FOGO ISLAND ARTS 2016 – YEAR IN REVIEW
ANNUAL REPORT TO PATRONS THANK YOU
Established in March 2016, Fogo Island Arts’ Patrons Program brings together an extraordinary group of individuals who share a commitment to international contemporary art and to creating cultural and economic resiliency for Fogo Island and rural places around the world.
As a Founding Member of the Patrons Program, your support has helped to foster the success of artists-in-residence, and contributes to a global dialogue around ideas of art, culture, business and sustainability.
The following presents programming highlights from 2016, made possible through the generosity of Patrons like you. From all of us at Fogo Island Arts, our sincere and heartfelt thanks for your invaluable support. Together we are building Fogo Island Arts into the future.
Steffen Jagenburg MESSAGE FROM OUR FOUNDER, ZITA COBB
Art inspires reflection, and is essential to our ability to understand the nature of our humanity. Art holds the potential to critically impact and question our worldview. Art observes the dynamics of global change. Given the scale and speed of this change, it seems we need art more than ever to help us navigate the seemingly boundless complexities of our contemporary lives.
Artistic practice is open to new discoveries, involves experimentation, free speech and a language that searches for new forms of expression—engaging all of us at a local and global level.
Fogo Island is a small island confronted with shifts that often originate well beyond its shores, but the lessons learned here are valuable to navigating a sensible balance between economic and cultural evolution.
As we try to figure out the best way forward, some things can be seen more clearly from the periphery. Whether we are an island, a company, a community, or an individual, we are all trying to understand how we belong to the world. Alexander Ferko RESIDENCIES
Fogo Island Arts’ open call for 2016 artist residencies received almost 1000 applications from 57 countries for five designated spots, resulting in an acceptance rate of roughly 0.5%.
FIA’s 2016 artists-in-residence included 16 Canadian and international artists working in a wide range of disciplines: Abbas Akhavan, Wilfrid Almendra, Marco Bruzzone, Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens, Jeremy Laing, MAP Office (Laurent Gutierrez and Valérie Portefaix), Ricardo Okaranza, Lisa Oppenheim, Paul P., Goran Petrović Lotina, Walter Scott, Augustas Serapinas, and Jeremy Shaw. Emerging curator Steven Cottingham was selected for the 2016 Hnatyshyn Foundation-Fogo Island Arts Young Curator Residency.
Steffen Jagenburg
RESIDENCIES EXHIBITIONS
Wilfrid Almendra Light Boiled Like Liquid Soap March 25 to October 9, 2016
Light Boiled Like Liquid Soap is a series of newly commissioned works by Wilfrid Almendra. Fogo Island Arts presented the French-Portuguese artist’s first solo exhibition in Canada, an immersive installation featuring sculpture, radio transmission and a series of objects that morph painting and drawing in a play of transparency. Combining found and repurposed materials, the works attest to notions of desire, circulation and flux, from protective spaces of retreat to global economies of exchange.
Alexander Ferko
EXHIBITIONS 2.1 Augustas Serapinas: Four Sheds December 23, 2016 to April 2, 2017
Lithuanian artist Augustas Serapinas presents Four Sheds, a site-specific installation at the Fogo Island Gallery that reconfigures an abandoned shed into another form of container. Presented as part of Fogo Island Arts’ emerging artist exhibition series, Four Sheds evokes a history of materials, techniques and traditions, and the human processes embedded within them.
Augustas Serapinas
EXHIBITIONS 2.2 PROGRAMS
FOGO ISLAND DIALOGUES MONIKA SZEWCZYK ON DOCUMENTA 14 ISLANDS, SOVEREIGNTY Toronto, February 29, 2016 AND DECOLONIAL FUTURES The first 2016 event in the Fogo Island Dialogues series of Vancouver, December 12, 2016 international conferences, lectures and conversations took place documenta 14 curators Candice Hopkins and Monika Szewczyk, in a in Toronto. The sold-out conversation between FIA Board member conversation moderated by Nicolaus Schafhausen, considered what Monika Szewczyk and Strategic Director Nicolaus Schafhausen it might mean to establish a continuum between the West Coast and delved into the origins of documenta as well as the stakes of the Southeast of Europe, with special attention given to the work of presenting the 2017 edition in Kassel and Athens in light of the Beau and Linnea Dick. European financial and migration crises.
WHAT IS CONTEMPORARY? Fogo Island, August 25, 2016
Director of the University of Toronto Art Centre Barbara Fischer and Nicolaus Schafhausen’s discussion covered a broad range of subjects, including artists’ responses to socio-political concerns as markers of contemporaneity.
