artLAB Vitrine
FALL 2024 & WINTER 2025
Studio Relics
Curated by Venus Nwaokoro
March 21 - April 10, 2025
Amythly, Payton Atkinson, Elizabeth Aszako, Patricia Barwicz, Genevieve Buchanan, Chih-ling (Gemma) Chang, Alexandra Chapman, Juliette Devos-Speers, Dylan Evans, Cheyne Ferguson, Hannah Khiavi, Kate Murphy, Venus Nwaokoro, Jadhen Pangilinan, Zoe Pantazopoulos, Dhra Patel, Maggie Shook, Mady Teeter, Emma Whitehouse
“Studio Relics” is a collection of cherished objects that have taken on significance in the studios of the 4th year Studio Arts Practicum class of 2025. These items carry stories, some humorous, others unexpected, and have even served as muses for several practicum students, appearing throughout their work.
Presented alongside “To Here Knows When”, the final exhibition by the practicum class, Studio Relics invites viewers to look closely and make connections: Which object belongs to which artist? What role has it played in shaping their creative process?
Ethos of Materiality
Curated by Venus Nwaokoro
Dylan Evans, Genevieve Buchanan, Jessica Joyce, Kate Murphy and Venus Chidimma Nwaokoro
January 9-30, 2025
assembled an engaging group of speakers, with Jessica Irene Joyce joining as the remaining co-panelist alongside Chan.
In Catherine Chan’s session, she distributed small parcels of clay to participants, inviting them to engage in a tactile and reflective process. As participants shaped and formed their clay, Chan delivered an insightful talk on the significance of materiality, emphasizing its role not only in art-making but also in broader contexts of human interaction and experience. She encouraged attendees to mold the clay intuitively, fostering a connection
between their hands, minds, and the surrounding environment.
This installation showcases the molded clay creations crafted by select participants during the workshop, highlighting their unique forms and interpretations. Included among the pieces is one parcel of clay left nearly untouched, still wrapped in its original packaging, offering a quiet commentary on potentiality and restraint within the act of creation.
What They Don’t See
Curated by Maggie Shook
Amy Itzel Reyes-Murray, Dhra Patel, Emma Whitehouse, Jadhen Pangilinan.
October 10 - October 31, 2024
“What They Don’t See” offers a rare glimpse into the hidden world of the creative process. This collection of open sketchbooks reveals the raw, unpolished beginnings of larger artistic projects, showing evolving sketches and notes that shape the final works. From initial concepts to rough drafts, each page invites you to witness the delicate, often unseen journey from imagination to creation. Explore the vulnerability and depth of artistic vision through these personal windows into the minds of artists, where great ideas first take form.
This exhibtion is curated by Maggie Shook, artLAB Gallery Intern
Maggie Shook is a practicum student in the fourth year of her BFA, Honours Specialization in Studio Arts. Her work integrates landscape and portraiture through painting, conceptually focusing on the interconnectedness of the human experience and the environment. She is inspired by the dynamic relationships between people and nature, and aims to capture them through a feminine lens in her paintings. Maggie's work has been exhibited in group exhibitions and featured in galleries including the ArtLab Gallery, Cohen Commons Gallery, Satellite Project Space in London, Ontario, and Quest Art School + Gallery in Midland, Ontario.
Instagram: maggieshook.art
Email: maggieshook3@gmail.com
Summer 2024 vitrine programming is organized by student Parisa Lahooty.
Cainyu?, Keep Scrolling
Jadhen Pangilinan, He/Him
August 8 - September 26, 2024
Working at the Artlab over the summer gave me an unexpected creative space. The ability of humans to imagine is an extraordinary gift that is often overlooked. A painter’s ability to observe and translate an image to the physical plane is a skill that takes time to perfect. We are usually focused on what is in front of us and we neglect the spark that drives our creative practices. That spark is our imagination, the determination to envision something and materialize it in the real world through art. “Cainyu?” is a series of drawings I created and it is a new practice that I am exploring as I detach my mind from an image source and take creative liberty to translate my imagination into the physical world. The series can be described as strange images of places and beings that reflect a psychedelic beauty, displaced but complete and stable within its chaos. No hesitating, no questioning with what flows out of my hand. “Cainyu” comes from the phrase “Can you?”, a phrase that I repeatedly asked myself “Can you? Can you? Can I… what?”.
