Supercrawl Presents Sharp Words Book Fair Feb 25 at Bridgeworks
Sharp Words is coming on February 25, 2023 to Bridgeworks (200 Caroline St. N., Hamilton)! Join us at this free event to discover fabulous new books from innovative writers and publishers, to talk to authors and artists, and to celebrate writing in our city.
The book fair will be open from 11:00am to 6:00pm and will feature great independent presses, artists, comic book creators and writers along with talks about publishing, the writing life and more.
Vendors are slated to include 845 Press, Arc Poetry, Baseline Press, Between the Lines Press, Black Eye Books, Book*hug Press, Canthius, The City & the City Books, Gordon Hill Press, gritLIT, Hamilton Public Library, Hamilton Children’s Authors Collective (ft. Joyce Grant, Joanne Levy, Aimee Reid, and more), Dawn Hussy and Jane Enright, Lime Press, Mark Leslie Lefebvre, Mawenzi House, Ojistoh Publishing, Palimpsest Press, Pallor Publishing, Rose Garden Press, Serif of Nottingham, Simulacrum Press, Stelliform Press, The Shale Project, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, West Meadow Press, Wolsak and Wynn and more.
At 7:00pm, join us for our Literary Cabaret — an evening of live music where your favourite local authors will pick up the microphone… not to read, but to sing!
Sharp Words respects, supports and encourages the wearing of masks at our in-person events.
Supercrawl Presents Broken Social Scene March 17-19 at Bridgeworks
BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE
You Forgot It In People 20th Anniversary Tour
Sunday March 19, 2023 – with special guests Zoon – GET TICKETS
Bridgeworks (200 Caroline St. N., Hamilton)
GA LIC/AA • $50 (+SC/HST) advance
Supercrawl Unveils New Public Art for 2021-2022
Supercrawl is pleased to announce the unveiling of two large-scale public works of art now on display in downtown Hamilton. On October 28, 2021, Nitewaké:non, a work by artist Melissa General, was installed on the south facade of 118 James Street North. Only a few steps away, Mary Anne Barkhouse‘s Dominion was installed in a new location, on the south facade of 91 James Street North, on November 17, 2021. Each artwork, while distinct and complex, also relates to each other by the themes they address, including: relationships to each other, family, home and community, the land, water, plants, and the natural world, as well as history, identity, and language honouring memory inherently rooted in a place — empire, colonialism, and survival.
The artworks are presented as part of Supercrawl’s 2021 Visual & Public Art programming and will be on display for a year. Nitewaké:non is sponsored by the McMaster Museum of Art (MMA) and is presented in collaboration with the enawendewin/relationships project at the MMA, curated by William Kingfisher. Considering gardens as sites of learning and creation, enawendewin/relationships brings together contemporary artists who integrate Indigenous knowledge with practical concerns in the everyday. The multidisciplinary project is informed by themes including growing food as sovereignty, methods for contemporary living, and how our local is affected by global concerns. enawendewin/relationships is on view at the MMA and across sites in Hamilton through November 28, 2021. For more information, click here.
Detail of Nitewaké:non; image courtesy of the artist
Melissa General
Nitewaké:non, 2014, chromogenic print
Artist Statement: Nitewaké:non, “the place where I come from,” examines my relationship to land by exploring the history in my home, Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. It is through this exploration on and with the land that I attempt to connect with and honour the memory inherently rooted in Six Nations Territory.
Biography: Melissa General is a Mohawk artist from Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. She is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design and received a Masters of Fine Arts degree from York University. She is a multidisciplinary artist working in photography, audio, video and installation. Her practice is focused on her home territory of Six Nations and the concepts of memory, language, and land. Her artwork has been exhibited at the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba, Lamont Gallery, Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Harbourfront Centre, Stride Gallery, Gallery 101, Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography and has been included in the 2016 Contemporary Native Art Biennial in Montréal. She is a Hnatyshyn Foundation REVEAL – Indigenous Art Award laureate and was named as the 2018 Ontario Arts Council Indigenous Arts Award Emerging Artist Laureate. Melissa is a recipient of a 2021 Artist Prize from Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts.
