gallery from March 22-April 1.