Summer residency
Self-directed residency with chris mendoza, Violaine Lafortune and Laura Demers
June 7 - 20 2024
Between June 7 - 20, chris mendoza, Violaine Lafortune and Laura Demers spent their time together at the plumb, using the space as a shared collaborative studio. They were visited by curators and plumb members Warren Harper and Ciar O'Mahony, and by artists Ron Loranger and Maura Doyle. The remnants of their material experiments, conversations and deambulations were left on display through the months of July and August.
Violaine Lafortune lives and works in Rouyn-Noranda. Working between arts and sciences, geography, geology and biology inform her practice. She uses and diverts the methods specific to these disciplines to discover phenomena from a new perspective and to reveal their poetic substance. Violaine's performances and works have been presented in exhibitions in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region, Quebec, Ontario, England and Switzerland. In 2024, she was awarded le Prix du CALQ, Artiste de l'année en Abitibi-Témiscamingue.
violainelafortune.com
chris mendoza lives and works in Tkaronto/Toronto. chris' practice moves between performance, sculpture, image-making, and writing as affective inquiries into belonging, inheritance, and embodied relations to place. Recent projects include the program series "Implicit Choreographies & Relational Topographies" developed with Pumice Raft, as well as exhibitions at Xpace, Union Station, and the University of Toronto Art Museum.
chrismendoza.ca
Laura Demers is interested in the unstable materiality of analog media and techniques; she creates works that invite the infiltration of natural traces and processes. These have been presented in artist-run centres in Ontario, Quebec, and New-Brunswick, most recently at the Louise-et-Reuben-Cohen Art Gallery and L'Écart. She has carried out curatorial projects at the Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario, La Maison des artistes visuels francophones, this town is small, The Power Plant, and the 2022 Orange Triennial, among others.
laurademers.com