Conference Papers
University Art Association Conference, 2007
Panel: ‘The Optical Outskirts of Abstraction’ Chair, Associate Professor Michel Daigneault. Paper Title: "De-stailizing Abstraction" This is a two-part presentation: In the first part, I will trace abstraction from the ‘endgame moves’ of the mid-1980’s referencing back to its critique of Greenbergian High Modernism. This section will conclude by my posing some questions about abstract painting in the present. Most pertinent for this panel: Is there such a thing as contemporary abstraction? In the second part of the presentation, I will discuss my own work as a painter that, in part, tacitly engages with this question. Full text (pdf) Artist Presentation University Art Association Conference – Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada 2006
Panel: Studio Practice and Teaching: Their Inter-Relationships Paper Title: Painting Vertigo: Fluid Spaces Studio and Teaching Now that the sinuous boundaries between the real and the virtual have become fluid, we can no longer think about these spaces in a binary way. They blur in our imaginations and memories. In this fluid space, places and events from everywhere merge with our lived experience. The public invades the private as media images from elsewhere cast their electronic glow across our living spaces. Space has collapsed as near and far have ceased to exist. Focusing on the super-modern spaces of the contemporary city, which are over laid with the virtual spaces of digital images, this artist presentation will examine how in my own painting practice I attempt to visualize this new immersive and destabilizing spatial experience. Full Text (pdf) University Art Association Conference 2002, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Panel Title: Studio Practice in a Digital Age Paper Title: Impurity & Teaching Painting as a Subversive Practice Abstract: This paper focuses on two painting courses that I’ve developed and taught in the Department of Visual Arts at York University; Painting; the Body and Technology and Painting: the Spaces We Live In. The ideas for these courses grew out of concerns in my own painting practice and the crisis in painting during the 1980’s & early 90’s when painting was again declared dead, considered an outmoded practice in contestation with newer, primarily digital technologies. These courses were an attempt to interrogate painting and the digital and to acquaint students with some of the major debates through both practice and theory. Full Text (pdf) The Ironic Turn Conference
The Bauhaus, Weimar, Germany, July 2003 Artist Presentation Paper Title: Painting Feminist Geography: Urban Drifts I have always loved to “drift” though the streets, alone, in the core of a big city: Montreal, New York, Toronto. From the time I was 'let loose' as a young woman it was my sign of freedom, I was unreachable, my coordinates unknown. But, even in my naiveté I realized I was being watched, I was part of a cat and mouse game. At times I was afraid but there was also a perverse pleasure in testing the limits of safety, in transgressing the boundaries. In my initial forays, as a young woman, I was a flaneuse, entranced by the ebb and flow of the crowd but more importantly dazzled by the commodities on display. Different from the flaneur, mostly because I too was on display and gazed upon by the flaneur. But now, as I circumvent these spaces I gather evidence, I am a spy in enemy territory perhaps still in the guise of the flaneuse but well aware that I am acting a part. I try to blend in, to become homogenous with the crowd. Full Text (pdf) |