ARTIST TALK: M.E. Sparks

TUES. NOV. 12, 2019 | 1PM | FREE
SCA 611 STUDIOS | Suite #330 – 611 Alexander ST., Vancouver

M.E. Sparks is an artist living in Vancouver, BC on unceded Coast Salish territories. She holds an MFA from Emily Carr University and BFA from NSCAD University. She has recently held solo exhibitions at Ou Gallery, Duncan (2019) and Fifty Fifty Arts Collective, Victoria (2019), and has participated in two-person and group exhibitions at South Main Gallery, Vancouver, (2019), SiteFactory, Vancouver (2018), Dynamo Arts Association, Vancouver (2018), Support, London ON (2018) and Access Gallery, Vancouver (2017). Sparks was a finalist in the 2016 and 2017 RBC Painting Competitions and has attended residencies in Canada, Germany and Finland.

In recent paintings, Sparks explores the possibilities of cut and un-stretched canvas, calling attention to the malleability, flaccidity and contradictory flatness of the painted image. Culling forms from painting history, found objects and childhood narrative, Sparks investigates historical representations of the female body and femininity, false binaries of abstraction and representation, as well as painting’s own image-object anxieties. Most recently, her paintings incorporate cuts, slits, droops and bends, in an effort to obstruct and rethink both pictorial space and historical narrative.

Presented by the SCA Graduate Program.