Piles
SVAVA THORDIS JULIUSSON
March 10 to April 8, 2017
OPENS March 10th - 7 to 10pm
RECEPTION Saturday March 18th - 2 to 5pm
Observing Objects: Svava Juliusson’s Piles
Svava Juliusson’s studio practice is predicated on the immediate relationship between body and material – an intuitive process through which hands meet media, and resulting forms are made. In the act of making, tensions manifest between moments of control and those of chance, resulting in objects and images that appear at once both known and unrecognizable. Juliusson’s process is one of unrelenting material study. She makes work through deliberate acts of attaching, casting, grouping, binding, and breaking commonplace materials. Other times, her hand is more fluid, activating the performativity of media at points of interaction with the surface of things.
Piles includes a group of new sculptures that make visible trace forms of the ropes, wires, and commercial plastics from which they were made. Upon viewing, their persistent thingness pushes back with an object-based agency that serves to subvert our aesthetic-seeking gaze. Alongside them, a series of gestural monoprints drawn by inks that move fluid across surface, and in stillness, yield images that lead the eye in unexpected ways.
-- Alana Traficante, 2017
Svava Juliusson’s studio practice is predicated on the immediate relationship between body and material – an intuitive process through which hands meet media, and resulting forms are made. In the act of making, tensions manifest between moments of control and those of chance, resulting in objects and images that appear at once both known and unrecognizable. Juliusson’s process is one of unrelenting material study. She makes work through deliberate acts of attaching, casting, grouping, binding, and breaking commonplace materials. Other times, her hand is more fluid, activating the performativity of media at points of interaction with the surface of things.
Piles includes a group of new sculptures that make visible trace forms of the ropes, wires, and commercial plastics from which they were made. Upon viewing, their persistent thingness pushes back with an object-based agency that serves to subvert our aesthetic-seeking gaze. Alongside them, a series of gestural monoprints drawn by inks that move fluid across surface, and in stillness, yield images that lead the eye in unexpected ways.
-- Alana Traficante, 2017
BIO
Svava Thordis Juliusson is a Hamilton, Ontario based artist born in Siglufjörður, Iceland in 1966. She began undergraduate studies at the Alberta College of Art and Design in 1993 and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts at NSCAD University in 1997. Juliusson completed her MFA in studio at York University in 2007.
Juliusson has exhibited her work widely, participated in residencies in Canada and abroad. Her work can be found in the collections of Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, and the Nova Scotia Art Bank as well as in a number of private collections. Juliusson is the recipient of grants: City Enrichment Fund, Hamilton, ON; Ontario Arts Council; Canada Council for the Arts; Toronto Arts Council; SSHRC (Canada Graduate Scholarship – Masters).
Svava Thordis Juliusson is a Hamilton, Ontario based artist born in Siglufjörður, Iceland in 1966. She began undergraduate studies at the Alberta College of Art and Design in 1993 and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts at NSCAD University in 1997. Juliusson completed her MFA in studio at York University in 2007.
Juliusson has exhibited her work widely, participated in residencies in Canada and abroad. Her work can be found in the collections of Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, and the Nova Scotia Art Bank as well as in a number of private collections. Juliusson is the recipient of grants: City Enrichment Fund, Hamilton, ON; Ontario Arts Council; Canada Council for the Arts; Toronto Arts Council; SSHRC (Canada Graduate Scholarship – Masters).
The realization of the work featured in this exhibition has been generously supported by municipal, and provincial granting programs. Svava Thordis Juliusson gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Ontario Arts Council and the City of Hamilton Enrichment Fund.