Last fall, the Art Bank attended Art Toronto, Canada’s international contemporary and modern art fair. At the fair, we showcased our collection and art rental program to potential clients. We also acquired five new artworks at the fair. These works—by emerging and mid-career artists from across Canada who were not yet represented in the Art Bank collection— are now available through our art rental program and we’ve started to install them at offices across the country. We take a look at these new works, and their creators, below.
Katharine Harvey, The Catch (2017), acrylic on canvas on board This artwork will be on display at the G7 Summit in La Malbaie, Québec in June.
Katharine Harvey’s latest body of work expands on her interest in memory. Her paintings take inspiration from photographs in her family archive. She paints each image in a gestural but representational style. She then applies upwards of twenty layers of gel and paint to obscure and abstract the image beneath. In this process, she also builds a three-dimensional sense of depth and space. The resulting effect creates veils of colour that resemble light emanating through stained glass. The Catch is based on a photograph of Harvey’s father showing off a fish he caught at the Lake of Bays in Ontario. Katherine Harvey has a BFA from Queen’s University and an MFA from the University of Victoria. She lives and works in Markham, Ontario.
Laurent Lamarche, Fossile Pétri 10 (2017), engraved plexiglass, aluminium, LED lighting This artwork is available for rent at $720 per year.
Laurent Lamarche uses recuperated transparent plastic wrappers and kinetic principles to create sculptural installations that question the conditions and stakes involved in transforming materials. He heats, glues, stretches, bends, twists, and folds the plastic to shape objects that trigger out of the ordinary visual experiences. Recently, Lamarche suggested new ways of experiencing natural phenomena (such as light diffraction, aurora borealis, and bioluminescence) by magnifying transparent materials and using lasers in his art practice. The organisms and phenomena in his work evolve in fictional worlds that blur the boundaries between art and science, nature and artifice. Lamarche, holds an MFA (2012) from the Université du Québec in Montréal and works in photography, sculpture and installation. He lives and works in Montréal.
Judy D. Shane, The Painted Photograph: Remnants, Remnant #475 v1 (2017), inkjet print This artwork is installed at Sustainable Development Technology Canada in Ottawa.
Judy D. Shane uses focally stacked digital photographs to examine the micro world of the hand painted brushstroke as seen through the macro lens. She creates large-scale photographic composites which exhibit a three-dimensional realism and a hyper-materiality while remaining firmly situated in a two-dimensional format. Judy D. Shane is a Vancouver-based artist. She graduated with a BFA from Emily Carr University in 2012. Her lens-based art practice is informed by her previous career as a visual effects compositor in the television and film industry.
Jimy Sloan, Juicy (2017), acrylic on canvas This artwork is installed at Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association in Toronto.
Artist Jimy Sloan explores the material surface through points, lines and planes, and creates patterns and figuration representative of assembled elements of topography and drawn forms. Through his work, Sloan notes that he’s become, “aware of the potential of a broken image plane to create unique, visually rich environments that speak openly and engage with the time that we live in.” Jimy Sloan is from Sackville, Nova Scotia. He graduated from NSCAD University in 2012 with a BFA, major in painting, and completed NSCAD’s New Glasgow Residency Program in 2013. He now lives and works in Prospect, Nova Scotia.
Kelly Wallace, Turning Squares (2016), pencil drawing on paper This artwork is available for rent at $960 per year.
Artist Kelly Wallace’s drawings are precise, technical renderings of hyper-detailed scenes from his memory and imagination. Using only vintage lead pencils and a ruler, Wallace spends 200 to 300 hours on each drawing. Appearing to disintegrate before your eye, the labour-intensive nature of these delicate drawings is striking. Kelly Wallace is based in London, Ontario. He has a BFA from the University of Guelph. Beside Myself: Kelly Wallace was on view at the Judith and Norman Alix Art Gallery in Sarnia, Ontario from February 2 to May 6, 2018.
About the Author: Amy Jenkins
Amy Jenkins is the Head of the Canada Council Art Bank. She is responsible for the management of the Art Bank’s operations and delivery of its programs including: art rental, loans, exhibitions and outreach activities.