Exhibition No. 17
April 21 - May 15, 2022

The SPAO Centre Gallery proudly presents Exhibition No. 17, featuring the 2022 graduating class from SPAO’s two-year college diploma program.

Over this last challenging year, our students have worked tirelessly 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, experimental camera techniques, site-specific installations, and digital pigment prints. From technological interruptions on the body, to explorations of shame, to our relationship with the world around us, this exhibition encapsulates the fragmentary nature of contemporary society. 

Exhibition No. 17 is a testament to our students’ ability to use the challenges that face them as opportunities for creative and nuanced portfolios. It is the celebration of a milestone that marks their journey into the future of photographic arts. SPAO is proud to present this new generation of contemporary photographers and photo-based artists who are more ready than ever to engage in what lies ahead.

S. MARIA BRANDT

S. Maria Brandt is a German-raised Croatian multidisciplinary artist working primarily lens-based in Ottawa, Canada. Whether she visually processes food, people, or architecture, her pieces are meditations on the perishable and the fears of aging and dying. She gains inspiration from her complex history, the driving force behind the connections she establishes to present events: waste, climate change, economic disruption, hunger, migration, and survival.

Installation 50% aims to raise consciousness around food waste and its role in our home. More than 50% of the food that Canadian households throw out could be eaten. Instead, we leave those millions of tonnes of edible food to perish, unseen and forgotten in the back of our fridges, freezers, and pantries, turning our own and the world's resources to waste.

JULIEN FONTIL

Julien Fontil, also known as ‘jules filmhouse’, is a multidisciplinary artist based out of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, whose practice flows seamlessly through the areas of photography, writing, music and sound engineering. Entangled mainly in a world of surreal exploration, his work is reflective of an inner journey towards spiritual liberation and greater well-being. He challenges notions of how art should be formulated and understood, mostly embracing ideas that come up from the unconscious mind.

His latest project in particular centers around the question of how much one's existence as a person is tied to their experience of having a body, consciousness, and identity. All of his creations exist within the complex philosophical relationships between meaning/non-meaning, artist intention versus viewer interpretation, and the power of emotionally-driven work.

LEXI JACOBS

Alexandria Dawne Marie is an emerging photo-based artist, who is interested in exploring multidimensional approaches to storytelling in relation to memory and mental health. As a recent graduate of the University of Ottawa, Alexandria utilizes her art to better understand her own disability and mental health challenges. Currently, Alexandria is experimenting with a combination of writing, theatre, and photography to showcase things often unseen, taking a poetic approach to illuminate various literal and metaphorical aspects of invisible illnesses. She has developed two series for Exhibition No. 17.

Imprints is a handmade book filled with images and stories inspired by the idea of untold stories and memories in the imprints left behind in freshly poured cement. Memories, is more centred on who Alexandria is as a person and artist, depicting her relationship with memory, ADHD, depression, and Rheumatoid Arthritis.

NAOMI KRONEN

Naomi Kronen is an Ottawa-based multidisciplinary artist, who has been exploring lens-based projects since 2016. Kronen examines nostalgia and mortality out of necessity, utilizing humour and performance strategies to exhibit the unruliness and absurdity of life. They often use themselves as their own subject as it is the easiest way to properly invite the viewer to reflect and revisit their own selves.

Kronen captures some images instinctually, while others are heavily conceptualized, resulting in digital and analogue formats being juxtaposed and paralleled — both formats undergo the same experimental process of careful minor or major post-production and manipulation.

ANWAR MASSOUD

Anwar is a photographer and filmmaker. He was on tour in Kabul, Afghanistan with the Canadian Armed Forces in 2005. He graduated from Carleton University in 2006, with a Bachelor of Arts in Film Studies, and in 2009 with a Master of Arts in Film Studies.  He also graduated from Sheridan Institute`s Advanced Television and Film Production program in 2009. Anwar spent six years with the Defence Public Affairs Learning Centre (DPALC) instructing soldiers, officers, and Government of Canada communication’s personnel on audio/video production, digital photography, and graphic design. Anwar is the lead photographer for MASLO Studios, and the founder of The LIPhE Project. 

As part of the 2022 graduating class, Anwar is presenting a fashion magazine for Exhibition No. 17. The magazine is comprised of almost 200 pages, including photography, illustration, and a variety of designs completed over the past decade.  Range is the theme of this presentation.

JUSTIN M. MILLAR

With two feet on the ground and a camera in the sky, Justin M. Millar brings his unique view of the world into his art as both a pilot and photographer. Stepping away from the often oversaturated, more commercial look of popular drone images (that is, not depicting beaches and all-inclusive resorts), instead Millar is interested in the darker and sometimes gritty scenes from above. He uses his work to show the simple, and at times complicated beauty of the environment he finds himself in. Millar strives to push his artistic photography to new heights by bridging the ethereal and the somber. His dark and mysterious aesthetic reiterates how views and angles are never fully known.

Millar is interested in the portrayal of human activity nestled within the vastness of nature. Confronting nature’s sublime awe through symmetry and balance, his photographs challenge viewers to reconsider what they always thought was familiar. His images are balanced and structured, almost symmetrical, which instills in the mind this idea that everything is where it is meant to be.

ANN PICHÉ

Ann Piché is a photo-based artist in Ottawa, Canada. Drawing on her background as an electronic technologist, she builds links between the invisible mathematical theories that surrounds us and visible art.   Her work creates an accessible entry point into complex subjects. In her project, beyond visible, Ann uses photographic abstraction and experimental camera techniques to explore string theory and its notion of the multiverse; a controversial idea that states that our universe may be one of many universes in existence. What if these spaces existed? What if we could go there? What would we see? Ann’s work acts as a visual medium to open up conversations and pique the curiosity of those who may feel intimidated by the unknown. 

Ann’s inspiration comes from everyday experiences and interactions. Her photographic process includes digital, film and scanography.

JON STUART

Jon Stuart uses photography to collect and process delicate evidence which he uses to reveal meaning and sublimity in the apparently mundane. His images are rich portrayals of events that played out before the photographer arrived. Each scene contains clues to existence, presence, and place, not merely documenting physical locations, but places charged with significance.

His current work, Stillwater, reveals the incongruities and mysteries of reterritorialization that can be perceived in an apparently ordinary Ontario landscape. At the western edge of Ottawa, a debilitated wetland is being brought back to life. This is a next generation landscape – inherently man-made yet wild and generative. Structured somewhere between the ordered parks of the city and the dark, unfathomable boreal forest, the history of this land can be read. He has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions and his work is held in public and private collections.

FIRST YEAR FEATURE

The first year of SPAO’s Diploma Program consists mainly of time spent in SPAO’s comprehensive multi-format darkroom. Students use film photography and cyanotype printing methods in order to fully understand the technical components of image-making. For Exhibition No. 17, our first-year students were challenged to express their individual practices and concepts while only working in a monochromatic tone. The end result is a unique and timely glimpse at a world off-kilter.

Interested in applying to our college diploma program? learn more about the program, the work of past students, and alumni achievements by clicking any of the images below.