In the opposite spectrum, I also believe that creating art does not always have to be profound. There is a simplicity in choosing a subject from a single glance. The series titled “Keep Scrolling” is a collection of funny-looking cats and dogs from Instagram. Social media is a big aspect of our lives in which information is shared and consumed. Content on people’s screens is a curation of interests specific to an individual. My social media is full of these silly pictures that compel me to keep scrolling to see more.
the preliminary architecture of you
Parisa Lahooty
June 26-August 1, 2024
It does not take a lot of effort to be able to see that everything around us is a form of art, and that statement not only encompasses our surroundings, but us as well. The intricate design of what builds us is an art on its own, from the cells that form our tissues to the complex structures of our organs. Each component, whether visible to the naked eye or only through the lens of a microscope, contributes to the art that is the human body.
This exhibition is a testament to my love for the intersectionality of art and science, as well as all the humans I’ve ever cared for, who are themselves reflections of the works featured.
2023-2024 vitrine programming is organized by artLAB Gallery intern Chloe Serenko.
Chloe Serenko (she/they) is a fourth-year practicum student finishing their honours specialization BFA in Studio Arts. Her practice is rooted in experimental approaches to mixed-media, painting, installation and sculpture. As the artLAB intern, her responsibilities include designing posters and publications for upcoming events and shows, organizing programming in the vitrine, and researching funding opportunities. She dedicates herself to her practice by spending long hours in the studio, expanding her knowledge of art history and exploring contemporary new-media approaches to fine art. Serenko’s goal for her future is to improve both their conceptual and technical approaches to design and fabrication and continue pursuing gallery work!
IG: chloenko_
Website: chloenko.com
Email: cserenko@uwo.ca
Long[ing] Cells
Tia Bates
March 28 - May 1, 2024
Shelved and framed within the vitrine, these memories fade. Ornamental artifacts on display, they are immune to stagnation in a constant state of play. Tia Bates sculpts with cinematic light to foster the intimate ‘touch’ of filmic image on the human body and the space inhabited in between. Both the porous human skin and malleable memory allow for a breach by the light of cinema. In the darkness of the cavernous movie house, the film’s aura grows and affects, drawing in, with the desire to capture and stick, to linger in the mind and stay in the head. Small scale sculptures evoke an autobiographical curiosity and exploration, they require a close examination and become a time-based work. Beeswax is used as a reference to the translucency of human skin, and a conduit that allows the sculpting of light.
Ladies of Lore
Bridget Beardwood (she/ her)
February 2-15, 2024
Featuring women of Greek and Norse mythologies, each character presents her own unique story. In Ladies of Lore, dive into the symbolism and history of the ancient goddesses. 
Under the Juniper Trees
Emil Stoetzer (They/ Them)
October 26 - November 19, 2023
"Under the Juniper Trees" is a series of works comprising of miniature dragons accompanied by their environments. Focusing on the lore behind dragons throughout the globe and the meditative aspect of creating miniatures, "Under the Juniper Tress" is an act of love. Each hair is individually sculpted, placed, and adjusted in an act that is more akin to repetition than it is to traditional sculpture. Dragons not only have their historical and mythological context, but their contemporary context as well. A mythological being that is known throughout cultures but was never real, a creature worshipped or misunderstood, a creature hunted, relates very strongly to the lived queer experience, especially that on the asexual and aromantic spectrum. Perhaps that is why we are all obsessed with dragons!"
Top Shelf Happiness
TK (Tori Kyriakides) (she/they/he)
October 5 - 19, 2023
This group of ceramics, sculptures, and found objects is an ever-growing and changing collection of things that live on top of the shelving of the desk in my studio. Beyond providing me inspiration and visual satisfaction, they serve as an assemblage of my current artistic practice where I explore themes of gender, childhood, relationships/intimacy, body, and sexuality.
2022-2023 vitrine programming was organized by artLAB Gallery intern Megan Goddard.
