Art Metropole

Allison Hrabluik is from Calgary, Alberta and lives in Vancouver. She completed post-graduate studies at the HISK in Gent, Belgium in 2007, and received her BFA from ACAD in Calgary in 2000.
Allison’s work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions and film festivals across Canada and internationally including Tatjana Pieters Gallery Gent, Belgium; The Or Gallery, Vancouver; Presentation House Gallery, Vancouver; G Gallery, Toronto; The Western Bridge, Seattle; The Cooley Art Gallery, Reed College, Portland; The Vancouver Art Gallery; Isabella Bortolozzi Galerie, Berlin, Germany; Mercer Union, Toronto; Downtown Artspace, Adelaide, Australia; Market Gallery Glasgow, Scotland; The Western Front, Vancouver; and the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, Ontario.

Born in California to Canadian parents in 1955, Daniel Olson completed degrees in mathematics and architecture before obtaining a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1986 from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design Halifax) and a Master of Fine Arts in 1995 from York University (Toronto). Olson’s work, which includes sculpture, multiples, installation, photography, performance, audio, video and artist’s books, has been exhibited widely, including shows at the Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (Québec), Galerie Optica (Montreal), and the Canadian Cultural Centre (Paris). Olson has published numerous artist’s books and multiples, most of which have been available at Art Metropole in Toronto, where he is also represented by Birch Libralato. Since 2001 Olson has been living and working in Montreal. Solo exhibitions include Twenty Minutes’ Sleep, Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver, 2005); Other Conditions, Modern Fuel (Kingston, 2005); Unknown Seventies Artists, Galerie TPW (Toronto, 2005); and I’m Not There (1955), Goethe Institute (Dublin, 2004). Olson has exhibited in group exhibitions such as Aural Cultures, Walter Philips Gallery (Banff, Alberta, 2005); Frottements: Objets et surfaces sonores, Musee national des beaux arts de Quebec, (Quebec, 2004); In Light (video projections by eight artists), Art Gallery of Ontario, (Toronto, 2004); and Promise, Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver,2001).

Emily Vey Duke is an artist and writer who works mostly in collaboration with her partner Cooper Battersby. They live in the countryside in New York with their six cats and two prairie dogs. She is an Associate Professor in the Transmedia Department at Syracuse University.

Cooper Battersby (b. 1971, Penticton British Columbia, Canada) and fellow Department of Transmedia faculty member Emily Vey Duke (b. 1972, Halifax Nova Scotia, Canada) have been working collaboratively since 1994. They work in printed matter, installation, curation and sound, but their primary practice is the production of single-channel video. Their work has been exhibited in galleries and at festivals in North and South America and throughout Europe, including the Walker Center (Minneapolis), The Banff Centre (Banff), The Vancouver Art Gallery (Vancouver), YYZ (Toronto), The New York Video Festival (NYC), The European Media Arts Festival (Osnabruck), Impakt (Utrecht) and The Images Festival (Toronto). Their tape Being Fucked Up(2000) has been awarded prizes from film festivals in Switzerland, Germany and the USA. Bad Ideas for Paradise (2002) was purchased for broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and for the libraries at Harvard and Princeton, and has won prizes from the NYExpo (NYC) and the Onion City festival (Chicago). I am a Conjuror (2004) has received prizes from the Ann Arbor Film Festival and the Onion City Festival.

Cooper Battersby (b. 1971, Penticton British Columbia, Canada) and fellow Department of Transmedia faculty member Emily Vey Duke (b. 1972, Halifax Nova Scotia, Canada) have been working collaboratively since 1994. They work in printed matter, installation, curation and sound, but their primary practice is the production of single-channel video. Their work has been exhibited in galleries and at festivals in North and South America and throughout Europe, including the Walker Center (Minneapolis), The Banff Centre (Banff), The Vancouver Art Gallery (Vancouver), YYZ (Toronto), The New York Video Festival (NYC), The European Media Arts Festival (Osnabruck), Impakt (Utrecht) and The Images Festival (Toronto). Their tape Being Fucked Up(2000) has been awarded prizes from film festivals in Switzerland, Germany and the USA. Bad Ideas for Paradise (2002) was purchased for broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and for the libraries at Harvard and Princeton, and has won prizes from the NYExpo (NYC) and the Onion City festival (Chicago). I am a Conjuror (2004) has received prizes from the Ann Arbor Film Festival and the Onion City Festival.

Jinhan Ko is a Toronto-based artist who is actively engaged in D.I.Y. activities. Jinhan received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1993 and has since exhibited his work in DYS- a group show at YYZ in 1995, the Red Head Gallery showcase, 1995, and at the Pleasure Dome – Open Screening at CineCycle, 1995. Past exhibitions include the Art Gallery of Ontario, el convento rico, Art Metropole, Sculpture Center, Dallas International Film Festival, and Media City. He is one of the founding members of the now defunct Money House, a working class home where a series of events (such as the Style Show, the Slide Show and the Snapshot Show) occurred. Jinhan Ko is a follower and the sole member of Jin’s Banana House and a partner in Instant Coffee, an active organization that facilitates artist’s projects, from exhibiting visual work to publishing artist’s project.

Judy Cheung uses modern technology, encompassing photography, video, film, digital electronic, text and sound to enlist methods of media manipulation in the service of cultural portrayal. As an artist, teacher and commercial photographer, she continuously explores and expands the unlimited boundaries in photographic art. Cheung received her B.F.A. at the University of Calgary in 1987 and M.F.A. degree at the Pratt Institute, New York in 1992. She is an active member of the Calgary arts community, in creating media arts exhibitions and televideo conferencing.

Laurel Woodcock is a multidisciplinary artist working in sculpture, video, audio, photography and performance. She is known for her interest in familiar language, turns of phrase, song lyrics, punctuation marks, typography and various other syntactical elements. These become materials with which she explores the problems and possibilities of language: its formal qualities and malleable meanings. Often, her work can be confused for official or corporate public signage—from billboards to a banner towed by a plane. Woodcock has exhibited nationally at the Power Plant, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Contemporary Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, and the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, among other Canadian venues. Internationally, she has shown her videos in New York, London, Chicago, Cairo, Berlin, Paris, Barcelona and Glasgow. Her work is in several public and private collections and she has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council. Laurel Woodcock is represented by MKG127, Toronto. She lives and works in Toronto.

Rob Ring is a pixel-based artist currently living and working in Kitchener. He has been actively exhibiting for over 10 years and his work has been featured in the Images Festival, Optic Nerve Festival, and countless group and solo exhibitions nationally & abroad.

Ring’s early performance-based work employed a not-necessarily-funny sort of humour, and earned him the reputation as “everybody’s (second) favourite video artist”. No longer using his own body as a creative instrument, Ring’s current practice often integrates video projection into live performances by theatre groups, symphonies, and other special events.

Rob is the Artistic Director of CAFKA – Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener & Area.

His hobbies include “faking it, copyright infringement & guerrilla urban embellishment”.