Tia Halliday & Megan Dyck: The Laboratory of Spatial Bemusement
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Herringer Kiss Gallery 101-1615 10 Avenue SW, Calgary, Alberta T3C 0J7
Tia Halliday and Megan Dyck, "The Laboratory of Spatial Bemusement," 2018
Reception & Performance Thursday, September 20th from 5 to 8 pm.
Part of Beakerhead
The Laboratory of Spatial Bemusement is a collaboration between artists Tia Halliday and Megan Dyck is a series of moveable kinetic sculptures and dance-based performances embracing a unique and uncanny union of kinesthetic and pictorial vocabularies; Emphasizing design and accoutrement reminiscent of 18th century French furniture and textiles and modern interior design, the artists invite viewers to engage in a tactile and movement-based consideration of luxury and hybridized domestic objects.
In a bold gesture against Aristotle’s hierarchy of the senses, which positions sight as the most import vehicle for sensorial experience, Halliday and Dyck emphasize a rich and multimodal engagement with material, pictorial and spatial phenomena through a playful merger of art and kinetic engineering.
Tia Halliday was born in Calgary Alberta. She received a BFA in Painting with distinction from the Alberta College of Art and Design. Halliday also attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Ontario College of Art and Design. Halliday went on to obtain a Masters of Drawing and Painting from Concordia University. Halliday has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions and engaged in various projects across Canada and Europe. Her work has been noted in such publications as the Washington Post and Canadian Art Online. Tia Halliday was recently selected as an Artist in Residence at Contemporary Calgary as part of their NEXT2015 Program and she performed her subsequent “living sculpture” performances during the LOOK2015 fundraiser for Contemporary Calgary. Tia is the daughter of the late Canadian abstract painter Richard Halliday, RCA and is currently a sessional instructor at the Alberta College of Art and Design where she teaches Drawing and Painting. Tia Halliday’s recent news includes being awarded with the ACAD Alumni Honour Award and the Enbridge Professional Development Award as well as being awarded with a Project Grant from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and selected to represent Alberta in the 2017 Alberta Biennial at the Art Gallery of Alberta.
Megan Dyck is an artist and educator living and working in Calgary, AB. Originally from Lethbridge, Alberta, she received her MFA from the University of Victoria (2014) and holds a BFA from the Alberta College of Art and Design (2010). Engaging a range of media, Dyck has participated in residencies in Canada, and internationally (Textîlsetur Îslands, Blönduós, Iceland, 2017). In addition to her studio practice, Megan teaches drawing, painting, and design courses at ACAD and the University of Calgary.