Plaza Plays Place

Hannah Doucet, John Patterson, Rachael Thorleifson

Workshop: Saturday Feb. 1st 2020 1pm
Opening: Feb. 1st 2020, 8pm

Plaza Plays Place

What are the sounds of our periphery life? A lot can be learned from our lowest frequency register. Our neighbours one floor down moved around in a peculiar way, like they were re-organizing their apartment over and over again. At all times of day and night they would play throbbing music. Filtered through the floor, the sound would reach our apartment as a distorted mess of muffled voices and bass. The layouts of both apartments must be nearly identical. The structures designate the signals that flow out of our spaces. The architecture of a home presents the inhabitants with logical, or at least preferred, paths. The choreography of a place is sensed. The intuitive pathways wear down into artifacts of our living.

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Alongside their independent practices Hannah Doucet, John Patterson and Rachael Thorleifson have been collaborating in various forms since 2014, including artworks, writing, exhibitions, and co-organizing Blinkers Art and Project Space with their peer Kristina Banera.

Hannah Doucet is an artist, arts educator and organizer from Treaty 1 territory, living in Tkaronto/Toronto. She has exhibited across Canada, with recent exhibitions at Duplex (Vancouver), PLATFORM (Winnipeg), The New Gallery (Calgary) and Gallery 44 (Toronto). Doucet was the inaugural winner of the PLATFORM Photography award in 2017. She participated in a Banff Centre residency for emerging visual artists in 2017. Doucet’s artistic practice is deeply connected to her work as a community art educator and organizer. She believes that the importance of being an artist moves beyond the production of artworks to that of building communities that will create contexts for artists, ideas, and artistic work to thrive. Doucet was a co-founder of Flux Gallery (Wpg) in 2015. She is a co-founder and active co-director of Blinkers Art and Project Space. Doucet is currently an artist in residence with Power Youth at The Powerplant (TO) and an MFA candidate at York University.

John Patterson is a visual artist and writer living in Winnipeg, Manitoba on Treaty 1 territory. Combining intuitive narrative explorations with visual or text assets taken from the commercial sector, quick phone pics, interviews or critical texts, Patterson aims to reform understandings, memories, or translations of personal experiences. He holds a BFA from the University of Manitoba and has shown work in galleries and artist-run centres across Canada, including Turismo [2017, Le Studio at La Maison des Artistes, Winnipeg], in which he developed short-term histories of the geographical area surrounding the gallery through the construction of objects, texts and videos. He is a co-founder of Blinkers Art and Project Space, has written for Canadian Art Magazine and SCAN publication, and is an editor of Monotext, a tri-annual publication of writing and images.

Rachael Thorleifson is a visual artist and organizer based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Rachael’s work examines lived experience through consumerism and retail aesthetics. Through installation, sculpture, video, and painting she negotiates the passive presence of consumerism through an engagement with melodrama. Rachael has exhibited in galleries, artist-run centers and alternative spaces in Winnipeg and across Canada. She is the co-founder of BLINKERS Art and Project Space located at 520 Hargrave Street in Winnipeg. She received a BFA (Hons) from the University of Manitoba in 2015.