Hekla Dögg Jónsdóttir & Rúrí | Canada
Platform centre for Photographic + Digital Arts & Urban Shaman Contemporary Aboriginal Art Gallery
June 10th 2016 – July 23rd 2016
Multi Venue Group exhibition curated by Kegan McFadden
The Icelandic Canada Art Convergence, núna (now), will mark its tenth year of activity with a monumental multi-venue visual art project curated by Kegan McFadden opening on 10 June 2016. The twenty-two artists exhibited include: Aisa Amittu, Garry Neill Kennedy, Janet Kigusiuq, Kent Monkman, Peter Morin, Derek Sullivan, Ione Thorkelsson, Rachael Thorleifson, Rebecca Belmore, Hekla Dögg Jónsdóttir, Cliff Eyland, Meryl McMaster, Chih-Chien Wang, Dana Claxton, Leah Decter, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Mark Emerak, Demian DinéYazhi’, Rúrí, Jude Norris, Justin Sorensen andHelga Jakobson. The presentation of Helga Jacobson’s work in Window is co-curated by Synonym Art Consultation.
”Looking forward to recognising the tenth year of núna (now) and postulating what the future might hold, this visual art exhibition looks to histories of survival as a starting point for a conversation. Titled Since Then, the exhibit considers possibilities of survival, of cross-cultural exchange, and legacy. Looking at work that depicts survival, alludes to hybridity and transformation, and carries with it the physical markers of distress as part of their conceptual make-up, Since Then challenges preconceived notions of what it is to endure from both a historical and a contemporary point of view. How is the road forward paved with stories of what has come before? What has happened Since Then… ?
Installed in four unique exhibition spaces throughout Winnipeg’s Exchange District, this sprawling multi-faceted group exhibit poses hard questions about what it means to survive and how the markers of survival sometimes, necessarily, force a dialogue about its opposite.”
-K.M.
Kegan McFadden is a Winnipeg-based writer, curator, and artist whose projects blur the line between cultural research and storytelling. McFadden has organized exhibitions for artist-run, university, and public galleries throughout Canada over the last decade, employing a curatorial method that is purposely subjective, in order to reposition received narratives and highlight alternative approaches to discourse.
Hekla Dögg Jónsdóttir (b. 1969) studied at the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts and received her BFA and MFA from California Institute of the Arts; she has also studied in Germany and Maine, U.S.A.
A founder of Kling & Bang Gallery, Hekla has curated several exhibitions and has lectured at the Iceland Academy of the Arts. Magic is a leitmotif in Hekla’s work as she seeks to capture the “perfect moments” when wonderful things appear unexpectedly and in the most unlikely places. Her multimedia installations, such as her sound-reactive cold cathode light sculptures of fireworks or waterfalls in dialogue with audio and video, have been exhibited internationally to wide acclaim.
Rúrí (b.1951) was 23 when she came to the attention of the public in a “striking” way in the summer of 1974, when she attacked a gilded Mercedes Benz with a sledgehammer and displayed the result as a symbol of materialism and consumerism at an outdoor exhibition on Lækjartorg Square in central Reykjavík. Rúrí has become one of Iceland’s most prominent artists, and many of her works can be found in public spaces and public and private collections. Working in a wide range of media, Rúrí presents her consternation for threatened nature and human discord intertwined with and alongside her more conceptual interests in time, relativity, and ephemerality. Her grand entrance on the international stage was her participation in the 2003 Venice Biennale.