2022 Satellite Award Exhibition: Holding Contradiction

2022 Satellite Award Exhibition: Holding Contradiction
Rain Fenek Bloodworth, Lindsey Greeno, and Maya Harding
August 31-September 10, 2022

Satellite Project Space
121 Dundas St
Wednesday-Friday 2-7pm, Saturday 12-5pm

Reception: September 1, 5-7pm

For the 2022 Award Exhibition, Satellite Project Space is excited to showcase works by three emerging artists, Rain Fenek Bloodworth (Western University, BFA), Lindsey Greeno (Fanshawe College, Fine Art Diploma), and Maya Harding (Bealart). Western University, Fanshawe College, and Bealart award this exhibition opportunity each year to an exceptionally promising artist graduating from their program. 

Each of these artists work within dichotomies framed by personal lived experience. Rain Fenek Bloodworth’s multidisciplinary work explores both hope and trauma, looking at objects that are simultaneously family heirlooms and cursed objects, and memories as both wounds and opportunities for forgiveness. Lindsey Greeno documents the urban landscapes of her life with coexistent banality and splendour, utilizing both painting and photography. Maya Harding, through painting and textile, explores the conscious mind vs the unconscious, using abstract mark making to access the inaccessible. 

Rain Fenek Bloodworth
Rain Fenek Bloodworth is a mixed media artist practicing in so-called London, Ontario. They come from a long line of artists, seamstresses, and craftsmen. Rain works with themes pertaining to their personal experiences with generational trauma, queerness, spirituality, and mental illness. They recognize and appreciate the inherent value all visitors bring when viewing an exhibition and encourage you to explore their work at your own pace. Rain graduated with their BFA from Western in 2022.

Artist Statement:
There is more beyond blood passed down through families. Unfortunately, vulnerable families are more likely to perpetuate cycles of trauma and victimisation. Within genetic memory are burdens which predispose the next generation to carry on the legacy of the past. Often, we hold onto cursed objects within a family to ignite hope, but frequently those heirlooms set fire to new foundation. The repairing of wounds cannot take place on sacred grounds that harbor ghosts; we must take the soul and free it from familial burdens through forgiveness and transformation.

Website: https://www.rainbloodworth.art/ 
Instagram: @rainbloodworth 

Lindsey Greeno
Influenced by her hometown of London Ontario, Lindsey Greeno captures the places and streets surrounding where she grew up in her works. Having graduated from Fanshawe in spring, scenes from her walks to and from campus are often captured in paint alongside images from her commutes to work as well spots in her neighbourhood and surrounding community. Cultivating a love of painting from a young age, acrylic has long been her preferred medium with a newfound interest in gouache paints. Photography has been influencing her artistic practice since she’s been able to use a camera- instant film, cellphone, her Nikon or otherwise. She now often crosses the two disciplines together, creating works that exist both as painting and photography.

Artist Statement:
Westward is a collection of works featuring sunsets from local areas that utilize acrylic and gouache paints to capture the bombastic colours of sunsets juxtaposed with the banal silhouettes of urban landscapes. The works explore the universal language of inhabiting a city and study the monotonous and unnatural features of urban development, like cable wires and streetlights, which are paired with the natural splendour of the surrounding skies. Crafting paintings from photographic originals and then documenting the resulting artwork to reproduce the painting as a photographic print serves to turn the painting into something distinctly new. By flattening expressive brushstrokes and vibrant colours onto photo paper or instant film, the images gain the quality of an intimate memento or keepsake heightening the universal familiarity of urban landscapes. The act of mechanical reproduction starts a discussion about the nature of what makes a painting distinct from a photograph, ponders what gets lost in the repetition as well as what is gained, and strikes the question of which work came first: the painting or the photograph.

Instagram: @artylinds and @birdsbylinds

Maya Harding
Maya Harding is a 19 year old Canadian interdisciplinary student artist who recently finished her last year at Bealart as an animation and painting specialist. Currently working in London, Ontario, Maya has a connection to the city’s contemporary art community and enjoys making works that celebrate and enhance the capabilities and meanings of artistic mediums. Hoping to further develop her commercial practice relative to animation, Maya looks forward to studying in OCAD University’s Experimental Animation Program this Fall.

Artist Statement: 
When reflecting on and representing one’s feelings and memories a person may choose to utilize imagery that is central to or derived from their conscious mind. This often manifests itself in representational imagery that references a concept, an occasion, or a physical relic of their past. The conscious mind is responsible for thoughts and actions within one’s own awareness. The arts however, such as music, dance, and visual mark making have the capacity to activate the unconscious mind. Although it is not directly accessible to us, the unconscious mind shapes our memory processing, personality, and oftentimes influences our mannerisms and the way in which we move through the world.
Maya often utilizes existing literature or philosophy to relate her lived experiences to those of others. In this body of work the shape of the canvas and the collaged textile elements borrow and reference themes from existing texts and studies. Utilizing the materiality of paint provides her the opportunity to interact directly with her representations of self as well as to display “the maker’s mark”. Through reflecting on her life in a conscious manner and then allowing her hands to move in a way that is familiar to her as a painter, Maya is interested in exploring and celebrating the visual differences between the conscious and the unconscious mind.

Statement for The Things I Hold on To
The Things I Hold on To is a four paneled painting referencing The Spider’s Thread, a short story written by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. The moral lesson is meant to teach others to be considerate of those around them, and that selfishness can destroy their own wellbeing. The story however, details an instance in which a man was sent a single spider’s thread from a higher power, with the intention of allowing him to climb this thread into a better afterlife. Although futile, his attempt is testament to humanity’s willingness to hold on to small pieces of hope in their own life with the intent of working towards a better future.
As someone who has had to find my own small threads of hope to grasp onto, the story speaks to me on a level beyond its original moral intent. The four panels are a visualization of my four years of highschool, from which I have just recently graduated. The Things I Hold on To was made with the intent of visualizing my own lived experiences, specific to my mental health during a challenging phase of my life. It was also made with the intent of comforting those looking for their own threads of hope to hold on to, and affirming that things do in fact get better.

Statement for Witness Marks
Witness Marks is a four paneled painting that takes on a hexagon-like form, referencing the five stages of change (pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance) and an additional stage of relapse.
This piece was created subsequent to the development of The Things I Hold on To and is an acknowledgment of the fact that although the anticipation for and plausibility of relapse in my mental health will always be present in my mind, I have the capacity for change. Through visualizing my steps towards an unknown future I have made marks that bear witness to my desire for self-transformation. With this piece I invite viewers to consider their own place in the six aforementioned stages.

Website: https://mayaharding03.wixsite.com/mayahardingportfolio
Instagram: @mayahard1ng