Steffen Jagenburg
PROGRAMS 3.1 PROGRAMS
OPEN STUDIOS May 27, 2016
Members of the public were invited to meet artists Paul P. and Walter Scott as well as Nicolaus Schafhausen and staff for studio tours and presentations of their work.
ALEXANDRA MCINTOSH & ANNE FAUCHERET IN CONVERSATION June 30, 2016
Anne Faucheret, curator at Kunsthalle Wien, and FIA Director of Programs and Exhibitions Alexandra McIntosh discussed ideas of desire, circulation and flux during a conversation about Wilfrid Almendra’s exhibition Light Boiled Like Liquid Soap.
REARVIEWS – A WORKSHOP WITH DANIELLE ST-AMOUR August 28, 2016
Danielle St-Amour, Director of Art Metropole, Toronto, and co-founder of the publication project Rearviews hosted a critical arts Alexander Ferko writing workshop.
PROGRAMS 3.2 ARTIST TALK SERIES June 12 – December 21, 2016
Artists-in-residence and special guests presented a series of engaging talks throughout the summer, fall and winter.
June 21 – Steven Cottingham
July 5 – Ricardo Okaranza
July 12 – Jacob Proctor
July 18 – Lisa Oppenheim
August 9 – marjioljn kok
August 16 – MAP Office
September 6 – Abbas Akhavan
September 15 – Jeremy Shaw film screenings
September 20 – Marco Bruzzone
October 11 – Jeremy Shaw
November 22 – Augustas Serapinas
December 6 – Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens
December 21 – Juste Jonutyte
PROGRAMS 3.3 FIA FILM 2016: IDENTITIES November 3 to December 15, 2016
Inspired by the legacy of the Fogo Process films, FIA launched a new annual program of politically and socially engaged film. The 2016 edition featured four films by Chantal Akerman, Manon de Boer, Marta Popivoda and Frederick Wiseman that offered diverse ways of representing and understanding identities through unconventional and contrasting lenses.
FIA Film 2016: Identities was curated by Goran Petrović Lotina, a researcher, curator and theorist in visual and performing arts and film, and artist-in-residence with FIA in 2016.
PROGRAMS 3.4 PUBLICATIONS
Grey light. Left and right back, high up, two small windows, the fifth volume in FIA’s publication series, accompanies a major work by London-based artist Hannah Rickards commissioned by Fogo Island Arts. Edited by Alexandra McIntosh and Nicolaus Schafhausen, the volume features texts by Melissa Gronlund and Will Holder, a conversation between Rickards and Schafhausen, and striking new photographic imagery drawn from the installation’s physical materials and production processes.
Asta Meldal Lynge PARTNERSHIPS
With support from CIBC, FIA established the CIBC Artist-in- Fogo Island Arts partnered with Eastern Edge Gallery, St. John’s, to Residence Program, which brings one celebrated Canadian co-present Walter Scott’s participation in HOLD FAST Contemporary contemporary artist per year over the next three years to Fogo Arts Festival (August 18-21). Scott led a comic writing workshop and Island. Toronto/Paris-based Paul P. was named the 2016 CIBC premiered a performance piece during the festival’s Art Crawl that Artist-in-Residence. stemmed from his time in residence with FIA in May 2016.
The Hnatyshyn Foundation-Fogo Island Arts Young Curator In September, FIA launched The Islands, an arts writing residency Residency program has been successfully renewed for another partnership with Art Metropole with support from Artscape for three years (2017-19), creating new opportunities for emerging 2017-18. Three recipients will spend a month in residence on Fogo Canadian curators. Each residency has been extended to six weeks. Island followed by two weeks on Toronto Island. The partnership Steven Cottingham, based in Vancouver, was the 2016 Hnatyshyn aims to foster critical research and writing about contemporary art, Foundation-Fogo Island Arts Young Curator in residence. and will result in a small publication series.
FIA has partnered with ars viva, a major contemporary art award in Germany, to fund three month-long residencies on the island in 2017. Nicolaus Schafhausen and Zita Cobb were members of the jury, which selected artists Jan Paul Evers, Leon Kahane and Jumana Manna.
Steffen Jagenburg COMMUNICATIONS & OUTREACH
2016 saw the advent of FIA News, a quarterly newsletter outlining programming, exhibitions, alumni and team news, regular e-communications, and an increased presence on social media.
