2021 Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition III

Tuesday, July 6, 2021

The Department of Fine Arts and UWAG (University of Waterloo Art Gallery) present the third thesis exhibitions by Master of Fine Arts (MFA) candidates from the graduate program in Fine Arts at the University of Waterloo. MFA Thesis gives the campus and community-at-large an opportunity to see the end result of two years of intensive research and studio production by emerging visual artists.

While MFA thesis exhibitions will be installed on site, the gallery remains closed in response to the ongoing pandemic and current lockdown. 

Both exhibitions “open" on the UWAG website July 8 with updated exhibition documentation to be posted on July 13. 


There are four individual photos of artworks that make up one larger image. They are in two rows of two. They are all colour images, and each sculpture is on a white background and sits on a grey floor. Top left: A burnt orange plaster sculpture that has a triangular form that leads to a rectangular base. The top of the sculpture is a round form with a subtle line connecting it to the triangular form. Top right: A grey plaster sculpture is bent to the right side as it leans to the floor. It has a rim that surrounds its top. Its bottom takes a brick-like form. Bottom left: A side profile of a yellow plaster sculpture with a round-rimmed top halfway bent. The bottom half is almost crushed flat underneath the top half. Bottom right: This grey sculpture sits takes the form of a pipe-like fixture with lined ridges and a slight bend on the top round rim.
Carrie Perreault
Pacing the House

Pacing the House is an exhibition of sculptures and drawings that use material inquiry to reframe childhood trauma into a state of investigation. By surveying the work through a feminist approach to autotheory, Perreault temporarily suspends the doubt she has thrown into the stories she has told herself and instead articulates them by creating objects and installations that reflect these conceptual intensions. Her practice involves a mode of creation—embodied disassociation at timethat sits between emotional immediacy and a process of gathering what has been lost. Using repetition and the multiple as a meditative mechanism provides grounding. The groupings of objects that make up the individual artworks fend off ideas of scarcity and provide manageable space for frightening experiences.
Carrie Perreault’s recent exhibitions and projects include period of adjustment, Niagara Artists Centre, St. Catharines; and Show.19, Cambridge Art Galleries, curated by Iga Janik. In 2019, she published 'period of adjustment', a poster/pamphlet with essays by Sky Gooden and Lucy R. Lippard, and ‘The Artist Cookbook Vol. 1’, featuring 52 artist’s favourite recipes, with Vol. 2 set for release in Fall 2021. Perreault has received grants from the Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). She also serves as a member of the Executive Committee on the York South-Western Tenant Union. Carie Perreault lives and works in Toronto/Tkaronto.

Maria Simmons
Colour image of several 2 x 3 inch wooden boards standing vertically varying widths apart to create an irregular-shaped room. The ‘walls' are made of clear white plastic, with a pink hue reflected on them. Projected onto the plastic is a video that spans the centre of the image. It depicts bright green chemical efflorescence with browns and greens, and greys. There are mounds of soil on the floor around the perimeter of the walls. Embedded in the soil are various white and terracotta clay and glass forms, mostly buried.
Rat, Plastic, Wood

Rat, Plastic, Wood is an exhibition of hybrid sculptures centring the physical manifestation of interspecies intra-action and natural forms of contamination-as-collaboration. A central structure of wood and plastic becomes the locus of boundaryless activity where soil, yeast, fermentation, hardtack, garbage all share space and interact. While making your way, you may collide with fruit flies and the aromatics of fermenting pine, noodles, dirt, and rotting banana. You may hear the low rumble of a dehumidifier, the wet sizzle of dry soil sucking up water. Nothing is inert, everything is potentialized.
Maria Simmons investigates potentialized environments through the creation of multidisciplinary sculpture and installation. She has recently exhibited at The Plumb, Ed Video Media Art Centre, Art Gallery of Hamilton, and Hamilton Artists Inc. She has received grants from the Ontario Arts Council and a nomination for the Hamilton Arts Award. Maria Simmons is from Hamilton.

Emovere Series (details), Carrie Perreault, 2020-21. Image courtesy of the artist.

Rat, Plastic, Wood (detail), Maria Simmons, 2021. Image courtesy of the artist.