Nitewaké:non was part of the MAWA-produced Resilience Project.
Image courtesy of the artist
Mary Anne Barkhouse
Dominion, 2011, inkjet print on Somerset paper
Artist Statement: Opening lines from the Book of Genesis set the stage for millenniums’ worth of misguided notions around authority by presuming, as it does, to offer humanity sweeping powers over everything that soars, scuttles, swims, slithers, climbs, gallops, hops, springs, ambles, digs, jumps, flutters or trots. Regardless, the numerous creatures found in air and sea, forest and fen, carry on. They are not oblivious to our actions, but they continue… despite our actions. Salvation, for the undomesticated, comes not through something magically bestowed by rhetorical fiction or fairy dust, but by their own agency. And Nature’s response to the passage from the Book of Genesis? ” … as if.”
Biography: Mary Anne Barkhouse was born in Vancouver, BC but has strong ties to both coasts as her mother is from the Nimpkish band, Kwakiutl First Nation of Alert Bay, BC and her father is of German and British descent from Nova Scotia. She is a descendant of a long line of internationally recognized Northwest Coast artists that includes Ellen Neel, Mungo Martin and Charlie James. She graduated with Honours from the Ontario College of Art in Toronto and has exhibited widely across Canada and the United States. As a result of personal and family experience with land and water stewardship, Barkhouse’s work examines ecological concerns and intersections of culture through the use of animal imagery. Inspired by issues surrounding empire and survival, Barkhouse creates installations that evoke consideration of the self as a response to history and environment. A member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, Barkhouse’s work can be found in numerous collections such as the National Gallery of Canada, Remai Modern in Saskatoon and the Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta. In addition she has public art installations in many cities across Canada, most recently in ᐄᓃᐤ (ÎNÎW) River Lot 11∞ Indigenous Art Park (Edmonton, AB), the Canadian Museum of History (Gatineau, QC), and Carleton University (Ottawa, ON). Barkhouse currently resides in the Haliburton Highlands of Ontario. maryannebarkhouse.ca
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ABOUT SUPERCRAWL
A not-for-profit arts organization situated within the traditional territories of the Erie, Chonnonton (Neutral), Wendat, Mississauga, and Haudenosaunee nations, Supercrawl is committed to honouring, showcasing and celebrating all varieties of creative work. Positioning local and emerging artists alongside significant provincial, national and international peers, the festival fosters and promotes arts and culture as well as the myriad benefits they provide.
Presented by TD Bank Group (TD) as part of the TD Ready Commitment to amplify diverse voices, Supercrawl is Hamilton’s premier multi-arts festival, fusing new and independent music with art installations, fashion, performance, literature, theatre, and artisanal craft. Supercrawl’s diverse multi-disciplinary program of sound, performance, visual and media arts is staged along a pedestrian-only creative corridor in the heart of downtown.
Since 2010, Supercrawl’s Visual Arts programming has showcased upwards of 100 artists and featured visual art installations in a variety of media. Supercrawl provides opportunities to local, regional and national artists and performers at both early and established stages of their practices. An annual call for submissions is issued to invite proposals from artists working in a variety of media, and art-lovers will also find roughly two dozen gallery spaces and artists’ studios in and around Supercrawl’s neighbourhood.
Supercrawl was shortlisted for a 2019 Ontario Tourism Award of Excellence for Tourism Event of the Year and 2017 Canadian Tourism Award for Event of the Year. The festival received the 2015 Ontario Tourism Award of Excellence for Tourism Event of the Year, and has been recognized as one of Festival and Events Ontario’s Top 100 Festivals/Events for six consecutive years (2015-2020). Supercrawl is a member organization of the Major International Festivals and Events Network of Ontario, the Canadian Music Live Association, and Festivals and Events Ontario.
Supercrawl Unveils New Public Artwork for 2020-2021
Supercrawl celebrates the arrival of a bold new large-scale work of visual art in downtown Hamilton. On Friday, October 23, installation teams mounted Shellie Zhang’s striking work To What Do We Owe This Honour? on the south facade of 118 James Street North.
The artwork is curated by McMaster Museum of Art and sponsored by both the McMaster Museum of Art and the Downtown Hamilton BIA.
