About The Show
The Thesis Award Show is a collaboration between ARTiculations, Graven Feather Studio and Akin Collective in support of graduating post secondary students. In early 2016 a call was sent out across the Province for applications in search of students demonstrating a coherent body of work unique in both concept and execution. Overwhelmed by the response, we extend a huge thank you to all of the applicants and congratulate this year's winners, Annunziata Morant & Jennifer Byrnes for their achievements. In addition to solo exhibitions, Morant & Byrnes each received studio credit with Akin Collective as part of the award.

Annunziata Morant
Forget Me Not
May 2nd-15th
Reception: Thursday May 12th, 7-9pm
Location: Graven Feather, 906 Queen Street West, Toronto, ON M6J 1G6

‘Remember Death’ warns the Latin phrase Memento Mori and so too are we elegantly reminded, by the recent work of artist Annunziata Morant. In Morant’s delicate and haunting series, we are forced to confront our own mortality through the memorialization of others. Functioning as physical, artistic reminders of our own eventual passing in fitting with the latin theory on the reflection of death, the ghostly victorian figures whisper that for us too, clocks will continue to tick. In these intimate, moving digital prints, acrylic seeps and colourfully trickles down the page (lifelines, tear streams perhaps) instigating discussion of personal histories and the transience of our lives. These works are as much mirrors for the viewer as they are windows onto lives already lived. Through an extensive and obsessive research process, Morant’s vast archive of Victorian mourning ephemera from the Victorian serves as an entry point for such contemplation and conversations in a contemporary setting. Nudging and prodding, the artist’s lovingly altered memorials remind us to be mindful- our day will also come.

Morant is a recent graduate of the Ontario College of Art And Design University BFA Program.

Jennifer Byrnes
Negative Forty
May 1st- 15th
Reception: Wednesday May 11th 7-9pm
Location: ARTiculations, 2928 Dundas St West, Toronto, ON, M6P 1Y8

Vast and powerful while detailed and delicate, Jennifer Byrnes series of prints’ offer varying perspectives and approaches to landscapes both natural and, perhaps, somewhere beyond. Through the laborious and historically expansive process of copper plate printmaking, the artist explores and expands upon the relationship between natural and geometric forms and ratio. Ink pools and holds in the sunken areas of Byrnes’ incised lines on the copper to create, curiously and conversely, scenes unbound by the limitations of reality or physical grounding. Mountains float and hover tied through delicate light lines. As worlds are inverted and mirrored in mythical, spiritual visions and scenes. Like the artist’s process itself, we are reminded about the delicate balance between opposites- lightness and weight. Telling of the artist’s interest in the concept of infinity, perhaps if something is both positive and negative concurrently it simply floats on forever.

Byrnes is a recent graduate of the University of Waterloo BFA Program.

Artist Talks by both artists will be held at ARTiculations on Sunday, May 15th at 3pm