Five by Five: Visual Arts MFA students face their own "Eviction"

Five students, five semesters, five solo exhibitions. Such is the challenge undertaken by the current crop of visual arts graduate students, who succeed only by creating their own eviction—from the program, true, but also the annual MFA thesis exhibition, this year dubbed "Eviction."

“We thought Eviction was a funny title because we have to vacate our studios on campus at the end of May,” explains artist and exhibit spokesperson Laura Dutton. “Since we are all so committed to our studio practice, it sometimes feels like the studio is our home—it seems we spend more time there than our actual residences. So we’re a bit attached to the space, and it’s also the place where we’ve bonded with each other.”

Dutton and her fellow MFA candidates—Dan Bernyk, Dickson Bou, Emilio Portal and Megan Press—have indeed exhibited a marked dedication to their various practices over the past two years, as they refined their approaches to sculpture, photography, video, printmaking and performance.

In his introductory statement to Eviction, painting professor Robert Youds notes that, “residing in each of these artists work is evidence of a sustained commitment to practice and its natural reservoir of intrigued questioning.”

Considering each artist works with different mediums, how does Dutton feel Youds’ thoughts apply to their collective exhibition? “Well, it relates quite heavily to all of our works in the sense that we each take the studio practice quite seriously,” she explains. “The making and testing of work is very important; that’s where the questioning takes place. Even though our work deals with different concerns—sculptural spaces, video installation and performance-based work—we seem to have something in common in the way in which our processes involve questioning, changing, reworking and testing.”

Keep in mind, however, that Eviction was always intended to be essentially five distinct exhibits.

“Our works are all quite different,” confirms Dutton. “Other than certain relationships in the way we work, there is no theme pulling these pieces together—except that they are a result of two years of exploration.”

While all five emerging artists have already participated in various exhibits across Canada (“We did our undergrad degrees in various cities—London, Windsor, Halifax, Montreal—so we each have some exhibition history in those places,” notes Dutton), they’ve also been busy locally during their five semesters as visual arts graduate students, showing work at the likes of the Xchanges and Deluge galleries.

But does Dutton think planning and mounting their own MFA exhibit will prepare them for future professional exhibits? “I think so,” she says. “There are always challenges when installing a show, and this one in particular is a real learning experience because as a group we’ve had to decide on promotional materials, the opening event, how to negotiate the space . . . it’s been fun.”

More photos

Artists' websites:

• Dickson Bou
  
• Megan Press
  
• Dan Bernyk
  
• Laura Dutton
  
• Emilio Portal