For those of you who find yourselves wandering Concordia’s campus in the coming week, the HOT MESSexhibit at the VAV gallery will definitely lure you in as you pass by the Visual Arts building.
Passersby will be stunned by the earth-like tones of color and the sheer size of this mixed media exhibit; a mix of sculpture, painting and drawing that will attract both the art aficionado or the debutant, and that acts like a magnet for sidewalk spectators walking down René-Levesque blvd.
The HIVEMIND collective is a group of three fine arts undergraduate students at Concordia: Maya Cardin, Leigh Macrae and Stephanie EM Coleman. They have been collaborating for the better part of the past two years building two select exhibits. The first, Home Paralleled, was shown at the Ctrl Lab art house on St-Laurent blvd. two years ago. Then, earlier this year, they received a grant to use the space at the VAV Gallery for their second exhibit, HOT MESS. The exhibit, unlike most, allows spectators to see the artists build onto their work in the gallery, rather than exhibiting it as a “finished” product.
The point of the exhibit is to really immerse the spectators in the artistic process that would normally occur in a studio.
The trio explained that they wanted people to be able to witness art as a celebration, not see it in a “traditional” or “sterile” way.
The members of HIVEMIND feel that the process of working together is mutually fulfilling. In the gallery it’s impossible to truly differentiate where one artist’s work begins or ends.
In the dynamic workspace that these artists have created, it’s clear that what they are looking to do is create an impact on their audience.
Ultimately what is so impressive about the HOT MESS exhibit is that, because the work of all these artists is so closely correlated, it simply takes on a life of its own. The artists work with neutral objects, like their signature hive stamp, which, being a recurrent symbols in the work becomes a “transition” piece that embeds the diverse parts of the exhibit together. “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts” seems to be the mantra for this particular collaboration.
To view samples of HIVEMIND’s work visit their site planetoidruins.tumblr.com.
Check out a video tour of the HOT MESS exhibit filmed and edited by Leah Batstone:
Great show. It was very cool to watch grow throughout the week.
Really bad sound on this video.
Yeah the audio is a little rough. Didn’t realize the music was playing until after the interview. This is only the second video I’ve filmed on my own though so they’ll get better! Thanks for the feedback!