Dear www.
October 29, 2021 to January 21, 2022
Curated by Moran Been-noon. Presented by PAVED Arts (Saskatoon, Canada) & glór (Co. Clare, Ireland)
Artists included: Martina Hynan & Monique Blom, Linda Duvall & Avi Ratnayake, & Martina Cleary & Janelle Pewapsconias.
We’re all tired of looking at each other through framed bunches of pixels. The years 2020 and 2021 made digital communication, and the internet, into our most “natural” way to see and hear each other. For Dear www. glór’s curator-in-residence Moran Been-noon invited six artists to respond to this reality. All the artwork offered a critical view, challenged by the technology, but at the same time acknowledged the road we’ve all walked and the value that can be found in digital channels.
This project brought together Irish artists based in the West, and Canadian artists based in Treaty 6 Territories – Saskatchewan, to pay tribute to digital art projects from the 20th century. Each Irish-Canadian pair created an artistic response to a historical digital art project, from a 2021 point of view.
PAVED Arts joined forces with glór in Co. Clare, Ireland to co-present each digital project. glór is a multi-disciplinary arts centre located in the heart of Ennis. glór hosts local, national and international music, theatre, talks, dance, Film, comedy and visual arts events throughout the year.
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Shadow Breath by Martina Hynan & Monique Blom:
From Friday 29th October
On Vimeo & in the Lobby of PAVED/Aka
Char Davies germinal work, Osmose (1995) relied on participants’ breath to direct and guide this immersive VR experience. Martina Hynan & Monique Blom’s ShadowBreath is a response work which explores how breath is created when being “with our environment” rather than simply being “in our environment”.
A shadow-spirit-self is conjured in the piece to probe the entwinement of our breath with the landscape and engage with the breath of the landscape.
About the Artists: Martina Hynan & Monique Blom
Martina is a maternal artist, curator and birth activist based in Ennis, Co. Clare, Ireland. She is a PhD researcher with the Centre for Irish Studies, NUI Galway and member of The Elephant Collective, birth activist group.
Her PhD work is a feminist practice-with-research project that draws on feminist new materialism and storytelling to explore the entanglements of birth with place, questioning how the transition from home to hospital birth effects/affects the relationship of the event of childbirth with the place where it occurs. It considers birth as embedded within deep ecological work that questions the social, cultural, political, environmental and ecological concerns surrounding childbirth particularly for those living in rural Ireland. // www.martinahynan.com
Monique Blom is a Canadian multidisciplinary artist and arts educator based “in the wild woods of Saskatchewan [where] her practice includes chopping wood, building ponds and creating edges.”
Blom is deftly balanced on the edges of the prairies, boreal forest, and society. Her practice springs from a desire to explore human relationships as part, or as apart from nature. Blom’s work ranges from paintings with elements of vintage collage to public art interventions. Her most recent works examining the relationship between women, domesticity, and the landscape were performed in Saskatoon (Canada), Galway (Ireland), Mexico City (MX), Princeton University, New York, Orlando, and Tampa (USA).
Linda Duvall & Avi Ratnayake
Linda Duvall is a Saskatchewan-based visual artist whose work exists at the intersection of collaboration, performance and conversation. Her hybrid practice addresses recurring themes of connection to place, grief and loss, and the many meanings of exclusion and absence.
Duvall has completed degrees in Sociology and English (Carleton University) and Visual Arts (OCAD University, University of Michigan, Plymouth University), and is currently a Professional Affiliate at University of Saskatchewan. Her work has been exhibited locally, nationally and internationally, including exhibitions in Guatemala, Ireland, Barcelona, Shanghai, Slovenia, London, Dubai and various kinds of places and spaces across Canada.
Born in Sri lanka, Avi Ratnayake emigrated to the UK in 1994. He is now based in Galway. His work encompasses portraits, landscapes, and fine art and touches on the subject of interfaces; meeting points between worlds, cultures, different forces where a truth is revealed; such as his portraits of people with vitiligo presents individuals, in a fine art context.
Through his explorations employing mainly analogue and digital photography, and sometimes illustration he seeks to draw out a narrative of appreciation. Currently, he has been working on images using new technology and old photographic, chemical processes to create cyanotypes.
Martina Cleary & Janelle Pewapsconias
Dr. Martina Cleary is an Irish contemporary artist, working with photography, film, video, performance, sound and new digital technologies to create immersive multi-media environments. She holds a BA from Crawford College of Art and Design, an MA from The Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, and an MEd from Aalto University of Art Design & Architecture, Helsinki. In (2017), she completed a practice-based PhD at the European Centre for Photography (eCPR), Newport. Her work has been shown internationally since the early 1990’s and supported by grants from the Arts Councils of Ireland and Finland, CREATE Ireland, The Finnish Cultural Foundation, CIMO Finland, The National Forum for The Enhancement of Teaching & Learning and Arts Offices in both Ireland and Finland. // www.martinacleary.com
“ecoaborijanelle” Pewapsconias is a multidimensional nehīyaw spoken word artist based in Little Pine First Nation of the Treaty 6 Prairies. Her dedication to honour the Earth inspires her to read, perform, and design to speak to Indigenous ways of being, knowing, and thriving, despite ongoing settler colonialism in Canada.
Influenced by the poetry slam and Cree oral storytelling customs, ecoaborijanelle has done a TEDx Talk, competed nationally twice, and published in the American Indian Culture Research Journal. Janelle lives in her home community with her son and dog, surrounded by the endless living skies and rolling prairies.
