BRENDA DRANEY
How to Tell a Story
Thursday, November 26, 2015 until Saturday, March 5, 2016
University of Alberta Museums Enterprise Square Galleries, 10230 Jasper Ave, Edmonton, AB
As part of Do It Yourself: Collectivity and Collaboration in Edmonton, curated by the Art Gallery of Alberta, Ociciwan features new works by Edmonton Artist, Brenda Draney. This exhibition is a short and effervescent survey highlighting artists participating within a selection of the emerging and shifting new artist collectives and creative hubs in Edmonton. Over the past five years, a series of collaborations have developed between individual artists and independent curators/project organizers.
Most of the artists involved work together to pool collective resources, combined with support from local artist centres, to create artworks and interdisciplinary exchange. For the most part the artists are working within entrepreneurial spaces and initiatives that were inspired by previous incarnations of historically notorious local art experiments.
These creative connections are either loosely defined or tenuous in nature, reflective of and responsive to common threats to artist collectives: opportunities from outside that draw away creative activators, rent fluctuations from a booming economy and few artist-run gallery spaces for emerging practices. This exhibition highlights the artists’ responses to these challenges and features the work and energy of artists who participate in these experimental and newly formed local artist collectives while also profiling new studios and artist hubs across the city.
Other work in this exhibition includes
Andrew Buszchak, Ficus Studios
Parker Thiessen, Pseudo Laboratories
Ian Rowley & Brandi Strauss, Rhythm of Cruelty
Sergio Enrique Serrano, Sara French & Megan Bertagnolli, Hard Copy
Brittney Roy, Creative Practices Institute
Devon Beggs & Chelsea Boos, The Drawing Room
Nickelas Johnson & Candice Kelly, Local Gifts
Kristine Nutting, China Beach Beardo Detractor Productions
Zack Ayotte, Still in Edmonton
Tennis Club
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About the Artist
Brenda Draney is an Edmonton-based artist who grew up in Slave Lake, Alberta, and completed an English degree at the University of Alberta before graduating with a Bachelors in Fine Arts degree, majoring in Painting. She graduated with her Masters degree from Emily Carr University of Art + Design and became the eleventh winner of the annual RBC Canadian Painting Competition in 2009. In 2013, Draney was long listed for the Sobey Art Award and in 2014 Draney won the Eldon and Anne Foote Edmonton Visual Arts Prize. Draney's work has been exhibited across Canada, including at the Art Gallery of Alberta, Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, the Toronto International Art Fair, MKG127 Gallery, Stride Gallery, Latitude 53 and The Art Gallery of Grand Prairie. In 2017, Draney will reveal a permanent art installation relating to the trap line in the new MacEwan University's Centre for Arts and Culture Building.