No Overnight Camping

Opening Reception: February 21, 7-9:30pm
Art Crawl:  March 8, 7-11 pm

Nature and the pristine sanctuary of wilderness are anything but natural. The way we have come to view and understand nature stems from a changing history of impenetrable and desolate landscapes, romantic notions of sublime beauty, and more recently sites of resource management. It is this changing boundary between nature and culture that the works of Dagmara Genda and Bruce Montcombroux look to explore. Through Genda’s two-dimensional pieces and Montcomboux’s three-dimensional works both artists explore their relation to, and position in, what might be understood as a contemporary wilderness.

Genda’s collage works are made with images sourced from cliche Canadiana coffee table books, calendars and travel brochures. Cut, reconfigured, and combined with drawn elements, her portraits of "corrupted animals" produce a version of nature that is humourous, perverse and acknowledges its place as part of human experience rather than something completely separate from it. Proposing "corruption" as the natural state, Genda draws alternate visions of wilderness.

Montcombroux’s three-dimensional works take as their subject matter makeshift structures, communication infrastructure, and mechanical interventions into the landscape. He presents us with a tenuous relationship between civilization and an austere nature.

Bruce Montcombroux was born in Oxford, England and immigrated to Canada with his nomadic parents when he was young. During his childhood he lived in numerous locations across Canada, in the Arctic, and spent countless summers residing in a tent-trailer at various national parks. As an adult, equally at home at a campsite or in an urban environment, Bruce continued to move frequently, at times living in temporary abodes. His current home is Saskatoon where he teaches Sculpture and Extended Media as a sessional instructor at the University of Saskatchewan. Although, as of now, he is in Calgary teaching courses about time-based media and virtual worlds at the Alberta College of Art and Design. Bruce exhibits nationally and internationally, his work has appeared in journals and press reviews, and he has attended residencies in the United States and Iceland. Most recently, he has been the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant.

Dagmara Genda studied visual art at the University of Manitoba and the University of Western Ontario, as well as cultural studies at Birkbeck College, University of London. She currently lives in Saskatoon where she works as a practicing artist and currently serves as the Director of AKA Gallery, Saskatoon's only non-media specific artist-run centre.  Dagmara Genda has shown across Canada and the US where she won 3rd place in the Durham Art Guild's 56 Annual Juried Exhibition curated by Sarah Anne Johnson. She is also the 2011 grand prize winner of 3rd Ward's Open Call—an international art competition coming out of Brooklyn, NY whose prize included a solo show and a cash grant. In Canada, she has been the recipient of numerous awards including Saskatchewan Arts Board Grants, the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibitions 2009's Best of Drawing Award and various graduate scholarships. Currently she has a panoramic drawing touring Canada as part of Ecotopia, a group exhibition curated by Amanda Cachia.