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Reception: Saturday September 14, 2 - 4 PM
August 24 - September 21
For the third time since 2016, Art Placement is pleased to host an exhibition of work by the Visual Arts Faculty at the School for the Arts, University of Saskatchewan.

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U of S Visual Arts Faculty Exhibition

In addition to teaching and research, the Visual Arts Faculty at the University of Saskatchewan are also among the leading artists in the city, making work at the forefront of an ever-changing artistic landscape. Their work is diverse and often cross-disciplinary, merging new technologies with established genres, media, and forms. Individually, they have exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally, and their works have been collected by prestigious institutions across Canada and abroad. Featuring work by current faculty members Lisa Birke, Jennifer Crane, Cameron Forbes, Allyson Glenn, John Graham, Mary Longman, jake moore, and Alison Norlen, as well as outgoing members Tim Nowlin, and Susan Shantz, who retired in 2023 and 2024 respectively. We are also delighted to include the work of Ella Dawn McGeough, newly appointed professor of sculpture.

As practicing artists who operate within an academic context with a strong focus on research, for this exhibition each faculty member was invited to consider some of the potential ways that their artistic production might engage with the idea of "research" as subject, practice, or conceptual framework. Encouraged to not feel bound by the conventions of a commercial gallery, particularly traditional expectations of finish, the artists were instead given an opportunity to put their methods and means on display; to focus on processes rather than outcomes, questions rather than answers. The resulting work is both refreshingly tentative and profoundly sincere, a glimpse behind the curtain that deepens our understanding of each artist’s thought and material processes.

Artist Biographies:

Lisa Birke is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is a result of the collision of video, performance art, and installation. She is interested in the stories that we re-cite and re-brand and how these inform our conception of the world and the tragi-comic perception of ourselves. Filmed unaccompanied in the Canadian landscape, absurd yet insightful performative acts become entangled in complex single and multi-channel videos and installations that trouble viewer expectations in the mixing of referents from art history, popular culture and the everyday. The thin line between theatrics and documentation is blurred, exposing an indeterminate subject and an even shakier subjectivity. Recently, Birke has been exploring immersive multi-media approaches using special effects, AR, and 360 video. Her award-winning video work has seen more than100 screenings and installations at film festivals, media centers and in galleries and museums internationally, including Vancouver International Film Festival, Slamdance Film Festival, Florida Film Festival, International Short Film Week Regensburg, the Remai Modern along with many others. Birke is Assistant Professor of Digital and Extended Media at the University of Saskatchewan. lisabirke.com 

Jennifer Crane is a lens-based artist who joined the Department of Art and Art History at The University of Saskatchewan in 2005 and  is currently Professor and Chair of the Photography/Digital Imaging Area. Crane’s research and studio art practice explores the relationship between the human body and the lens in both historical and contemporary photography using a combination of experimental, analogue and digital photographic processes. Her work has been exhibited widely in galleries and art festivals both nationally and internationally and her work can be found in both private and public collections including The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. Crane has received funding from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Canada Foundation for Innovation. jenncranestudio.com

Allyson Glenn is an Associate Professor in Painting and Drawing. Working in a variety of mediums, including acrylic, oil, gouache, printmaking, and drawing, as well as digital mediums, Glenn’s work combines traditional media with a contemporary worldview and modern technology. Her work is notable for its thick and luscious paint handling, which stylistically references the traditions of realism, impressionism, and abstract expressionism. With an analytical approach to composition, her carefully structured surfaces are developed through dozens of preliminary drawings and sketches, as well as digital manipulation of photographic source material. In terms of content, Glenn’s paintings explore a range of subjects including myths, boundaries, culture, and the environment. Her artworks have been exhibited extensively across Canada and internationally in the United States, Greece, Switzerland, India, China, Germany, Czechia, and the United Kingdom. allysonglenn.com

Through painting, drawing, and collaborative projects, Cam Forbes’ painting and publicly engaged practice considers social space. Forbes’ recent project, Active Site, observes and supports interventions in Western Newfoundland’s built environment through facilitating collective actions by visual artists, faculty, students, and community members. From 2008-2011, Forbes was the executive director of Winnipeg’s Art City. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from NSCAD University (Halifax) and a Master of Fine Arts from Concordia University (Montreal). Forbes is a new faculty member in the department, coming to the University in 2024, following almost a decade as an assistant professor in Visual Arts at Grenfell Campus, Memorial University in Corner Brook/Elmastukwek, Newfoundland. Of settler descent, she was born in Regina, Saskatchewan, Treaty 4 Territory. She now lives in Saskatoon with her partner and three children. cam-forbes.ca

Mary Longman is an Artist and Art Historian. Her teaching focuses on Contemporary Aboriginal Art History, National and International, though with a background in studio art and an active studio practice and exhibition schedule, she also regularly teaches in the areas of Sculpture and Drawing. Longman is an established artist who has been exhibiting nationally and internationally for more than three decades. She works in many different mediums including mixed-media sculpture, installation, drawing, digital media and book illustration. Her works give visual representation to Aboriginal perspective, challenging colonial power structures through personal narratives that contradict official settler histories. Her fine art has been exhibited in prestigious galleries throughout Canada and internationally and her works can also be found in several public collections across the country. marylongman.com

“The work Passage speaks to the history of Indigenous territories in Saskatchewan and the changes after the signing of treaties. The rivers of Fort Qu’Appelle and Saskatchewan have been significant passages for travel, trade and cultural exchange for Indigenous people. The work honors this history of traditional territories that was also home to the plentiful bison. The soundtrack is the song, Gordons Groove, by the Grey Buffalo Singers are from Gordons First Nation, SK  are Mary Longmans family. The Longman family’s original name was Grey Buffalo until the government changed the name at the time of signing of the treaties.”

