Grenfell Art Gallery and SOFA Artists-in-Residence Program
The Grenfell Art Gallery, in partnership with the Grenfell School of Fine Arts, is proud to provide opportunities for artists in western Newfoundland through our artist-in-residence program. This program is propelled by the belief that making space for both emerging and established artists on the west coast are crucial to the vitality of our creative community and cultivating a greater critical context for contemporary artists in Newfoundland and Labrador. By building a supportive environment and providing workspace for artists we nurture the development of new ideas and practices while supporting experimentation and artistic excellence.
Summer 2022 Artist-In-Residence:
Tangiene Martin-O’hara
We are pleased to welcome our 2022 Summer Artist in Residence (AiR) Tangiene Martin O’Hara. Tangiene is an Elmastukwek-based artist, who grew up Treaty 6 territory in Edmonton, Alberta. She is a recent winner of the provincial Arts and Letters Award in Visual Arts, past participant in the FARR residency, and a board member for the League of Artists of Western Newfoundland and The Cloud Factory Artist-Run Centre.
Tangiene’s residency will focus on monsters, real and imagined. Drawing on personal recollections, lore, and Newfoundland folktales, during her residency she will be working on large scale drawings and paintings that trouble notions of nature and the sublime landscapes reflective of Romantic era in painting. The work seeks to understand, with care and slow consideration, experiences of trauma and sexualized violence. Tangiene’s residency is supported in part through an Explore and Create Grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. Tangiene’s practice, and more generally her work in our community, have promoted an awareness of the local visual arts community oriented on broader issues and dynamics of our contemporary moment.
As the university art gallery for Memorial University and the public art gallery for Western Newfoundland, Grenfell Art Gallery is committed to supporting the work of contemporary artists and artistic excellence in our region. The Grenfell Art Gallery Artist in Residence program, in partnership with the Grenfell School of Fine Arts, creates opportunities for artists based in western Newfoundland. This program is propelled by the belief that making space for both emerging and established artists on the west coast are crucial to the vitality of our creative community and cultivating a greater critical context for contemporary artists in and from Newfoundland and Labrador. By building a supportive environment and providing workspace for artists our intention is to nurture the development of new ideas and practices while supporting experimentation and artistic excellence. Tangiene’s residency will culminate in an exhibition of new work in our project space in September 2022.
The Artist in Residence program and all Grenfell Art Gallery activities are made possible by the generous support of all its funders including Grenfell Campus, Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts. We are grateful for the crucial ongoing support of our community, corporate, and private donors.
Past Grenfell Art Gallery Artists-In-Residence:
Robyn Love
A leading contemporary artist in Western Newfoundland for more than a decade, Robyn is based in Elmastukwek, Ktaqmkuk territory (Bay of Islands). Love's practice focuses on rituals of kinship and care, particularly among communities of women, using humor and performance as paths toward actualization and empowerment. In 2005, Love founded The House Museum, a Gillams-based interactive installation that explored cultural tourism and museology, as instruments for building community and equity. In 2017 the space transitioned into BARDO-29, an experimental contemporary art space hosting residencies and annual public programs. During her residency with the Grenfell Art Gallery, Robyn critically examined the idea of gossip as an extension of her participatory art project Branks.
Love received her BFA from Cooper Union in New York City and has an extensive record of exhibitions, residencies and public projects at galleries and museums nationally and internationally, including The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Struts Gallery, The Brooklyn Museum, and Northern University in Abderdeen, South Dakota. She has received numerous grants to create new work from foundations and public agencies, including the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts
Image courtesy of Shawn O’Hagan
Shawn O’Hagan
Shawn O’Hagan was born in Toronto, Canada and moved to Newfoundland in 1975. She lives and works on the west coast of the island. Her background is in painting (she has an MFA in Painting) but she has worked with many processes and materials. For the past 15 years Shawn has concentrated mostly on textiles. Her new work combines textiles and painting. She has exhibited her work in solo and group shows mostly in the Maritimes and her work can be found in many collections including the Canada Council Art Bank.
