Marjolaine Bourdua
Lucie Rocher

Microbourses : artist talk (2/2)
06.08.2021

It is with great pleasure that we at CLARK invite you to attend our upcoming presentations by the four recipients of our Micro-grant programme. This initiative, brought forward by members of CLARK’s programming committee, was aimed at supporting artistic research and creation during the pandemic, while our regular activities were on hold. After spending the past few months in the studio, the selected artists will share their current research with the public, who is invited to join in on the conversation.

This first presentation, animated by CLARK’s cultural mediator Prakash Krishnan, will feature Marjolaine Bourdua and Lucie Rocher. The second will take place on June 8th, with artists Chloé Lefebvre and Annie Descôteaux (more info here).

Marjolaine Bourdua

Bio:

Marjolaine Bourdua is an artist, educator, and cultural worker based in Montréal/Tiohtiá:ke/Mooniyang. Her current art practice evolves around concepts of production and the circulation of objects and signs that constitute our present-day ruins. Through sculpture, she investigates the tensions that are inherent to popular culture by investing in its forms and materials. Bourdua holds a BFA from UQAM and a graduate degree from Villa Arson in France. Her work has been presented in Québec, in France, and in Germany in the form of exhibitions, curatorial projects, and sound works, notably at Optica, the MAC LAU, the PHI  Fondation, the Maison des arts de Laval and Sporobole. Later this fall her work will be part of a group exhibition at the Musée d’art de Joliette.

Project:

Over the past few months, I’ve devoted myself to developing a new group of sculptures that are in line with my body of work titled Des formes poussent. These consist of generic polystyrene forms inspired by emoticons and pictograms from the digital realm. This research is a response to Ivan Illich’s concept of conviviality. Through these sculptural gestures, I explore the acute presence of digital technology and its influence on our physical being.

Lucie Rocher

Bio:

Lucie Rocher recently received her doctorate in art studies and practices at the Université du Québec à Montréal (2020). Her recent solo exhibitions include at the Maison de la culture Janine-Sutto (Frontenac) (Montréal 2017), VU (Québec, 2018), Occurrence (Montréal, 2019), and most recently Axenéo7 (Gatineau, 2020). She has also taken part in several international residencies, namely in Iceland (2015), Québec (2016 and 2019), Japan (2019), and Gatineau (Centre Daïmon, 2020). Rocher is employed as a sessional instructor at the Université du Québec à Montréal.

Project:

For this residency project, I decided to work on creating micro-hanging systems for my photographs. Among other things, I will focus on a number of unique architectural features I have photographed over the past year which, until now, had remained archived as research images. As part of my thought process, I explored new non-performing-performative ways to “make an image hold” within a space: the wall, the studio, or the gallery. The idea is to put forward the “performance” of materials (the image support that is directly tied to the hanging system) to temporarily “stabilise” and “support” my photographic subjects, which are inspired by construction sites. Other notions will also be explored in this project, namely looking at the sides, the weight, and the periphery of the photographic image.

Centre CLARK’s 2021 cultural mediation program, which includes this talk, is supported by Ubisoft, Business/Arts, and Canadian Heritage.