2021 Satellite Award Exhibition: Function As One

2021 Satellite Award Exhibition: Function As One

Kaitlyn Hwang
Clara Tuckey
Kenna Robinson

September 1-11, 2021
Wednesday-Friday 2-7pm, Saturday 12-5pm
Satellite Project Space

Virtual Reception: Thursday, September 9, 6:30-7:30pm
https://zoom.us/j/93062513577?pwd=Mnppd1Q4TUl3WlN5ZTJob0FjOWk0QT09
Meeting ID: 930 6251 3577
Passcode: 456580

For the 2021 Award Exhibition, Satellite is excited to showcase works by three recently graduated emerging artists, Kaitlyn Hwang (Western University, BFA), Clara Tuckey (Fanshawe College, Fine Art Diploma), and Kenna Robinson (Bealart). Each year, Western University, Bealart, and Fanshawe College award this exhibition opportunity to an exceptionally promising artist graduating from their program. Using the tactility of material to explore ideas of identity, these artists consider relationships with self, others, space, and object in multi-dimensional layers.

Kaitlyn Hwang
Kaitlyn Hwang is a multimedia artist and recent Western University graduate of the BFA program with an Honours Specialization in Studio Art. Her work investigates the ways in which we come to cultivate and represent a sense of self, through means that are both tangible and intangible. She is interested in analyzing the role of materiality in memory and the cultivation of identity, and the omnipresent consciousness that lives on through the objects we keep, the spaces we inhabit, and the marks that we leave. Kaitlyn has plans to further her art education by pursuing an MFA in the future.

Kaitlyn’s practice is often exploratory, interested in analyzing the ways in which we grow and cultivate our sense of self by using the tangible to navigate the intangible nature of memory, identity, and feeling. The work often interacts with ideas surrounding the archiving of intimate connections made between others through our sentimental relation to objects and space. She interacts with presence and non-presence through representational and ambiguous forms, often using ghostly figures as a means to examine how our memories and emotional connections to space and the individual fracture and transform with us over time. Primarily using art as a way to explore fragmented narrative, she takes into account both what is present in the work and what has been purposely removed, obscured, or abstracted. Interpreting the self in a state of flux, she focuses on compositions marked by elements of the body, nature, and growth wavering between unknown and familiar. These paintings are part of a look into how our intimate connections with others both grow and imprint themselves upon us as we cultivate our own identities. Incorporating ideas from psychology and representations of human activity and lush plant life, the work considers questions surrounding how much we as individuals are a product of the company we keep over our lifetimes.

Instagram: @kaitlynhwangart

Clara Tuckey
Clara Tuckey is a practicing artist born and currently living in London, Ontario. Her work is based in textiles and photography, focusing on the individual’s intimate relationship with their surrounding natural environment. Through observation, research and memory, Clara seeks to understand historical implications of specific textiles and sewing techniques, as well as the deep connections between humans and nature; reinforcing an appreciation and recognition of the beautiful and finite intricacies of the earth in her work. Clara graduated from Fanshawe College’s Fine Art Advanced Diploma program in April 2021, and holds a Bachelor of Arts with specialization in English and Cultural Studies from the University of Western Ontario (2020). In combining these disciplines, Clara creates new, visual narratives through photography. Finished textiles or garments are placed outdoors or on the human body and photographed, juxtaposing the human-made textiles with the natural setting to create conflicting narratives that question the relationship between subject, object and setting.

Clara’s current work focuses on the individual’s method of relating to the world and their experience of disillusionment and distrust in learned historical narratives, normative thinking and social standards. Through observation, research and memory, she looks at the historical implications of specific textiles and sewing techniques with the intention of creating a textile piece that is both familiar and foreign.

The style of quilting seen in this series is known as yo-yo quilting–a popular method during the 1920s and 1930s in Canada and beyond. Scrap fabric from sewing projects, household textiles, and even feed and flour sacks were repurposed into intricate coverlets of gathered circles. These historical coverlets are often sewn in very uniform patterns, camouflaging the individuality of each circle into one large textile. When adapting this practice into her work, Clara wanted to emphasize the individuality of each circle by creating more organic, randomized arrangements and placing differing patterns and colours beside each other. For Shed Series, she used entirely recycled fabrics (keeping with traditional yo-yo quilting methods), selecting each textile not only for their material makeup (ie. cotton, polyester etc.), but also for their graphic details.

Photography allows for the creation of subtle narratives, framing the model and textile in an environment that is again, both recognizable and abnormal. The photographs are meant to question normalcy–of environment, action and presentation–and embrace change in an understated manner, reflecting the small and constant transitions of the natural world.

Instagram: @ofpeasandpetals
Web: http://www.claratuckey.ca

Kenna Robinson
Kenna Robinson is a 19-year-old artist from London, Ontario. She is a recent graduate of the Bealart program where she studied photography and ceramics and is a current student at X University in the Photography Studies program. Kenna is a recipient of the Vivian Sturdee Major Grant Purchase Award (2021) and the Mackie Cryderman Prize (2021). Her work primarily focuses on the physicality of both photographs and clay, and expresses what it is like to exist as a physical being and how her specific media change that.

Metaphysical philosophy is the primary focus of Kenna’s work. Exploring ideas of presence, change and identity, she questions: is it possible to externalize being? She is particularly drawn to the connection between mind, body, and world and the physicality of existence. In her practice, she has found that the ceramic and photographic media are inherently physical. They speak to specific, familiar actions, whether or not it is explicit. These rituals, such as handling a photograph or pressing clay into one’s hand, inform the work both practically and conceptually. Clay becomes an extension of human touch and photographs, an externalized form of identity. They are literal imprints of herself on the physical world, proof of her own being. The ability to create and change objects external from herself connects her with that world and reassures that she is here. Kenna’s process echoes that reassurance and asks the body and world to function as one.

Instagram: @kennnarobinson