Credit: Scenocosme filming public participant for their interactive UrbanScreen exhibit Rencontres Imaginaires in 2016.
Residencies
Learn about the digital projects our artists-in-residence have created for Surrey Art Gallery or UrbanScreen over the years.
2020
Varvara & Mar
Varvara & Mar’s interactive artworks are funny, thoughtful, and often surprising. In late 2019, they took up residence at Surrey Art Gallery to host production sessions for We Are the Clouds, a site-specific art installation at UrbanScreen. During each session, the artist duo filmed members of the local community along with staff from the Surrey Arts Centre, waving their arms and moving their bodies in front of the camera.
These small performances provided the silhouettes for the floating “clouds” that would ultimately appear in the final artwork, prompting onlookers to join in with their own responses and see themselves in cloud form.
2019
Faisal Anwar
Faisal Anwar’s artwork CharBagh challenges viewers to consider new ways of representing information. He visited Surrey Art Gallery over the summer of 2019 to host a series of workshops with local community members and other artists.
These sessions were hosted in multiple locations throughout Surrey, including Bear Creek Park, the Seniors’ Garden at Chuck Bailey Recreation Centre, and the PLOT Sharing Garden in Newton, and also featured local artist Roxanne Charles and local ecologist Nicole Tennant in conversation.
Each session, Anwar prompted participants to share images in response to questions about the environment, such as “What are the images that capture the current moment of climate change?” Anwar then uploaded these images to Instagram, where they were then shaped into ornate geometric patterns and displayed both at the Gallery and at UrbanScreen.
2019
Cindy Mochizuki
Cindy Mochizuki worked in Surrey Art Gallery's TechLab over the summer. The public was invited to see her progress on her multimedia installation Autumn Strawberry that brings histories and stories of Japanese Canadian berry farmers from the Lower Mainland to life. The artist will be presenting elements from her film sets, storyboards, past film animations, and conceptual sketches for her final presentation of the exhibit in 2021.
2018
Scenocosme
Artist duo Scenocosme (Grégory Lasserre & Anaïs met den Ancxt) use art to build spontaneous connections between different people. For Rencontres Imaginaires, they took up residence at Surrey Art Gallery (along with technician Christophe Thollet) and invited members of the community, artists, and Gallery staff to perform playful gestures in front of a camera. Each performer became an “imaginary friend” who would appear in the final artwork at UrbanScreen—there, members of the public could interact with these new friends, generating spontaneous stories with strangers.
Indigenous Contemporary Art Intensive
The Indigenous Contemporary Art Intensive, composed of Alanna Edwards, Naomi Kennedy, Avishka Lakwijaya, Atheana Picha, and Kelsey Sparrow, was a summer pilot program engaging emerging artists with mentoring artists. They grew their practices as artists and as cultural workers, informed future Surrey Art Gallery initiatives, and created video artworks for Surrey Art Gallery’s UrbanScreen.
2013
Sylvia Grace Borda
The artist worked throughout the summer doing visual research on south of the Fraser agriculture, preparing for her presentations in the Figuring Ground exhibition at Surrey Art Gallery and the Aerial Fields exhibition on UrbanScreen.
2010
Ruth Scheuing
Ruth Scheuing's residency and exhibition project Silkroads examined the myths and metaphors of the Silk Road. Working with digital maps and images, ancient textile patterns, and a programmable jacquard loom, Scheuing created intricately designed woven blankets. Visitors were invited to drop by and talk with the artist.
2009
John Wynne
This London-based Canadian artist created the site-specific sound installation Wireframe during his residency.
2008 – 2009
M. Simon Levin, Jer Thorp, Sylvia Grace Borda
The TechLab was transformed into an artist's production studio for the development of Glocal, an interactive digital public art project, led by the artist team of M. Simon Levin, Jer Thorp and Sylvia Grace Borda.
Over the course of the year, the team developed educational workshops and toolkits to enable the presentation of thousands of digital artworks created by Surrey youth and contributions from participants from around the world. Glocal was one of the Cultural Capitals of Canada initiatives.
2006
Reva Stone
For the duration of her exhibition Imaginal Expression, Reva Stone used Surrey Art Gallery's TechLab as a studio space as she continued to develop her project exploring a form of artificial intelligence. This project combines voice and face recognition software, video capture, and graphics to create a work that appears to have sentience. Visitors were invited to drop by and talk with the artist.
2005
REMIXX
During summer 2005, Surrey Art Gallery's TechLab was used as a studio by a collaborative team of youth and digital artists to create REMIXX.sur.RE
2004–2005
Diana Burgoyne
During her Sound Drawing exhibit, the artist used Surrey Art Gallery's TechLab to continue research and development of her electronic light drawing project.
2003
M. Simon Levin
The artist used GPS technology in Surrey Art Gallery's TechLab to create drawings of conversations that record stories of the Fraser River in the exhibit C.H.A.R.T.
2002–2003
Kate Armstrong
In Surrey Art Gallery's TechLab, the artist produced an interactive website for her Catalogue exhibit that explores the mechanical and cultural forms that stem from online shopping.
2001
Carlos Vela-Martinez
Telerobotics technology research, supported by the Canada Council New Media Residency program.
2000
Archer Pechawis
Digital video sampling technology research, supported by the Canada Council New Media Residency program.
1999
Paul Williams
The web-based project Untold Tales! Virtually Reality! explores the relationship between analog and digital worlds.