Summer Group Exhibition

Image: Ulrike Veith, Bitter (detail), photographic work, 2024.

Summer Group Exhibition
Featuring Éveline Boudreau, Odette Nicholson, and Ulrike Veith
July 5 – August 2, 2024
Opening Reception: Friday, July 5, 7–10 pm
PAVED Arts, 424 20th St. W. Saskatoon

Éveline Boudreau / Corps ailleurs…/Body Somewhere…
Media Gallery

This video project (approx. 15 min.) is composed of three parts.

Part 1, Mésentente, starts with an anonymous performer, in winter, on the balcony of her home and continues in her backyard. The white snow representing purity and innocence contrasts with the performer’s vivid Red dress, representing passion, pain and blood. Her overly long flowing sleeves and head covering impede her search for something – unattainable. The performer’s voice is transcended by that of a classic female singer, imbued with hope.

Part 2, Changements, occurs in spring in a landscape of forest and prairie – the snow is leaving, buds are opening. The performer from Sequence 1 is joined by another performer, in Blue, relating to the grand blue sky, symbolic of the trust and freedom that they seek. They move through the wild forest, then grasses and into wolf willow, expressing the struggle of many women. They find support and inspiration in each other and in the beauty of nature. The background music carries a spirit of spring revival.

Part 3, Résilience, occurs in early summer; nature is fully green and physically transformed. The Red and Blue performers are joined by another, in Beige. Her colour relates to soil, to earth, and is symbolic of simplicity, comfort and individuality. Their togetherness is a social representation of women coping with violence. Alone, they confront institutions that proscribe their place in society. The performers retreat back to nature. In an allegory of their obstacles, they roll metal barrels up a grassy hillside… United in friendship and determination, are they
walking toward a common goal?

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Éveline Boudreau, “Corps ailleurs…/Body Somewhere… (part 1: Mésentente), video still.

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Éveline Boudreau, “Corps ailleurs…/Body Somewhere… (part 1: Mésentente), video still.

Artist Bio

Éveline Boudreau is a multidisciplinary artist of Acadian origin from New Brunswick. She has degrees in sociology, education and kinesiology from the Universities of Moncton and Ottawa. After moving to Saskatoon, she became active in many organizations including: AGAVF (Association des groupes en arts visuels francophones), CARFAC-SK, CARFAC-National, and PAVED Arts. Currently on the Board of Directors of Free Flow Dance Company, she has a BFA from the University of Saskatchewan and has done Artist Residencies at the Banff Centre of the Arts. Since 2014 she has annually participated in the International Conference on Arts in Society. After doing art work in ceramics and installations for many years, she now focuses on performance and video art where the body, time and space are her primary materials. She addresses subjects that relate to identity, technology, and current social issues, especially violence against women.

Odette Nicholson /Life Itself (the 30yr project)
Window Gallery & Foyer
A 5-minute silent video, originally mounted and filmed at PAVED 2018.
Artwork and Direction: Odette Nicholson
Videographer / Production: Dylan Evans
Watch Here

The Life Itself project art work was installed and filmed at PAVED 2018.

The year 2015, a life embedded and deeply invested was abruptly torn away, shock determined the journey. The absence of discernment brought with it a microscopic gaze, pieces and parts of the whole. The installation components began while clearing debris, puzzling the ghosts of the past, a marriage-story’s thousands inch-size boxed notes of daily family activities who’s energy seemed a match to the artist’s own interdisciplinary approach to her studio. Topical development of series work, a storied-art continuum is a somewhat autobiographical approach tuned with the twist of abstraction and a nod to the universal. In this body of work find sculpture, paint, photography, collage, poetry and film.

The Life Itself project time-line precedes the Covid pandemic by a few years yet there is a connection, and a personal one for all of us. The video presents in a gentle and beautifully accessible way, the isolation of grief’s dream-like-state. Revisiting before to make sense of after, with a bit of time and distance. ‘Life Itself’ released to the public in 2024.

Life Itself the video is installed the PAVED Arts Gallery foyer accompanied by three of the installation’s collaged calendar panels presented in the gallery window and QR code video makes the video available – like life 24/7, to all passers by.

Special note: The 30yr project literally began with the 1985 conception of my first born child and as life would have it, is dedicated to my 38 year old son Oliver, who passed away April 2024.

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Odette Nicholson, 'Life Itself (the 30yr project)', installation view, PAVED Arts, 2018.

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Odette Nicholson, 'Life Itself (the 30yr project)', installation view, PAVED Arts and AKA Artist-Run Window Gallery, 2024..

Artist Bio

Odette Nicholson’s imagery typically expresses the physical and philosophical, by intense examination of details, then broadened with an eye for the abstract and universal where for all us autobiographical references build the whole of our lives.

Ulrike Veith / Conversations with My Old Self
Main Gallery

Veith uses photography as a means of exploration of herself and her social and political world.

Veith’s most recent photographic series Conversations with My Old Self explores her personal identity and her aging process through autobiographical images.

In appreciation of the multi-facetted nature of human beings, she uses a non-linear and non-chronological approach to share snippets, gestures, glances, and memories that connect her present self to her younger self.

Her early family life was marred by abuse, neglect and intergenerational trauma. She finds the exploration of these familial relationships cathartic. With an introspective approach in her images, she revisits her childhood, calamities, vulnerability, and emotional states. The images also express her search for and appreciation of agency, resilience, strength and joy.

The vibrant colours in her still life and narrative tableau photography seek an uneasy and dissonant aesthetic meant to question the status quo. She often works in a surrealistic manner and appreciates the artistic freedom within this approach that encourages a subversion of reality, envisioning new ways of being and imagining new worlds. She finds that her process of exploratory construction combined with the materiality of the objects she uses, does have fresh elements of discovery and surprise for her. To build her images, she uses photo editing techniques and an extensive collection of small, natural materials and man-made objects.

Veith is inspired by Imogen Cunningham and Thelma Pepper who both undertook significant photographic projects over the age of 65, in Cunningham’s case over the age of 90 and who shared unique insights into older women’s lives.

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Ulrike Veith, Bitter (detail), photograph, 2024.

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Ulrike Vieth, Conversations with My Old Self, photograph, 2024.

Artist Bio

Ulrike Veith was born in Germany and lives and photographs in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. During her career she has worked as a curator, educator, programmer, administrator and writer. She has received grants from the German Academic Exchange Service, SkArts and the Canada Council. Her work is in the collection of SkArts.

Previously, having started out in the 1980s in analog photography, both black & white and Cibachrome, she recently made the switch to digital photography and image creation.

Summer Group Exhibition

Image: Ulrike Veith, Bitter (detail), photographic work, 2024.