E-BLAST STATISTICS:
• FIA mailing list of 3494 subscribers • Roughly 50% open rate (Arts/Artists industry average is 23%) • List has grown steadily, increasing by 2000 subscribers since Oct 2014 • Goal is to add 1000 new subscribers per year
FACEBOOK:
• 4996 Page likes, with a steady growth of approximately 70 per month • Reach varies but the December 5 post launching the call for The Islands residency reached 9245 people. • Response time to comments/questions: 1 day
Alexander Ferko SELECTED MEDIA COVERAGE
Andy Campbell, “Critics’ Picks: Edgar Leciejewski, Inman Gallery.” Artforum, March 2016.
“Fogo Island Arts to Welcome 2017 Ars Viva Prize Winners.” The Telegram, June 2, 2016.
“News in Brief: Gallery 295 Closing, Fogo Island Arts Residency Launches, Canadian Artist Sues Damien Hirst.” Canadian Art, June 17, 2016.
Harri Welch, “The World’s Most Spectacular Art Islands.” AnOther Mag, July 25, 2016.
“Wilfrid Almendra ‘Light Boiled Like Liquid Soap’ at Fogo Island Arts, Fogo Island.” Mousse Magazine, August 12, 2016.
Joaquim Miro, “Top 15 Sustainable Initiatives in Newfoundland.” L’autre Couleur, August 3, 2016.
Heinrich Schwazer, “Herr Schafhausen, leben wir in einer Postdemokratie?” Die Neue Südtitoler Tageszeitung, August 14, 2016.
Linda Browne, “The Spirit of the North.” The Oak Nordic Journal, October 11, 2016.
Kate Sutton, “Artist in Residence.” Art Basel Miami Beach, December 2016.
Steffen Jagenburg ALUMNI & STAFF NEWS HIGHLIGHTS
FIA Strategic Director Nicolaus Schafhausen was invited to become the first International Juror of the 2016 Sobey Art Award, Canada’s pre-eminent award for contemporary Canadian artists under 40.
2016 artist-in-residence Jeremy Shaw received the 2016 Sobey Art Award. FIA alumni Mark Clintberg (2013-14) and Jerry Ropson (2013) were on the long list for the 2016 award. Also in residence in 2016, Abbas Akhavan was the recipient of the 2015 Sobey Art Award.
Artists-in-residence Nadia Belerique (2015) and Walter Scott (2016) were selected to participate in the 2016 Biennale de Montréal. Belerique also presented her work at the 11th Gwangju Biennale, The Eighth Climate (What does art do?).
FIA Director of Programs and Exhibitions Alexandra McIntosh was invited to participate in Periférica on April 14, a public seminar in Ponta Delgada, Azores that brought together eight speakers on the relationship between centre and periphery in contemporary artistic creation.
Kitty Scott, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) and a member of FIA’s Advisory Board is curating Geoffrey Farmer’s Canadian Pavilion exhibition at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017 and will co-curate the 2018 Liverpool Biennial.
Alexander Ferko FIA PATRONS
FIA PARTNERS FIA INSTITUTIONAL
Anonymous PARTNERS 2016 Maxine Granovsky Gluskin & Ira Gluskin Canadian Imperial Bank Of Commerce (CIBC) Vicki Heyman The Hnatyshyn Foundation Paul Marks Liza Mauer Nancy McCain Barbara & Dougal MacDonald Shabin & Nadir Mohamed Elisa Nuyten & David Dime Alison Rossiter Bill & Janet Tibbo Samara Walbohm & Joe Shlesinger
FIA FRIENDS
Sherri & Bill Appell Mark and Johanna Chehi Jeanne Donovan Fisher Catriona Jeffries Joanne & Rob Nelson Kathy & David Richardson Alexander Ferko Christina Steinbrecher-Pfandt & Stefan Pfandt Laurie Thomson & Andy Chisholm FOGO ISLAND ARTS ADVISORY BOARD
Zita Cobb Eleanor Dawson Paul Dean Fabrizio Gallanti Elisa Nuyten Silke Otto-Knapp Todd Saunders Nicolaus Schafhausen Kitty Scott Monika Szewczyk
FOGO ISLAND ARTS STAFF
Nicolaus Schafhausen STRATEGIC DIRECTOR
Alexandra McIntosh DIRECTOR OF PROGRAMS AND EXHIBITIONS
Iris Stünzi RESIDENCY PROGRAM COORDINATOR
Cyril Lynch RESIDENCY PROGRAM TECHNICIAN
Steffen Jagenburg Leander Schoenweger fogoislandarts.ca