Meet your Artists-in-Residence, 2017-18

Aaron Richmond and Victoria Stanton are our two new Artists-in-Residence working in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education. They will be collaborating with the community of the Faculty of Education during the 2017-2018 school year, supported by the P. Lantz Initiative for Excellence in Education & the Arts and the Institute for Human Development and Well-Being (IHDW).

We’re very pleased to welcome Aaron and Victoria to the Faculty of Education.

Aaron Richmond

Aaron Richmond is a Montreal-based artist whose practice explores the psychological and semiotic capacities of tectonic space. Using a broad range of material and conceptual parameters, his work seeks to address both the individual and the collective in their various capacities for working, making and building.

Aaron is the recipient of awards which include, most recently, the 2016 Robert Motherwell Fellowship and the 2015 Milton and Sally Avery Fellowship, both awarded through the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. He holds a Masters of Philosophy from the University of Cambridge, and a Master’s of Fine Arts from the Hoffberger School at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

As an AiR at McGill’s Faculty of Education, Aaron will combine his experience as an artist and educator, exploring how the act of drawing can function as a mode of thinking within the context of education. He intends to develop a multi-layered program in which the viabilities of artistic practice are made accessible to faculty, students, and their broader communities. [aaronrichmond.ca]

Victoria Stanton

Victoria Stanton is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher/curator/educator who works with live action, human interaction, video, film, photo, drawing, and writing. Continually exploring within diverse media, while the outward results of these processes may manifest in a multiplicity of forms, performance is the invariable core of her research. Considered a pioneer of transactional practices in Quebec, Stanton has presented exhibitions, performances, infiltrating/relational actions, and films/videos in Canada, the U.S., Europe, the U.K., Australia, Japan and Mexico. As a published author, and one third of the TouVA Collective (comprised of Anne Bérubé, Sylvie Tourangeau and Stanton) her new book, The 7th Sense (co-authored by the collective), develops salient notions on how performance is practiced and on the question of “the performative.”

As an AiR, Victoria intends to collectively explore the roles of rest (slowness, stillness, spaces of pause and interval), connection to place (the way we invest of ourselves in the environments that frame our day-to-day activities both professionally and personally) and walking (an everyday activity that at once serves a practical function but also allows for freedom and fluidity of thought), as parallel forms of creative and intellectual expression that through a series of performative encounters, workshops, presentations, dialogues, and classroom initiatives, can enhance pedagogical methods while providing valuable tools for social engagement and change.

Learn more about Victoria’s work at: bankofvictoria.com and nothingissacred.ca

Maria Ezcurra, Art Mediator

Maria Ezcurra returns for a second term as the Art Mediator, coordinating activities for the P. Lantz Initiative for Excellence in Education & the Arts, supporting the projects developed by the Artists-in-Residence, and collaborating with the Faculty of Education community.

Maria Ezcurra was one of the two first Artists-in-Residence at McGill’s Faculty of Education, where she is currently working as an Art-Mediator supported by the P. Lantz Initiative for Excellence in Education and the Arts, and the Institute for Human Development and Well-Being -which she also coordinates. Originally from Mexico, Maria obtained a PhD at Concordia University with the first research-creation doctoral project presented at the Department of Art Education. Formed as a visual artist, she has participated in numerous individual and group exhibits worldwide. Her artwork and research involves participatory visual methods, collaborative art practices, feminist art education, dress and textiles, visual and material culture, gender stereotypes, violence against women, and immigration.

Learn more about Maria’s work at: www.mariaezcurra.com