ArtsCourt at the O.A.G.
The vast space of winding hallways leads to a black-box room capable of holding as many works as people and more.
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For more click here.
EXHIBITIONS ON LOCATION
07/02/2024 - 17/02/2024
Undercurrents
Szturm found the opening take her away just like a fast-running tow; speeches, music, and conferences with fellow artists engaged her in an intersection of spheres between visual (painting, video, sculpture) and physical (theatre). She was lucky to receive entrance to the Kimiko show and thoroughly enjoyed the interdisciplinary exhibition.
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Check out the curator Sarah Jasmine Hodgson.
For more on the Fringe festival check out their Instagram or website.
Photo credits to Melody Maloney.
Definitely Superior Art Gallery
This upgraded cinema presents refreshed work that excites the budding art scene in Thunder Bay.
For more click here.
EXHIBITIONS ON LOCATION
08/11/2024-11/01/2025
Interconnectedness
Szturm's Domestic Ritual and Bugging oil works both entered into the interconnected juried show with enthusiasm.
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Happy to be welcomed again in this grassroots gallery, the artist had presented the following written statement:
Interconnectedness relates to my current art practice as I am always reading, intaking my environment, and taking note of specific observations that resonate with me on a critical level. These sources of inspiration are stewed in, often both transfigured and transmogrified into a sketch that I find myself determined to conjure and share in whatever form is fitting. These artworks stick with viewers longer, unafraid to capture attention through their mutated appearances. It seems current contemporary artwork is churned from one’s surrounding, interconnected inextricably to art history and beyond, but the beautiful discoveries and commentaries that emerge make galleries a rich space for critical thinking, as they should be.
01/09/2023-07/10/2023
Elucidate
Visitors would meet Szturm's Domestic clown (Feb. 2023) when first walking into the show on opening night, basked in natural light:
A little lost within and without a centre.
This work begins in the room as the artist releases her frustrations with her supposed role in traditional social perceptions; baking and sewing, florals, beauty, comfort, and the household are beloved, thought the notion that it is only right as a woman she love them breaks her heart. That because she is x she must perform/believe/carry-out y closes her in this empty yet full dorm she retires to at the end of one day. Perhaps, internally, womanhood and selfhood conflict.
Szturm uncovers her messy, dispiriting mind and illuminates the rock-and-the-hard-place many female-identifying (or feminine-presenting) people face in a society that clowns on their likes and pressures ways of living up their rear-ends based on the F on their birth certificate. Elucidation becomes relevant to understand the gender-role system has been damaged for a long time, and the only way out is to throw it away entirely: taking oneself one step at a time from the place of the self over the idea of what the self should be doing. This concept bleeds into her cluttered oil paintings, her contemporary art – as there are so many manners of contemporary art out there, why not focus that which she knows best – is only supported by its underlying truths to be revealed.
Szturm's bad beekeeper (Apr. 2023) was also accepted for display, as she wrote:
The hive is closing in, I don’t know what I did to make them angry.
This work places the artist in a discomforting role as she disregards her surroundings, one where scattered household objects plaque the land, and she (poorly dressed for the outdoors, resembling a wasp nest more than anything, with solely a Ziplock bag for facial protection) regards a bee after pinning another. Multiple close in on her for this mistake in what it means to “keep” things. She, while the situation unfolds, perhaps she is beginning to discover that entomology requires far more experience than she expected.
Szturm clarifies that some things we love truly are better off alone, for the safety of both parties, and that it can be better for everyone’s health to not force some things that (while they may draw interest) may not be meant to be(e). Elucidation becomes relevant to relationships of any kind, whether with partners or big ideas, as one cannot be adequately fostered without the proper time and effort. This is similar to Szturm’s contemporary practice, as in her finished works clarity only comes to viewers with close study.
The artist was enthused with her success in her first paid and juried showcase.
Gallery 115
This student- and professor-ran gallery offers a space for artists all over Ottawa to exhibit.
