Morgan Melenka
Morgan Melenka is a visual artist from amiskwacîwâskahikan who has recently relocated to Mohkinstsis (Calgary). She engages with architecture to discuss how artifice functions in our built world, working between sculpture, installation, and printmaking through a constellation of materials that emphasize the veneer, including digitally printed fabric, vinyl, paper, ceramic tiles, mirror, and Formica. In 2021, Melenka exhibited at the Art Gallery of Alberta, the Southern Art Gallery of Alberta, and Plumb Gallery in Toronto. Her work has been exhibited across Canada and in the U.S, including New York, Nebraska, and Tennessee. She holds a MFA from NSCAD University and this past summer she began work as a scenic painter for film and thinks it’s pretty cool to learn all the tricks of creating fabricated reality for the screen.
PUBLIC ART: Billboard on Shaw by Morgan Melenka and Megan Gnanasihamany
October 6, 2022 - November 26, 2022Billboard on Shaw presented by Critical Distance, featuring Burtynsky Suite by Morgan Melenka and Megan Gnanasihamany, 2022.
Burtynsky Suite is composed of four reproductions of Carrara Marble Quarries, Cava di Calagrande #2 by the Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky. The reproductions range in degrees of abstraction, but each, unlike the seemingly cool distance of the original photograph, contain the rough edges of the process of translation and the clear marks of a subjective artistic rendering.
Find out moreThe Equivalence of Alloyed Gold
October 6, 2022 - November 26, 2022Featuring works by Stephanie E Creaghan, Andy Slater, Gillian Dykeman, Chandra Melting Tallow, Ashna Jacob, Aislinn Thomas, Anne Macmillan, Tamyka Bullen, and Dayna Danger
Curated by Megan Gnanasihamany and Morgan Melenka
On view: October 6 – November 26, 2022
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 6th, 7 to 9 pm
The making of art history is a process of translation. It flattens and unfolds through digital interfaces and methodologies of internet conservation, allowing exhibitions to spread through a temporal daisy chain of image, text, catalog, and critique. This chain of distillation — from material art object or experience to description and flat image—disseminates cultural themes, concepts, and conclusions across artistic landscapes, allowing for particular figures, galleries, and publications to become authoritative texts on contemporary work. Taking the 2018 Art Gallery of Ontario exhibition Anthropocene as its starting point, The Equivalence of Alloyed Gold is a year-long experimental commissioning and exhibition process hosted by Critical Distance Centre for Curators (CDCC) incorporating ideas of communication and sensory translation.
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