Megan Goddard is a fourth-year student finishing her BFA in Studio Art, as well a major in Museum and Curatorial Studies. Her practice includes painting, sculpture and working with textiles currently. As artLAB intern her responsibilities include designing posters for upcoming events and shows, organizing programming in the vitrine, and researching funding opportunities. Megan's goal as an intern is to promote the artLAB to her peers and others, as well as to curate exhibitions that showcase the current talent within the Visual Arts program! She is unsure of where her path post undergrad will go, but has an interest in exploring artist residencies and collectives around the globe.
Winter Studies
Timothy Wiebe
March 30 - April 13, 2023
“These are a series of small conte drawings that I created as studies, some may become larger paintings, others not. I like conte as a drawing medium because I'm able to play with the materials and use many different techniques such as smudging, layering, and hatching. I also enjoy the limited palette of black, white, umber, and sienna because it forces me to be creative with my colour choices and application to create varied tones and the illusion of more colours. The purpose of these drawings is to capture fleeting moments that I only catch brief glimpses of while driving to and from school. I can turn these little moments into something special and permanent through the vessel of art. “
Pocket Universes
Sebastian Evans
March 2 - 23, 2023
"These three paintings were made as an attempt to condense some earlier work with alcohol ink and house paint into a square foot size. They are resin, alcohol ink and house paint on three different custom canvases. Two of the canvases are made up of smaller mini canvases which have been secured together to create the square foot size. These are imagined spaces which exist in deep outer space. They are my attempt to create realms made of alcohol ink which floats and behaves according to its own physical laws as it co-mingles with resin and water-based paint. These were featured at Westland Gallery’s Square Foot Show and are available for purchase if you are so inclined. They are an abstract imagined realm where colour and flow are the most important elements which determine the meaning and composition. They were made in late 2022."
Goodness, Present and Hallowed
Jack Cocker
January 21 - March 2, 2023
"Through this body of work, I'm looking at expanding on the practice of landscape and figurative painting, appreciating and being cognisant of the work of painters in centuries prior while approaching the medium with the mindset that the landscape is no longer limited to the sublime, supreme beauty of the countryside, but has instead expanded to encompass the boundless relationships between all things in the natural world. The natural is no longer stunted by the forest or the valleys, with it now flowing through architecture, culture, infrastructure, religion, family, friends and every connection between things in our world.
Through painting the Canadian landscape as I see it, as a visual representation of these close relationships and connections rather than as a vehicle to explore the sublimity of nature, a sense of familiarity within the viewer and a curiosity as to why it has appeared should form, inviting them to better acquaint themselves with their own connections."
For more on Cocker's practice visit him on IG @jack.ckr
Avengers Assemble
Darcy McVicar
November 21 - January 9, 2023
"Darcy McVicar is in his 4th year of Honours Visual Arts. He is currently exploring Contemporary Escapism and using specific colours and imagery to bring the feeling of escape from the world into his work. He also uses this theme to bring back fond memories of people and things.”
Fishbones
Bridget Koza
October 6 - November 17
From the artist: "Spending my summer backpacking along the Appalachian Trail, I gained a new understanding of wildlife, motivating me to communicate these findings in my artwork. Our society is consumed with industrialization and capitalism, often neglecting the endangered species that share our earth. In this acrylic painting, I have illustrated a fish in skeleton form outlined in a partial black silhouette. Not only does the black space around the animal accentuate the skeleton, but the dark colours really make the subject feel trapped -- akin to the situation for serval endangered animals. By inverting, altering and creating contrast with the colours of the watery background, I have created an oil-spill scene. Altering the imagery of a familiar species is meant to warn viewers that these species may be endangered in the future. Furthermore, this painting asks, "do these animals deserve this representation?”
IG: @kozart.studios
Xiaoyi Cao (Charlotte) is a fourth-year student with a double major in Studio Art and Art History and Media, Information & Technoculture. Her practice includes painting, drawing, visual design, photography, and animation. As an intern at the ArtLab Gallery, her responsibility includes the management and curating of the gallery vitrine, graphic design, video recording and editing. During her internship, she is trying to promote ArtLab programming to more students and provide them with opportunities to display their work. After completing graduation at Western, Cao plans to work in Toronto or Montreal for a year, as an artist or designer intern, before continuing her education with an MA degree.