“My recent work celebrates where and how I live – my personal history (both intellectual and spiritual) and my natural surroundings (my home, my garden, my cabin in the Bay of Islands, Newfoundland). I try to live carefully, touching what is around me. I am interested in the connections and overlap between my natural and domestic environments. The threads that run through my life. And about the energies that connect them all. In my work I employ the labour intensive techniques of embroidery and appliqué either on painted terraskin paper (mounted on wood panel or stretched canvas), or on hand dyed vintage textiles or handmade felt.”
Meagan Musseau
Meagan Musseau is an interdisciplinary artist of Mi’kmaq and French ancestry from Elmastukwek, Ktaqmkuk territory (Bay of Islands, Newfoundland). She works with customary art practices and new media, such as beadwork, basketry, performance and installation to explore memory, language, and the relationship between land and body, object and narrative. Musseau graduated with a BFA in Visual Art from Grenfell Campus Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. Her work has shown nationally, in venues such as FLUX Media Art Gallery, Victoria; Open Space, Victoria; Kelowna Art Gallery, Kelowna; Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton; MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina; Ace Art Inc., Winnipeg; Grenfell Art Gallery, Corner Brook; and Eastern Edge Gallery, St. John’s. She was a member of the Indigenous Emerging Artist Program 2015-16 on unceded Coast Salish territory and has participated in artist residencies at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Alberta; Centre for Book and Paper Arts, Columbia College Chicago, Illinois, United States; University of Brighton Fine Art Printmaking, Brighton, England; and the National Artist Program, 2011 Canada Games, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Musseau's work has been supported by awards such as the Emerging Artist Award, VANL-CARFAC (2018); Emerging Atlantic Canada Artist Residency at Banff Centre, The Hnatyshyn Foundation (2018); Aboriginal Arts Development Award, First Peoples’ Cultural Council (2016); and Corner Brook Emerging Artist of the Year (2013).
Michelle MacKinnon
Michelle MacKinnon is an artist and educator from Tichborne, Ontario and is currently living in Corner Brook, Newfoundland. MacKinnon graduated with an MFA (2015) and BFA (2013, Honours, Cum Laude) in Visual Arts from York University. She has participated in residencies at The Banff Centre for the Arts (Banff, Alberta), The Hermitage (St. Petersburg, Russia), and Spark Box Studios (Picton, Ontario). She has exhibited in various galleries across North America and Russia, and is a two-time recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant.MacKinnon is currently a sessional instructor at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Grenfell Campus (Corner Brook, Newfoundland) and has previously taught at York University (Toronto, Ontario) and Algoma University (Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario).
Michelle MacKinnon. Photo by Lucas Morneau
Melanie Colosimo
Based out of Halifax, NS, Melanie Colosimo uses found material, graphite and paper to create large-scale sculptural drawings. Her work focuses on strong, structural materials to explore identity, liminality and progress. She received a BFA from Mount Allison University in Sackville, NB (2006) and an MFA from the University of Windsor, in Windsor, ON (2011). Her work has been screened and exhibited in festivals and galleries internationally and across Canada such as AKA Gallery (SK) the Art Gallery of Windsor (ON), the Atlantic Film Festival (NS), Eastern Edge Gallery (NL), and Mount Saint Vincent University Gallery (NS). Her work is currently travelling southern China as part of the exhibition Maud Lewis and the Nova Scotia Terrior. She has participated in a variety of residencies such as the CFAT local Artist in Residence, University of Windsor Research Residency and the Banff Centre’s Thematic Residencies and at the Vermont Studio Centre in Johnson, Vermont. Colosimo is currently the Director of the Anna Leonowens Gallery at NSCAD University in Halifax where she facilitates over 120 exhibitions a year by NSCAD visiting artists and graduating students.