Presented by TD Bank Group (TD) as part of the TD Ready Commitment to amplify diverse voices, Supercrawl is Hamilton’s premier multi-arts festival, fusing new and independent music with art installations, fashion, performance, literature, theatre, and artisanal craft. Supercrawl’s diverse multi-disciplinary program of sound, performance, visual and media arts is staged along a pedestrian-only creative corridor in the heart of downtown.
Zhang’s artwork is the sixth long-term installation that the festival has showcased at this site, where it will live as a prominent visual presence over James Street North for an entire year. It succeeds Supercrawl’s 2019 installation, Hiba Abdallah’s text-based work In Retrospect, whose declarative message (EVERYTHING IS MUCH MORE CONNECTED THAN WE THINK) anticipated our current moment, a time when links between global and local concerns are undeniable.
Shellie Zhang’s To What Do We Owe This Honour? enlarges a collection of miniature totemic objects against a backdrop of a sky to create a connection between the intimate setting of one’s home with the shared realm of public space. The project prompts reflection for the objects we surround ourselves with and the monuments we adorn our cities with, questioning, what symbols reflect our current collective values, whose legacies are granted permanence, and which histories are given a pedestal.
Zhang (born 1991 in Beijing, China) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Tkaronto/Toronto, Ontario. By uniting both past and present iconography with the techniques of mass communication, language and sign, Zhang’s work deconstructs notions of tradition, gender, the diaspora, and popular culture while calling attention to these subjects in the context and construction of a multicultural society. She is interested in exploring how integration, diversity and assimilation is implemented and negotiated, how this relates to lived experiences, how culture is learned, relearned and sustained, and how things are remembered and preserved.
Zhang has exhibited at venues including WORKJAM (Beijing, CN), Asian Art Initiative (Philadelphia, PA) and Gallery 44 (Toronto, ON). She is a recipient of grants such as the Toronto Arts Council’s Visual Projects grant, the Ontario Arts Council’s Visual Artists Creation Grant and the Canada Council’s Project Grant to Visual Artists. In 2017, she was Artist-in-Residence at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Her work has been published in Canadian Art, the Toronto Star, Blackflash Magazine, CBC Arts, and C Magazine, and she is a member of EMILIA-AMALIA, a feminist reading and writing group. The artist’s recent and upcoming projects include exhibitions at Artspace (Peterborough, ON), Patel Gallery (Toronto, ON), AKA Artist-Run (Saskatoon, SK) and the Anchorage Museum (Anchorage, AK).
A not-for-profit arts organization situated within the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Haudenosaunee nations, Supercrawl is committed to honouring, showcasing and celebrating all varieties of creative work. Positioning local and emerging artists alongside significant provincial, national and international peers, the festival fosters and promotes arts and culture as well as the myriad benefits they provide.
Since 2010, Supercrawl’s Visual Arts programming has showcased upwards of 100 artists and featured visual art installations in a variety of media. Supercrawl provides opportunities to local, regional and national artists and performers at both early and established stages of their practices. An annual call for submissions is issued to invite proposals from artists working in a variety of media, and art-lovers will also find around two dozen gallery spaces and artists’ studios in and around Supercrawl’s neighbourhood.
Supercrawl was shortlisted for a 2019 Ontario Tourism Award of Excellence for Tourism Event of the Year and 2017 Canadian Tourism Award for Event of the Year. The festival received the 2015 Ontario Tourism Award of Excellence for Tourism Event of the Year, and has been recognized as one of Festival and Events Ontario’s Top 100 Festivals/Events for six consecutive years (2015-2020). Supercrawl is a member organization of the Major International Festivals and Events Network of Ontario, the Canadian Music Live Association, and Festivals and Events Ontario.
In June, Supercrawl festival organizers announced that they would be re-scoping event programming in response to pandemic-related public health considerations. The massive free event, which drew more than 250,000 fans in 2019, has since undertaken a range of special events, including the ticketed Skytop Concert Series staged atop the York Boulevard Parkade in September and announced a free live performance series at Bridgeworks (200 Caroline St. N., Hamilton) that will showcase various artistic disciplines through the end of 2020.