Art NOW series presents Elyse Longair

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Elyse Longair, "Collage" 2023

created during the Banff Artist in Residence Spring 2023 (image courtesy of the Artist)

In this artist talk, Elyse Longair will discuss her collage practice, process, and simple image aesthetic. She creates each collage from analog popular knowledge source material, predominantly, National Geographic Magazine images from the 70s, 80s and 90s. It is important to her that the images come together in a flat, near seamless and logical way. When the work is printed on a large scale, the material reality and history of the image is highlighted.

A focus of her talk will be on her upcoming solo exhibitions, which explore thresholds and infrathin spaces.

Elyse Longair is an artist, curator, and image theorist from Lethbridge, Alberta. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies at Queen’s University under the supervision of Alicia Boutilier. Longair’s research focuses on collage history, collage as research creation and institutional strategies of collecting and curating collage. She holds the position as Chair, Chief Curator, for the Services to Artists Committee, College Arts Association, the Local Shorts Programmer for the Kingston Canadian Film Festival and is a member of University Arts Association Sustainability Committee. Her most recent residencies include, Artist in Residence, at Casa (Winter 2024), and Banff Artist in Residence, at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (Spring 2023). Her upcoming solo exhibitions include, Picturing The Infranthin at Contemporary Calgary, part of Exposure Photography Festival, On the Thresholds of Time, curated by Julian Jason Haladyn, at the Trianon Gallery, Lethbridge AB, part of Exposure Photography Festival and On Collage at Centre[3], Hamilton ON. She completed her Master of Fine Arts at OCAD University under the mentorship of Julian Jason Haladyn in 2021. From 2020 - 2021, she was an RBC Emerging Artist at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery. Longair’s ‘simple image’ theory in collage re-imagines the role of images away from the overt-complexity that dominates our world, opening up new possibilities for imagined futures.

Free admission, all are welcome to attend.