For more click here.
EXHIBITIONS ON LOCATION
24/11/2023-07/12-2023
Planting Roses In January
Szturm took a foray into curating with her ART4119 course run by Celina Jeffery. Exploring The Garden, inspired by Derek Jarman's Modern Nature, she fell foremostly for the contemplative space it could become.
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The artist took on a leadership role in curatorial research, helping write a large section of the curatorial essay and catalogue, creating and refining goals as the exhibition progressed, helping select artists, wrote letters and contracts, aided in fundraising, made prints with the exhibition's logo on leaves to align with the ecologically-positive outlook the show had, and spoke during the Vernissage.
Inspired by Derek Jarman’s Modern Nature (1989), Planting Roses in January invites audiences to think about what the garden means to them. Jarman’s own garden was in a location where it should not have been possible for plants to grow, yet, against all odds, it flourished with flora and fauna of all kinds. When confronted with the fears and uncertainties surrounding a bleak future, which included his own ill health and the wellbeing of the planet, Jarman created the possibility of new futures.
Just as a garden can take many forms, Planting Roses in January brings together a diverse collection of artworks from Yekta Çetinkaya, Saanya Chopra, Sophie El-Assaad, Kai Holub, Sarah Hughes, Lou Koch, Susan June Robertson-Baranick, Marguerite Morin, Kalli Vath, and Annika Walsh.
The artists of this show, curated by the team of ART 4119, create their own garden and examine what it means to them in terms of personal identity and memory, whether that be through the lens of culture, Queer ecology, or eco-feminism. Like Jarman’s own garden, Planting Roses in January hopes to highlight the themes of the artists, bringing into existence a safe, communal space where audiences can reflect upon their own shared experiences, encouraging a profound bond between humans through nature.
With consideration of the ongoing eco-crises, the exhibition incorporates sustainable practices through the use of organic materials in gallery labels and inks. With an emphasis on personal identity and the never-ending possibilities of an environmental future filled with optimism, Planting Roses in January creates a space that asks its viewers: what does the garden mean to you?
- PRIJ Walltext
“Planted… a selection of old roses… Rosa mundi, rose of the world.”
Derek Jarman, “Modern Nature” (4)
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Check out the class's Instagram.
27/09/2023-09/10/2023
INK-UP
The artist's walltext and statement on this exciting workshop/exhibition combination are as follows:
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Ink up!
A Printmaking Workshop & Showcase / Un atelier de gravure et une exposition
Erin Szturm is a student of the Fine Arts who aims to use her printmaking skills in Ink up! A Printmaking Workshop & Showcase. She explores the Linocut manner of printing, well known but at times forgotten, as she takes on a professorial role aiming to teach participants on the “Opening night” or “Vernissage” how to make, print, and sign their own. Using the communication and critiquing skills perfected during her undergrad, paired with a hands-on approach to learning, she’s filled the room with handmade art created by individuals, well-known and newly acquainted, to the artist.
She recognizes that the arts community thrives on this hands-on approach; this is what keeps the arts full of life, and life full of artists.
Please take in this show of learning.
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The artist Erin Szturm (she/her) is going into her fourth year of the UOttawa BFA program (specializing in painting/drawing). Erin often combines rural scenes with more urban and personalized contexts as she herself was uprooted from Northern Ontario and her hometown of Thunder Bay - where she observed the wilds of forestry, farming, and freshwater - to the political-cultural hub that is Ottawa, this allowing her to traverse complex gallery systems that she had never been exposed to before; in her work one can see shivering anxieties, dreamlike spaces, liminal places, the uncanny and the beloved combined.
Here she takes a trade dear friends taught her and hopes to share such skills with the community in this city. Lino-cutting for years now, she hopes the show presents the array of diverse minds and energizes the want to develop new ways of old manners of making.