Banana Hands
From the archives and an installation component by Xiaoyi Cao
October 7 -21, 2021
Working from the Artlab Gallery archives, I selected a poster designed by Christine Negus for a film screening that was hosted in 2014 titled Banana Hands. The image on the poster resonated with me and a recent work that I learned about by Maurizio Cattela called the Comedian, in which the artist installed a banana onto the gallery wall using duct tape. Selling for $120,000 this work mocked capitalism and the evaluation of art markets. The juxtapositon of these two artworks captures a variety of perspectives in seeing the world -- reality can be different things, just like the banana.
formful
Tyler Jafelice
March 29 - April 9, 2021
“formful” – displaying excellent form, especially in performing a sport.
Tyler Jafelice’s vitrine exhibition formful is an arrangement of sculptures that explore what it means for one type of body to express multiple stages or states of being. Jafelice contemplated the way athletics puts a single body through multiple states such as “weariness”, “tension”, or “balance”. He then translated these three concepts into melted candle sculptures. No adhesive or glue was used to make these works, only cutting, carving, and melting separate parts together. Much like a body, nothing holds these works together but their own flesh. The sculptures are divided into three regions; one region representing weariness, one representing tension, and one representing balance (from left to right). However, elements of all three stages can be found in each work.
Tyler Jafelice on Instagram.
息抜き / ikinuki: to relax, to take a breather
Holly Granken
March 1 – 14, 2021
Artist’s statement: When most people think of photography, they think of photos of an object, maybe a landscape, or a portrait of a person. It’s easy to forget that photography is really just the study of light and that’s what I wanted to explore in this work. I wanted to take the features that make up a composition- a model, a room, furniture- and reduce them to just colour, shadows, and light. In doing this, it opens up a much wider opportunity for the viewer to interpret the work. It asks questions and has an air of mystery about it. I want these images to provoke feelings in the viewer, but feelings that are varied and personal to each individual. Does the image make you feel warm? Cozy? A little sexy? Does it make you feel vibrant, or does it remind you of summer? The world is a crazy place right now, and it can promote a lot of bad feelings. I want people to look at my work and walk away with a positive feeling that they can pass on to the next person they see. We all need that good feeling now more than ever.
Holly Granken’s website.
Holly Granken on Instagram.
In fact, it wasn't on my mind at all.
Tia Bates
February 1 - 14, 2021
Artist's statement: "In fact, it wasn’t on my mind at all." is a series of three paintings of locations from the home I grew up in painted from memory. The series acts both as a self portrait series, and a series of narratives described in the titles of the works. These function as stanzas to a larger narrative poem with the light source being the place described in the titles, and where the subject of the poems physically exists to affect the space around them. The illuminated space illustrates the way a location is perceived through experiences, emotion, and memory.
Tia Bates on Instagram.
I Never Said It
Megan Goddard
January 11 - 24th, 2021
Artist's statement: My series, “I Never Said It,” acts as a sculptural representation of my relationship to people, and the censoring of thoughts which sometimes occurs. The bottles contain pieces of writing that are things I have never told, and will never tell anyone. They speak to a larger issue of communication for myself and perhaps others, revealing some thoughts but not all, either because they’re not socially acceptable or simply too much time has passed for me to say them. The glass bottles represent the duality and complex nature of relationships, by being open to see but simultaneously closed off to touch.
Meghan Goddard on Instagram.
Artlab Vitrine 2019-2020
Programming by Shurui Wang (Mavis), past Artlab Gallery Intern.
Shurui Wang (Mavis) is purshing her honors specialization in both Studio and Art History. She has a great interest in curation. During her college years, she worked as an intern, or volunteer, in museums and art galleries in both China and Canada. As an intern at Artlab Gallery, her responsibilities included the management and curating of the ArtLab Vitrine, exhibition and event poster design, media materials and grant writing. During this time, she focused on connecting local artists in London, Ontario with the Department of Visual Arts in order to enhance students' connections with the art community by introducing local artists' works. After completing her undergraduate degree at Western, Mavis will move to London, England for graduate study, where she will focus on connecting curatorial knowledge with interaction design.
