OPENING ONLINE: Friday, April 23, 2021 at 4PM EDT.
OPEN IN-PERSON: Friday, July 23, 2021 - Friday, August 20, 2021*
*GALLERY HOURS: Wednesday to Sunday, 12pm to 5pm.

The SPAO Centre Gallery proudly presents EXHIBITION NO. 16, featuring the 2021 graduating class from SPAO’s 2-year Diploma Program.

SPAO’s Photographic Arts and Production Diploma students have worked tirelessly over this last challenging year in order to create innovative installations and portfolios that showcase their individual photographic practices. This diverse group of emerging talent is pushing the boundaries of the photographic medium, working with new technologies, alternative processes, ceramic, and digital pigment prints. From explorations of grief, identity, addiction, and the futuristic imaginings of our digital world, this exhibition truly encapsulates some of the most contemporary and heartfelt topics of our time. 

EXHIBITION NO. 16 is a testament to the flexibility and resilience of our students to focus on their work, and push through the challenges that face them. It is this celebration of a milestone that marks their journey into an uncertain future. SPAO is proud to present this new generation of contemporary photographers and photo-based artists who are more ready than ever to tackle what lies ahead. 

VIRTUAL WALKTHROUGH

Check out the interactive virtual tour for a view of Exhibition No. 16!
To view the Virtual Walkthrough Full Screen, press the play button to begin the tour and then press the square button at the bottom right corner of the media screen to enlarge.

For a live tour of the exhibition, join Gallery Manager Darren Pottie and our graduating diploma students for a Virtual Tour + Conversation on Thursday, May 20 at 7pm EDT.

Virtual walkthrough presented by Next Door Photos

ALEXANDER DOES

Alex Does Alex Does is photo-based in Ottawa, Canada. His practice is centred on experimental and exploratory printmaking while examining themes of memory, revelation, chaos and recovery. His lived experiences and recovery from substance abuse informs both his image making process and the major themes in the work. His current project examines the faults in his own memory and coming to terms with it. The process is a radical approach involving a range of household chemicals on fibre paper with a method that references historic alternative processes. The results yield hand-crafted and cared-for portraits where the scars, the stains, and the imperfect memories will remain.

Website: alexdoes.art
Instagram: @a.does_

ANDRE DE JESUS

Andre de Jesus is an emerging artist born in Lisbon shooting film exclusively . He explores the poetry and intimacy that exists between the photographer and the atmosphere that shapes us all as memories and celestial moments in time. His vertiginous compositions in portraiture and documentary photography are mainly influenced by monochrome film processes, both in medium and large format.

Website: Andre-jesus.com
Instagram: @andrejesus.insta

DANIELLE LABONTE

Danielle Labonte is photo-based in Victoria, BC. Passages is about a sense of place, memory, and leaving as I prepare to move to Victoria, BC after living in Ottawa for decades. In this work, I memorialize what I love about living in this region: some intimate landscapes on our property on the banks of the Rideau River, some garden plants and local weeds and the local bird life. What I found to be a refuge will soon disappear as urban development marches on and swallows up rural lands. 

Historical processes have a timeless aesthetic that echoes my mood as I get ready to uproot. These processes also appeal to my love of tactile crafts and my interest in creating unique objects based in historical craft. In my future locale, I will continue to be inspired by the natural world and add to my knowledge and application of historic printing techniques.

Website: daniellelabonte.com

VICTORIA LAUBE

Victoria Laube is a multidisciplinary artist. Although her work is predominately lens based,  when warranted, she incorporates other media into her practice. She photographs digitally with a small format camera and is usually engaged in ‘stream of consciousness’ photography of the quotidien. Photographing those everyday mundane things that generally go unnoticed or are overlooked, Laube captures degradation, evolution, and metamorphosis. At times, in search of the unexpected, of the ephemeral, of hidden secrets, she is driven, she would say almost subconsciously, to stage various unconventional scenarios and then to photograph them. 