Regardless of ever changing and developing inspirations, Szturm will adapt and evolve evermore in hopes to one day support herself with the art she loves, show in galleries, illustrate her own narratives like those that entertain and inspire her, and teach others what skills she has so they may live beyond her.
The artist was thrilled for the opportunity to not only propose, prepare, run an adult workshop for the first time, curate, install, and take down a workshop/exhibition in an area that was foreign to her a few years ago, but showcase the work made by many hands in a community-led group exhibition.
15/02/2023-27/02/2023
Climates - Mixtures - Climatiques
This curatorial project by Sarah Rooney included artworks by Saanya Chopra, Ferhat Demirel, Yunjia Hu, Maxime Legault, Emily Matheson, Madeleine Merritt, and Erin Szturm
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deeper into the forest (April 2022) was selected to be displayed aside a handful of contemporaries. The opening and opportunity was one met with thanks and excitement by Szturm as she socialized with those interested in her piece and others. The artist was happy to converse and join in debates between palettes, setting, motifs, intention, or meaning within her own work and others. The night breathed fresh air and inspiration into her mind, hands, and lungs.
31/10/2022-4/11/2022
Based on a True Story
With Chris Glabb, Szturm began brainstorming early in the summer (prior to the announcement of submissions opening) on the topic of horror movies that captivated them both. Such a topic is rich in varied themes, tropes, topical issues, and cinematic visuals they could pull focus on and utilize to elevate their work. Ideation began as they planned extensively on a shared doc from two different cities, laboured on new works from sketch to completion, made posters, marketed, created essays, and printed labels to pair with their personally installed bilingual show. Though a smaller presentation with about five works put forth by each artist, it was an intensive product of thought and care by the pair.
The pair's statement on their show is as follows:
Chris Glabb and Erin Szturm are two students of the Fine Arts who are using their individual skills as a collective in Based on a True Story; here they will explore the popular horror genre and inquire into the subject itself, mainly the recurring flaws all too common in a major amount of these movies. Where Chris explores his own identity through the representation of gender and race, Erin observes and picks apart the troubling thread of voyeurism aimed at women, along with a seeming thirst for either control over or torture of their bodies in tired and discomforting detail. These themes hidden in what is supposed to be entertainment seem to not only disturb and offend, but parody or predate/align to real societal issues from behind the scenes to contemporary news. While the two artists agree there is much experimentation in the genre’s past that created beloved classics and paved ways for ingenuity in practical effects, visual framing, and creative narratives as modern masterpieces (e.g. Jordon Peele’s or Ari Aster’s films) delve into issues of class differences, the topic of race, and mental health issues in strikingly poignant and pointed manners. The two believe horror’s past needs to be addressed for its issues but can be used in it of itself as a popular and inventive genre with important talents and common identifiers to speak about widespread issues occurring today.
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Check out Chris Glabb's work on his website or their Instagram.
SAW Club
The club/gallery space offered a relaxed attitude for its patrons to experience music, art, and food altogether.
For more click here.
EXHIBITIONS ON LOCATION
23/04/2023-24/04/2023
SCIART
Converging Science and Fine Art in a show put on by Neuroscience and Sci-Art Professor Cristian Zaelzer, the artist thought of Mary Kelly and her Post-Partum Document (1973-79); interdisciplinarity is something Szturm hopes to delve into further.
