OCAD’s Grad Show was bursting at the seams with work from talented students. It’s just the sort of outing you need to motivate, inspire, or send you down the treacherous path of trying your hand at something new without any formal training. Thought I would share with you a few works that caught my eye:
Kira Shaimanova’s fantastical three dimensional illustrations have a lovely unsettling quality. She makes her dolls out of clay, creates her own sets, then photographs them together. Is it just me, or does the doll below look like Bjork?
Sweet Talk by Kira Shaimanova. Photo:http://www.kirashaimanova.com
Tiffany Eting Wu’s fibre art installation provides an interesting commentary on how crime scenes are represented in the media. Her hundreds of delicate, white flowers were in perfect contrast to the subject matter.
Crime Scene by Tiffany Eting Wu
Flora Shum’s printmaking was stunning, and definitely my favorite. The wall was filled with her delicate prints, which included etchings on handmade flax paper.
Detail of Flora Shum's work
Amanda Muis’s canvas and encaustic on wood was beautiful. From a distance, I was tempted to think pasta. But on closer inspection, it reminded me of a microscopic view of something like mitochondria… traces of high school biology lingering in my brain.
Detail of Tempest by Amanda Muis.
Elisabeth Heidinga’s installation is about how humanity’s over-consumption is impacting negatively on the environment, and how our behaviour patterns are contributing to increased numbers of animals becoming endangered.
Detail of an installation by Elisabeth Heidinga
Abby McGuane created an interesting marbling effect with her collaged black and white inkjet prints. Slightly different sized holes were cut in superimposed copies of the same image, thus creating the marbling effect. Unfortunately, the depth of these spaces doesn’t really come through in the photograph. It really was neat.
Detail from Unseeing by Abby McGuane.
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