Chelsea Ryan: be(hold)-ing
Chelsea Ryan combines diaristic practices with digital technologies to record the still, transient, and enduring moments she notices inside and around her home.
Focusing on the background noise of everyday life, she looks for and amplifies the tensions between the quotidian and the profound, collapsing the distance between what is overlooked and what is considered monumental. Incorporating single-shot video, projection, diary entries and radio static, her work explores the relationship between attention and distraction and how these cognitive activities can be captured and represented. The exhibition’s title speaks to the simultaneity of the experiences involved in such observation – of “being,” “holding,” and “beholding.” Pairing moving images with ambient sound, the artist creates a space that asks viewers to consider their awareness of time and distraction in a society in which their attention is a valuable currency.
Image detail: Chelsea Ryan, the sun blinds me as I sit here (detail of still), 2023, looped digital video, 2:09 mins. Courtesy of the artist.
This exhibition represents the culmination of two years of focused work in the University of Guelph’s Master of Fine Arts program. The Art Gallery of Guelph’s annual exhibitions of graduating MFA students is presented in conjunction with the School of Fine Art and Music at the University of Guelph.
About the artist
Chelsea Ryan
Chelsea Ryan is a candidate for the MFA in Studio Art at the University of Guelph. Originally from Oakville/Treaty 13A territory she holds an Honours BA in Art and Art History from the University of Toronto and an Advanced Diploma from Sheridan College, where she received the Graduating Student Art Award. Ryan has exhibited across Ontario at the Blackwood Gallery, Boarding House Gallery, Georgian College, Orillia Museum of Art and Art History, Red Head Gallery, University of Toronto Arts Centre, and Visual Arts Mississauga.
View More Exhibitions
exhibition
January 18.2024 / April 21.2024
The Unsettlements is a series of projects initiated by JD Pluecker in 2018 that delve into sites of memory, silence, and ancestry, particularly in Houston and across what is now called Texas
exhibition
Tim Pitsiulak
January 18.2024 / May 12.2024
Tim Pitsiulak’s work offers profound insight into not just life in the North, but the ever-evolving impacts of colonization, particularly the effects of climate change and environmental exploitation.
exhibition
September 21.2023 / December 30.2023
This group exhibition that explores various rituals related to the everyday and the natural environment through art by those who hold cultural ties to the Caribbean.
exhibition
September 14.2023 / December 17.2023
The Third Scenario examines the act of art making through hyphenated conditions and what it means to create while being Asian and living in Canada.
exhibition
September 14.2023 / December 17.2023
This exhibition of works by Manitoulin Island-based artist Carl Beam probes the interstices of history, politics, science, materiality, and Indigeneity.
exhibition
September 14.2023 / December 17.2023
Seeing the Land, Feeling the Sea presents landscapes by Canadian artist Takao Tanabe from AGG’s permanent collection.
exhibition
July 14.2023 / September 3.2023
This exhibition highlights Grande’s distinct visual lexicon culled from her experiences as well as cultural sources – symbolic references that coalesce in surreal, painterly compositions.
exhibition
May 25.2023 / September 10.2023
Incorporating elements of local lore as well as the evolving built landscape, Norlen’s large-scale drawings explore the effects of time and the play of memory and imagination that results.