Cristine Andrew-Stuckel

/ˈfræg mən tɪd/ 

March 29 - April 2, 2021

Gordon Snelgrove Gallery

My work is an expression of the isolation and disconnection that I experienced as an adoptee within the context of ancestral lineage. Exploring the human condition within the framework of societal expectations and prejudices, and how this translates into the projection of vulnerability through the bastardization and perceived illegitimacy of humans born outside accepted parameters informs my work.

This multi-media exhibition creates and acknowledges tension through the interruption of space and fragmented images where memory creates the missing historical archive, and ancestry is rooted to place. Convoluted histories and fractured bloodlines are represented through tangled masses and self-reflection while empty spaces deny origins. The juxtaposition of delicate graphite renderings with the more visceral application of media, or the reflectivity of an artificial forest with the stark reality of a tree and its manufactured root are indicative of the struggle to reconcile a personal history with one that is muddied and invented and one that is dissociated – real yet imagined. Constructed environments echo the premise of the built family and its history; realism is contrasted with abstraction and fantasy, and fragments contradict the whole. Subtle gestures manipulate the gallery space, rejecting convention, and reflecting a refusal to accept or conform to society’s impositions.

While my work is personal, it explores the connections we make as human beings with one another and with the places we inhabit. It highlights the relative importance of these connections as support systems that instill a sense of history and belonging in the absence of legitimate genealogies.

About the Artist

Originally from the Ottawa Valley in Ontario, Cristine relocated to Saskatoon in 1999 with her young daughters to begin a new life, and in 2015, she returned to university to pursue her lifelong love of art. Areas of focus during her time at the University of Saskatchewan include painting, drawing, photography, and sculpture/installation. Cristine has been the recipient of numerous awards and scholarships based on her academic achievements at university including the Michael S. Misanchuk Memoral Award in Art and Art History for Travel, the Athetes and Art Scholarship, and the Anna Bychinsky Award for Excellence in the Fine Arts. She has volunteered at the Gordon Snelgrove Gallery on campus and was involved with the Visual Arts Student Union as a board member. In 2018 she was chosen by a professor in the Art and Art History Department as one of the top three painting students to enter a student painting and sculpture competition at Galerie Art Mûr in Montreal and was subsequently chosen as one of the student-artists to take part in the associated exhibition that same year. 

Diana Roelens

watermark

March 29 - April 2, 2021

Gordon Snelgrove Gallery

watermark means both a measure of the height of risen water and pressured marking in paper visible when held up to light.  Both definitions are evident in my drawing and installation works as I examine the forms and flow of water through abstraction and luminosity.

Utilizing the environment as a medium in my large hanging drawings, snow and ice determine the delicate patterns made by a palette of red inks that ebb and flow across the paper.  In my collaboration with nature, I exposed the works to the forces of winter, allowing the freeze and thaw to dictate the forms and shapes on paper over a period of time. The mark making is a reminder of the unpredictability and power of this element as it seeks every undulation and crease exposing underlying vulnerabilities and creating unexpected topographies.  With other works, I have manipulated the outcome in an attempt to contain the ink flow and abstract my own watermark alluding to manmade interference.

Snow determines the textured patterns in a grid installation of small works - a series of acrylic panels exhibiting painted frottages on loosely attached translucent papers – that are juxtaposed by discreetly illuminated rice paper scrolls hung as sculptural forms, where light becomes perceptible upon closer inspection through machine sewn pinpricked patterns reminiscent of pores.

watermark is a culmination of transforming my work from quintessential landscapes to abstraction by surrendering the process to the elements, documenting the shapes and patterns that inadvertently replicate our own life-force.

About the Artist

Diana Roelens is completing her BFA (Hons) Studio Art at the University of Saskatchewan in April 2021, culminating in her BFA thesis exhibition.

Roelens was born in Nongoma, South Africa and immigrated to a small rural town on the Canadian prairies in 2004 together with her husband and young family.  She currently lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, but grew up and lived in various South African locales. The richly diverse environments of South Africa and Canada have strongly influenced her work through painting, drawing, sculpture and installation.

Roelens has participated in student exhibitions at the Gordon Snelgrove Gallery. In 2018 she was one of the students nominated to submit paintings to Fresh Paint/New Construction at the Art Mûr gallery in Montreal. A number of her works were selected for this survey exhibition of new works from students across fourteen Canadian universities.  She has also exhibited in group shows in Saskatchewan and South Africa and had work featured on the cover of ESJ, a University of Saskatchewan research journal.