We are happy to announce this year’s mentee for the 2021 Timeshare Mentorship, Claire Hunter.
Claire will be creating a new video work under the mentorship of the 2021 TimeShare Mentor Lisa Birke (Saskatoon, SK) and with technical help from Production Manager Lucas Morneau. As part of the mentorship, Claire will receive a $1000 stipend and support fee, an Adobe Cloud subscription for the duration of the mentorship, access to Faucet’s equipment and post-production facilities, and an opportunity to screen their work at Struts Gallery in 2022. Struts Gallery is excited to see the great work Claire will produce with Lisa’s help.
ABOUT THE MENTEE |
Claire Hunter is a recent graduate of Mount Allison University, where they completed their Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2020, and currently resides in Fredericton, New Brunswick. They are a queer artist whose practice uses video, installation, performance, sculpture, printmaking, and textiles to discuss their experiences as a queer and nonbinary person. For Claire, it is about bringing back power to queer people where it is commonly unsafe. They live in rural Canada, which makes spaces like bathrooms, clubs, hospitals, and places of worship potentially unsafe. They express this by using their bodily fluids as a tool. By using their bodily fluids, they explore how everyone is the same – we all urinate. To explore this in the past, they have consumed specific food to dye the color of their urine to use it as a medium and had a queer Virgin Mary spit in their mouth parodying Michelangelo’s Pietà. Presently, they explore textiles to comfort those who do not feel empowered.
ABOUT THE MENTOR |
Lisa Birke is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is a result of the collision of video, performance art, and installation. Situating in the “in-betweens”, she is interested in the stories that we re-cite and how hese reflect our conception of the world and the tragi-comic perception of ourselves. Filmed unaccompanied in the Canadian landscape, absurd yet insightful performative acts become entangled in complex single and multi-channel videos and installations that trouble viewer expectations in the mixing of referents from art history, popular culture, and the everyday. Recently, Birke has been exploring immersive multi-media approaches, special effects, and 360 video. BIO |
Lisa Birke has had solo and group exhibitions across Canada and her award-winning video art has been screened at film festivals and galleries internationally, including Time is Love (Scotland), Vancouver International Film Festival, Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener & Area, Tom Thomson Art Gallery, Athens International Film + Video Festival (USA), New Media Fest (Germany), Slamdance Film Festival (USA), Florida Film Festival (USA), along with many others. The 360-degree video, The Land of Milk and Honey, was recently included in the contemporary art biennial at the Remai Modern in Saskatoon Canada. Birke is Assistant Professor of Digital and Extended Media at the University of Saskatchewan. www.lisabirke.com