2021 EDITION
The 2021 Edition - Artists for Artists consists of seven limited edition prints by Graham Gillmore, Angela Grossmann, Attila Richard Lukacs, Derek Root, Vikky Alexander, Rebecca Belmore and Dana Claxton. All the proceeds from the sale of this 2021 Edition are awarded to emerging artists.
The 2021 Portfolio series contains six copperplate etchings and one giclee print in a limited edition of 30, printed on 250 gram Rives BFK paper by master printer Peter Braune at New Leaf Editions. The image size is 17” by 12 3/4”, on a 21 1/4” by 17 1/8” sheet.
The Portfolio Prize Artists for Artists 2021 Edition is pleased to announce the acquisition of its 2021 Edition - Artists for Artists by the Art Gallery of Ontario for their Prints & Drawings collection.
“This stunning portfolio of limited-edition prints was organized by a group of artists and proceeds from its sale support other emerging artists,” says Alexa Greist, Associate Curator and R. Fraser Elliott Chair, Prints & Drawings. “To see contemporary artists from so many fields explore printmaking as a medium is exciting. This purchase reflects the AGO’s ongoing commitment to support and collect artists from across the country.”
2021/2022 PORTFOLIO PRIZE
The 85/5 Visual Arts Foundation is excited to announce the five recipients of this year’s Portfolio Prize, which will award $6,000 to five early career artists. The recipients are: Durrah Alsaif, Mathew Andreatta, Manuel Axel Strain, Rebecca Bair and Bracken Hanuse Corlett.
We want to thank all nominating non-profits, artists run centres and institutions and our final jurors Lisa Baldissera, Nya Lewis and Elliott Ramsey for being a crucial part in the selection process and congratulate all shortlisted artists and the final recipients!
Durrah Alsaif is an interdisciplinary artist, who received her B.F.A. in 2017 from Kwantlen Polytechnic University. She has exhibited her work at galleries nationally. Alsaif had a public artwork in Stadium/Chinatown Skytrain station in Vancouver, BC for her work Qimash as part of the Capture Photography Festival in collaboration with TransLink. Originally from Saudi Arabia but now living in Canada, Alsaif is interested in exploring the ever-changing and malleable conditions based on cultural and socio-political notions in her home country via the lens of a person living in North America. She explores these ideas with photography, performance, sculpture, and installation.
Mathew Andreatta is a multi-disciplinary Coast Salish artist of Qualicum First Nation and Musqueam Indian Band with Italian ancestry as well. Mathew was born and raised in Langley, BC, and spent Summers with his family on Vancouver Island in Qualicum visiting his Grandparents, Aunts and Uncles and cousins. His journey as an artist began in 2017, after having graduated from the University of British Columbia, with an active interest in the traditional and historical examples of visual language and expression, its techniques, and forms from his own and closely related First Nations artists. It wasn’t until 2019 after his first Tribal Canoe Journey when Mathew began taking his own practice more seriously as his need to express, connect, and understand more deeply his identity as an Indigenous person grew stronger and stronger. While Mathew didn’t undertake any formal mentorship or training, his passion for continuing to learn and grow his ability of visual storytelling as well as his own understanding of the practice is fueled by constant research and study of historical and contemporary pieces of art as well as their contexts and significance. He is a learning artist whose forms are meant to connect with those of his ancestors while attempting to speak to the generations of Indigenous Artists to come in order to help ensure these traditional and ancestral ways of expression and understanding are carried on.
Manuel Axel Strain is a 2-Spirit artist from the lands and waters of the xʷməθkʷəyəm (Musqueam), Simpcw and Syilx peoples, based in the sacred region of their q̓ic̓əy̓(Katzie) and qʼʷa:n̓ƛʼən̓ (Kwantlen) relatives. Strains mother is Tracey Strain and father is Eric Strain, Tracey’s parents are Harold Eustache (from Chuchua) and Marie Louis (from nk̓maplqs), Eric’s Parents are Helen Point (from xʷməθkʷəy̓əm) and John Strain (from Ireland). Although they attended Emily Carr University of Art + Design they prioritize Indigenous epistemologies through the embodied knowledge of their mother, father, siblings, cousins, aunties, uncles, nieces, nephews, grandparents and ancestors. Creating artwork in collaboration with and reference to their relatives, their shared experiences become a source of agency that resonates through their work with performance, land, painting, sculpture, photography, video, sound and installation. Their artworks often envelop subjects in relation with ancestral and community ties, Indigeneity, labour, resource extraction, gender, Indigenous medicine and life forces. Strain often perceives their work to confront and undermine the imposed realities of colonialism. Proposing a new space beyond its oppressive systems of power. They have contributed work to the Vancouver Art Gallery, Surrey Art Gallery, the UBCO Fina gallery and were longlisted for 2022 Sobey Award.