05
Reilly Knowles
February 27 - March 14, 2020
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 27 from 5-7PM
In making these sculptures, I contemplated funerary rituals, embalming processes, and the human urge to preserve what has already been lost. I was also concerned with the death of the environment, and what mourning rituals might be undertaken to deal with this decline. Funerary Doll consists of a figure made from clay I dug up from my parents’ garden and refined over a process of days. It is encased in beeswax, and lays in a coffin decorated with plants foraged from my childhood neighbourhood. In Bones of the Saints, three sticks resembling bones lay inside a glass case inspired by medieval reliquaries.
Funerary Doll, 2019. Clay from my parents' garden, beeswax, garden flowers, sumac cones, walnut leaves, found box, wool, cotton and beach glass. Bones of the Saints, 2020. Oak, glass, lead, silk and twigs.
04
Fangyuan Zhao (Jamie) and Shurui Wang (Mavis)
Future fragment
January 30 - February 13, 2020
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 30 from 5-7pm
This collaborative work investigates environmental issues, specifically those dealing with plastic. Here the artists attempt to create “contemporary amber,” encapsulating plastic fragments in clear resin. As one of the most difficult materials to degrade, plastic's impact on the environment and biosphere cannot be underestimated. How should we react to artificially created artifacts as part of the planet?
03
Yanru Zhou
Dinosaur Collections (Play tricks on me)
January 09 - January 23, 2020
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 09 from 5-7pm
This exhibtion features a collection of lithography prints by Yanru Zhou. Thematically this body of work juxtaposes contemporary culture with extinct dinosaurs, collapses the space between current and prehistoric time. The five prints are produced to create a loose narrative in which dinosaurs are playing, eating and living like humans, however viewers can simultaneously see shoes, clothing and other objects. Zhou intends to create a world with both conflicting and amusing elements.
02
Edna Press
November 21 - December 05, 2020
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 21 from 5-7pm
Ruth Skinner, founder of Edna Press, is currently a PhD candidate at Western University. Her research focuses on artists books and publishing practices. Through this approach, she often works in collaboration with other artists and researchers to produce publications.
Art publishing is an important part of visual culture, its diversity, economy and multiplicity allows it to suite numerous different objectives. Art publications come in many forms, both as archives of existing art and as works of art themselves.
01
Christos Angelopoulos
Explore
October 3 - October 17, 2019
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 3 from 5-7pm
Christos Angelopoulos is a London-based artist, who works in a variety of media including oils, acrylics and inks. His subject matter often focuses on elements of nature and personal observations. He is currently working on a new series of paintings from his studio in Argos Greece.
Angelopoulos has four paintings on display this time in Artlab Vitrine, these show his exploration of materials at different times, including two of his series of works on trees.
Abstract #12, Oil on panel, 2018
Two Together Is Still Not One, Oil on panel, 2018
Mist or Tree, Ink and pencil on paper, 2016
Gold Brown Landscape, Ink on paper, 2016.
2018-2019 programming by Kayleen Tosello, Artlab Gallery Intern.
Kayleen Tosello is a fourth-year student with an honours specialization in both Studio and Art History. Her practice includes printmaking, painting and photography. As Artlab Gallery intern her responsibilities include managing and curating the gallery vitrine, grant writing, and creating poster designs + press material. During her internship she intends to focus on providing students with opportunities to display their work in alternative spaces. Following completion of her BFA at Western University, Kayleen will be working as an intern in Interior Design and Architecture in New York this summer, after which she intends to complete her MA in Architecture at Ryerson University.
05
Nia O'Brien
DEBRIS
February 27 - March 14, 2019
Opening Reception: Wednesday, February 27 from 5-7pm
04
Adam Mulder
MEXICO '68
January 31 - February 14, 2019
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 31 from 5-7pm
03
Michael Thompson
Spoils
January 10 - 24, 2019
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 10 from 5-7pm
02
Li-Elle Rapaport
time stood still
November 15 - Deceber 05, 2018
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 15 from 5-7pm
01
Sydney Smith
Collection of Essence
November 01 - 06, 2018
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 1 from 5-7pm