Laube shoots frequently, captures multiples, and always ensures a variety of viewpoints. She embraces both focus and blur to convey meaning and emotion. Not only interested in the messages single photographs hold, she is also fascinated by how photographs present in relationship to each other, in relationship to time, and in relationship to the greater world. 

Website: victorialaube.com

JULIE MELASCHENKO

Julie Melaschenko is a Canadian photo-based artist whose current work examines the objects with which we surround ourselves, and the roles they play in formulating concepts of memory, personal history and legacy. Melaschenko’s practice is influenced by her background in advertising and graphic design, her travels and living abroad, and a lifelong interest in collections.

Thirty-eight is a series of photographic exercises produced over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Attempting to expand on previous work created using her grandmother’s costume jewelry collection, the lockdown and restrictions of the pandemic made it impossible to pursue research around the collections and accumulations of others. Instead, Melaschenko turned her lens inward to her own storage room. The images in this project were made with the thirty-eight pounds of LEGO that her family accumulated over many years.

Website: juliemelaschenko.com

LEAH MOWERS

Leah Mowers is a photo-based artist living in Ottawa, Canada. In 2019, her body of work, titled Hope and Transformation, was featured at the Ottawa Art Gallery. Mowers’ anthropological approach invites the viewer to pause and reflect as they peek into a world they may never have had access to. Using the photographic genres of portraiture and still life, she explores themes of spirituality, vulnerability, and cultural stereotypes. 

In Mowers’ current body of work, The Witches Among Us, she hopes to demystify and humanize a growing community centered around a small witch school In Chelsea, Quebec.

Website: leahmowers.com

CHRISTOPHER SCHMITT

Christopher Schmitt is an emerging lens-based artist located in Ottawa, Canada. His work explores the impact of progress on the human experience. In particular, he looks for opportunities to photograph built environments that reveal a subtle connection between the past and the present (or to the future). Prior to attending the School of the Photographic Arts: Ottawa, Schmitt worked in high-tech for over 30 years.

For his current project, Convergence, Schmitt photographs computer circuit boards and then alters the images in post to create futuristic landscapes. These landscapes, both real and unreal, mimic our increasingly virtual world.

"Many people are pessimistic or anxious about the future. They’re worried about global warming, the pandemic, fake news, being hacked... While I love science and technology, I also recognize there’s often a dark side to how it’s used. My project explores this paradox, and in particular, examines how people are adapting to increasingly rapid technological change."

Website:  chrisjschmitt.com
Instagram: @christopherjschmitt
NFT Marketplace: CJSchmitt

DYANNE WILSON

Dyanne Wilson is an Ottawa-based documentary photographer focusing on the relationship between nature and the built environment while exploring themes of memory, place and time.

Growing up in a military family, change was inevitable. She spent much of her childhood in Northern Canada around the 60th parallel. Canadian landscapes, remote communities, and winter are the foundations of her memories and appear often in her work. Generally preferring the found over the staged, Dyanne likes to explore the place where she finds herself in an attempt to find stillness, light and meaning.

A Quiet War is a project documenting her new home in Richmond, Ontario during the COVID 19 pandemic lockdown while comparing her father's experience and photographs during WWII.

Website: dyannewilson.com

First Year Feature

The first year of SPAO’s Diploma Program consists mainly of time spent in SPAO’s comprehensive silver-gelatin darkroom. Students use film photography and silver gelatin printing methods in order to fully understand the technical components of image-making. For Exhibition No. 16, our first-year students were challenged to express their individual practices and concepts while only working in monochromatic tone. The end result is a unique and timely glimpse at a world off-kilter.

From Left to Right (click to view)

Naomi Kronen - The Sun
Jon Stuart - Mink
Ann Piche - Rate of Change
Ivan Whitehall - Nuns
Sabina Catherine - The Reminder
Julien Fontil - Untitled
Alexandria Jacobs - Possibilities