Ella Dawn McGeough (b.1982, White Rock, Canada on unceded territories of the Kwantlen, Katzie, and Semiahmoo Nations) negotiates sticky sites of affection & infection, influence & inheritance, obligation & commitment, encounter & entanglement, dreaming & waking, inside & outside, you & me, us & we. They received a BFA from the University of British Columbia (2007) and MFA from the University of Guelph (2013). In 2023, they earned a doctorate from the Department of Visual Arts at York University for research-creation drawing upon the vast potential of beds, human and otherwise. Their writing has been published by numerous outlets (esse magazine, CMagazine, Public Journal, Momus, among others) and their work has been exhibited across Canada, the United States, China, the Philippines, and Europe, having been shaped by residencies in Tambopata National Reserve, Peru; Bergen, Norway; Berlin, Germany; Banff, Alberta (Treaty 7 Territory); and Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, Quebec. Alongside Liza Eurich and Colin Miner, they co-edit the publishing project Moire.ca. They recently relocated from T’karonto to Saskatoon to become assistant professor of Sculpture at the University of Saskatchewan. elladawnmcgeough.com

jake moore is a neurodivergent intermedia artist who creates complex immersive and interactive installations, critical scholarship, and curatorial work. She works at the intersection of material, gesture, text, and vocality to make exhibitions, events and other kinds of intervention public. She has a national exhibition history as both a solo artist and within the collaborative publishing and curatorial platform, The Dim Coast, most recently at the Remai Modern as part of the group exhibition, Other Arrangements... curated by Troy Gronsdahl. Her critical and creative writing has been published in C MAG, ESPACE, ESSE, Canadian Art, PAVED Meant,.dpi as well as in myriad exhibition texts and catalogues. She is currently the Director of University Art Galleries and Collections and an Assistant Professor at the School For the Arts at the University of Saskatchewan teaching courses in art history, critical theory, curatorial and exhibition-making practices. of-the-now.ca/jake-moore

Alison Norlen is an internationally-exhibiting Artist and Distinguished Professor at the U of S in and Drawing and Sculpture. Her background is primarily in painting, though she is best known more recently for her large-scale drawings and sculptural installations, which have been collected by prestigious institutions like the National Gallery of Canada. Norlen frequently works in a diverse range of media and disciplines, from sculpture to architectural installations, and even fashion. Inspired by an interest in "cultural artifice", she researches themed sites such as the West Edmonton Mall, Disneyland, Universal Studios, Las Vegas, roadside attractions, circuses, and carnival celebrations. She is both spectator and recorder of these places and events, an appreciative and critical voyeur translating her experiences through personal narrative and visual metaphor. Norlen has exhibited extensively across Canada and internationally in Brazil, Korea, Amsterdam, and the United States. She has received numerous project and travel grants from the Saskatchewan Arts Board, Manitoba Arts Council, and the Canada Council.

Tim Nowlin is recently retired, following an almost thirty year career as a Professor in Painting and Drawing. His educational background is in traditional printmaking, though he has devoted the better part of his studio practice since the mid 1990s to painting. He has exhibited his paintings throughout Western Canada and abroad in Switzerland and Germany, and from 2015-2020 served as annual Guest Lecturer and Visiting Artist at the Hubei Institute of Fine Arts in Wuhan, China. Returning to his roots in printmaking, Nowlin spent several years exploring digital printing processes in works that also incorporate his long-time interest in collage and bricolage. Speaking to memory and how new meanings are generated through the recombination of discarded elements, Nowlin has found digital technologies to be indispensable in exploring the possibilities of collage as a medium.

Susan Shantz recently retired from the Department of Art and Art History after 34 years of teaching and research in the areas of Sculpture and Multi-media. Her artwork consists of mixed-media works, often sculptural in form, that explore embodied ways of knowing. Her materials and processes of making are varied and derive from a range of conceptual concerns. Shantz’s practice is decidedly diverse and non-media specific. Though her work is often object-based and exists in space, the term sculpture itself is sometimes ill-equipped to encapsulate the entire nature of her work, which is more concerned with the exploration of process, materials, and ideas than formal structures. Shantz has exhibited extensively throughout Canada and internationally since the mid 1980s, including major solo exhibitions at the Mendel Art Gallery, MacKenzie Art Gallery, and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, among others. Her work is also included in numerous public collections in Canada. susanshantz.com