Active Collaborations-artistic-materials-and-media

How do materials’ past use(s), significance, or agency shape art practices? What protocols do they necessitate? Artists in this discussion work with diverse non-traditional media, including plants, and salvaged or recycled materials. In this panel, materials lay the foundation for broader discussions of environmental practice—considering the nature of collaboration, ethics, and sustainability in art practice.

This event will be held rain or shine, with covered outdoor facilities available in case of inclement weather. Accessible public washrooms and seating are available. Drinks and refreshments will be provided. Physical distancing will be in place for this event, and additional safety precautions may be required in line with public health measures.

Panelists

Brad Isaacs (he/him) is an artist and independent curator of mixed Mohawk and settler ancestry, currently based in Toronto. He holds an MFA from the University of Western Ontario and has exhibited at galleries such as the McMaster Museum of Art, the Ottawa Art Gallery, and Hamilton Artists Inc. His recent work continues an ongoing practice examining simulations of nature and includes photographs, collages, drawings and paintings based on fishing equipment and ephemera, and the materials and colour patterns of fishing lures. He frames fishing as a space in which to interrogate dominant cultures of hunting, relationships with nature, and ideas of masculinity.

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Dana Prieto is an Argentine-Canadian artist and educator based in Tkaronto. Her site-responsive work examines our deep relations with colonial structures and infrastructures through a careful attention to the ground, and the different forms of living and dying within it. Dana’s practice is material, process, and place-focused, and often unfolds over extended periods of artistic research and interdisciplinary collaborations. For over ten years, Dana has worked with ceramic processes and soil-derived materials to reflect on the technologies of containment found in the places where she lives and works: looking at mines, bodies, nests, vessels, institutions, and land. Dana holds a Master of Visual Studies from University of Toronto and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from OCAD University. Her work has been presented in national and international galleries, public spaces and informal cultural venues.

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Sean Procyk is a settler artist and playground designer. His practice focuses on creating immersive public engagements through site-specific installation, architecture, and community workshops. Each project responds to its regional context, with a particular focus on unsettling relationships between landscape, community, and ecology. Procyk’s work explores processes of ecological succession, land-based disturbance, human alienation, and collective action. He works primarily with found, reclaimed, and natural materials. Procyk’s works have been exhibited at Hamilton Artists Inc., Latitude 53, Stride Contemporary Art Gallery, Elemental Festival, Convergence Conference on Art and Technology in Banff, and Nuit Blanche Toronto.

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Amanda White (she/her) is a white settler artist/scholar living and working on the traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, Anishinaabe, Huron-Wendat, and Haudenosaunee peoples. Amanda is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Sustainable Curating, Department of Visual Art at Western University. She has a PhD (Queen’s) and an MFA (Windsor). Amanda works across mediums with a focus on plants, food, and environmental justice, with recent exhibitions and projects for: McIntosh Gallery, Museum London, Cambridge Galleries, Koffler Digital and PUBLIC Journal. Current collaborative and solo projects include studio work, a co-edited book, and a graphic novel.

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Panelists

Active Collaborations: Artistic Materials and Media

Event Documentation