COLLAGE 2022
Online juried slide exhibition, with playlist and PDF publication
JURORS: Sebastein Miller & Ken Moffatt
DESIGNER: Marli Davis
The Aird is delighted to offer our 2nd annual juried exhibition showcasing collage-based works by contemporary artists.
Derived from the French verb coller, meaning “to glue,” collage refers to both the technique and the resulting work of art in which fragments of paper and other materials are arranged and glued or otherwise affixed to a supporting surface. Associated Art Movements include Cubism, the DADA, and Surrealism. Today, collage, as a process and an art movement is experiencing a second life!
JURORS BIOS
Toronto-born artist Sebastein Miller is most recognized for his recent body of work entitled Civil Disobedience. Miller’s new media practice involves sampling and mixing digital pop-culture imagery with social-political symbols, and collage parties. In Civil Disobedience, the artist constructs photomontages that rethink the histories of the twentieth century using Afro-Futurist emblems and found imagery. Miller’s work provocatively explores some of the key tensions in contemporary culture from a Black male perspective. Variously referencing photojournalism, album art, protest imagery, comic books, films, and video games; the cut-out style of his practice foregrounds the works’ constructed nature highlighting the gaps between the images’ posited futures and currently depictable reality.
Ken Moffatt is the author of Troubled Masculinities: Reimagining Urban Men and Postmodern Social Work: Reflective Practice and Education. In addition to authoring books, Ken is the Jack Layton Chair (Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Community Services) at Toronto Metropolitan University. He has curated two online collage shows Cut Paste Resist (co-curated with R.M. Vaughan, Writer in Residence, University of New Brunswick) and Create Resist (co-curated with Dr. Reena Tandon, CELT, Faculty of Arts, Toronto Metropolitan University). He has curated companion shows to his writing, such as Self Portrait in Rice Paper by Johnson Ngo, presented at Video Fag. His art has been shown at Paul H. Cocker Gallery, Katherine Mulherin Gallery (co-created with Daryl Vocat), Zsa Zsa Gallery (co-created with Patrick Decoste), Videofag (co-created with Daryl Vocat), Naco Gallery and
Aird Gallery.
Marli Davis is a multicultural, interdisciplinary artist, based in Toronto. Her research-intensive practice borrows scientific and spiritual ideologies to conduct art-making in strategic phases, reminiscent of ritualistic laboratory experimentation. Establishing a practice within this convergence of ideologies provides Marli with the necessary outlets to execute intimate investigations throughout her work. Seeking topics that introspectively challenge the self; many dealing with the mapping of her fragmented cultural discourse. The artist begins to embody the examiner’s role; addressing and systematizing bodily notions through video, painting, sculpture, installation and publication.
In 2019, Marli studied abroad in Florence Italy and has obtained various awards and scholarships throughout her education. In 2021, she received a BFA from OCAD University; emerging with a dedicated passion for academia. Marli is currently partaking in selected art exhibitions, residencies and forum events. While learning within the art industry through mentorship and different intern, freelance and employment experiences.