Rebecca Bair is an interdisciplinary artist based in Vancouver - the traditional and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish peoples. Her research aims to explore the possibilities of specific representation and of identity through abstraction and non-figuration. Bair uses multimedia approaches and Sun collaborations to illustrate her exploration of identity and intersectionality, through the lens of her own experience as a Black Woman on Turtle Island. Her artistic, professional and educational goals revolve around common themes of celebrating Black plurality, as well as enabling interpersonal and intercultural care, and her work acts as a vehicle through which the complexities of history and identity can be uncovered, redefined and expressed.
Hanuse Corlett initially worked in theatre and performance before shifting to his current practice that fuses painting and drawing with digital-media, audio-visual performance, animation and narrative. He graduated from the En’owkin Centre for Indigenous Art and then went to school at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, while also receiving training in Northwest Coast art, design and carving from acclaimed Heiltsuk Artists Bradley Hunt and his sons Shawn and Dean. Working with and researching ancestral forms is central to his work as well as an openness to working with new media and tools. Much of his current process is collaborative, which includes working with youth, community and fellow working artists. He has exhibited, performed and screened his work locally and internationally and has received public art commissions in a number of cities/territories.
2021/2022 PORTFOLIO PRIZE JURY
The jury for the 2021/2022 Portfolio Prize, awarding 5 emerging artists with $6,000 each, includes: Lisa Baldissera, Nya Lewis and Elliott Ramsey.
Nya Lewis (MFA) is an independent curator whose hybrid practice is rooted in the culmination of centuries of resistance, love, questions, actions, and study concerning diasporic cultural production. Their work reflects the diversity of intersectional, inter-generational, global indigenous, Queer critical discourse and its many forms of expression. Across the disciplines of art-making, programming, research, curating, and writing, Nya’s work with Canadian institutions—including the Vancouver Queer Film Festival, Capture, Vancouver Public library, Centre for the Study of Black Canadian Diaspora, UBC Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver Art Gallery, grunt gallery, and Ref. (formerly Black Art Gastown), AfroQueer, Femme Art Review, Polygon, SFU Contemporary Art faculty, and UBC Equity and Inclusion—is driven by the possibilities of historical recovery, and the reimagining of community. She is the director at Artspeak in Vancouver, BC.
Elliott Ramsey is Curator of The Polygon Gallery, on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ First Nations. He holds a Masters of Arts degree in Comparative Media Arts (2015) from Simon Fraser University. Ramsey’s experiences as mixed-race and gender-nonbinary inform his ongoing research into identity performance and formation, representations of hybridity and multiplicity in the visual arts, queerness, and feminism. Ramsey is a member of the Black Curators Forum and an alumnus of the Professional Alliance for Curators of Color.
Lisa Baldissera Lisa Baldissera has worked in curatorial roles in public art galleries in Western Canada since 1999, including Senior Curator at Contemporary Calgary (2014-16) and Chief Curator at the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon (2012-14). She was Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria from 1999 to 2009, where she produced more than fifty exhibitions of local, Canadian, and international artists. She holds MFAs in Creative Writing (UBC) and Art (University of Saskatchewan) and a PhD from Goldsmiths College, University of London. Baldissera has served on contemporary art juries across Canada and internationally, including the Alvin Balkind Curator’s Prize (The Doris and Jack Shadbolt Foundation), Canada Council for the Arts, Saskatchewan Arts Board, Royal Bank of Canada Canadian Painting Competition, the Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Awards, the Sobey Art Award, British Columbia Arts Council, Prix Pierre-Prince-de-Monaco jury and as a guest of the British Arts Council outreach program. She is Director of Griffin Art Projects.
EXHIBITIONS & TALKS
ANNOUNCEMENT: RECIPIENTS OF THE 2021/2022 PORTFOLIO PRIZE
“REINVENTING MENTORSHIP” 2021 EDITION - ARTIST FOR ARTIST EXHIBITION AT NEW LEAF EDITIONS
“MENTORSHIP IN THE VISUAL ARTS” ARTIST TALK WITH ANGELA GROSSMANN
“REINVENTING MENTORSHIP” 2021 EDITION - ARTIST FOR ARTIST EXHIBITION AT ART TORONTO 2021