Erin Szturm’s oil-painted-series Balanced Evolution According to the Human Hand presents skewed frogs in a 360-display simulating a pop-up laboratory with specimens pinned for study and dissection. Based on Burraco and Orizaola’s paper discussing Chernobyl’s radioactive-effect on Eastern Tree Frogs (selective evolution: those biologically protected against damage due to black pigmentation survived/bred, darkening subsequent generations), Erin went from science-fiction thumbnails (illuminating human/animal attempts to adapt to dystopian worlds) to science-reality, assuring formative affect/effect on viewers. Researching radiation consequences (tumour-formation) and other evolutions (polycephaly, aka, two-headedness), the artist decidedly used Eastern Tree Frogs and scientific study (disruption/pithing); sketching outcomes of past-to-future human-incited nuclear disasters, she ultimately painted four instances of their known-and-projected evolutions. Erin’s Neuroscience and Sci-Art course informed materiality/style (oils’ sublime/affecting realistic-finish bolstered by rich chiaroscuro and tactile panels/pins) and incited the work’s metaphoric inspiration (likening evolution to sublime paintings recording Kafka’s Metamorphosis’s awful/enwrapping transformations). Erin hopes to churn internal conflict as viewers’ want to touch/explore the attracting subjects (formally/symbolically) yet respect/fear the sterile setting as they wonder where evolution starts/ends and who/what caused this scene. This aims for enthrallment, confusion, and somberness stimulating viewers’ thoughts on their relationships-to and effects-on nature, leading to an active fallout fighting-for/seeking-less destructive lives.
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Burraco, Pablo, and German Orizaola. “Ionizing radiation and melanism in Chornobyl tree frogs.” Evolutionary Applications, vol. 15, no. 9, 2022, pp. 1469-1479. Wiley Online Library, https://doi.org/10.1111/eva.13476.
Kafka, Franz. Metamorphosis. London, Arcturus Publishing Limited, 2022, pp. 7-95. Print.
For more on Cristian Zaelzer click here.
For more on the exhibition and the Convergence Initiative that enabled this enmeshment of science and art click here.
17/03/2022
Astro
The artist stood in the small club in Ottawa, affording a space to show her work for the first time. She submitted several works and her diptych Intersection (left - right) (Feb. 2022) was ultimately accepted.
Her experience was one of excitement as the atmosphere thrummed with music, light, art, and drinks for inquisitive students, professors, and those thriving off of arts of all kind.
Wallspace Gallery
A small-but-mighty gallery in Ottawa that has been gaining traction offering emerging and established artists a place to exhibit and sell their work.
For more click here.
EXHIBITIONS ON LOCATION
13/08/2024-27/08/2024
Wallspace Award
Group Show:
Wall Space X uOttawa
New Dimensions 2024
In an exciting opportunity provided by Szturm's exceptional work in Means of Abundance, the artist and several of her contemporaries were awarded with some of their first experiences being showcased in a commercial gallery.
100 Laurier on the UOttawa Campus
A building of old bones masked by new stone that facilitates contemporary arts learning and the lifecycle that is the graduation exhibition.
EXHIBITIONS ON LOCATION
23/04/2024 - 28/04/2024
Means of Abundance
Szturm seized many opportunities with this grad exhibit, becoming quite prolific in her process over the 2023-24 year and completing several large-scale, multi-panel pieces to celebrate the end of her undergraduate career. Set in 114 with two other artists, Elie Crighton and Kristen Hinojos, the trio closed in on the Home; what it means, how it is embodied, who/what exists there, why it is of importance were teased apart when visitors rounded their area.
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Moreover, Szturm dabbled in curation, install, takedown, writing and selling exhibition catalogs (read here), forming and presenting speeches at the MoA Vernissage (watch here), organizing and running tours throughout not only the week-long show run, but the whole year. Her last year of her BFA is self described as a "comprehensive slice of life in any Arts and Culture sector."
23/03/2024
Open House Spotlight
on Szturm:
"The rat's nest in my
mind when I think of
my female ancestors"
As a volunteer Fine Artist, speaker, and installation artist for the 2024 Open House at the University of Ottawa, Szturm welcomed an unfinished room roughed up by previous MFA students to seize the idea that art can appear anywhere and occur under any conditions. She was inspired by women of myth, religion, and folktale and took up reclaiming their space in nature her own way. The room is an ode to Creator(s), those who got the short end of life/history due to factors outside of their control, and one's mystical connection to the earth many attempt to sidestep.
