The Juried Art Show, in its 42nd year takes over the Zavitz Gallery
By: Daniel Bitonti
Sure you have your weekly showings at Zavitz. Sure you have Mac-Stew and Alma Gallery to visit work from local and not-so-local artists.
But for a University of Guelph student-artist, no event is more important than the Juried Art Show, this year celebrating its 42nd installment.
Taking place on Mar. 19 and 20, undergraduate student art will monopolize every room, corridor and stairwell in Zavitz Hall. The yearly student run exhibition has become the largest of its kind in Ontario, featuring, exclusively the artwork of undergraduate students.
With a respected panel of jurors deciding the top ten top prizes (first prize is a cool $1000) and 20 honorable mentions, the Juried Art Show is certainly about competition. This year, organizers expect close to 200 submissions. And with no categories, the best paintings, sculptures and performance pieces will compete together.
According to Miles Stemp and Darryn Doull, this year’s curators, it’s the degree of student involvement that makes the show different from any other.
“It’s the shear scale of it all, the fact that it is entirely student instigated,” said Doull. “The whole process starts with the students, it’s for the students and everyone comes together around the students.”
It’s the responsibility of both Stemp and Doull to select jurors and organize submissions. This year’s annual silent auction takes place tonight at Atmosphere at 8pm, featuring the pieces of respected names in the art community, including the works of several professors from the School of Fine Art and Music. All work for the auction was donated.
But organizers say the Juried Art Show has as much to do with exposure as competition, providing aspiring professionals with a venue to display their work to the wider artistic community.
“We get contemporary Canadian artists, writers and critics from Toronto and the surrounding area because of the connections we have,” said Stemp, still not ready to reveal this year’s respected panel of jurors.
“It’s sort of fortifying what the University of Guelph has started to forge with Toronto. I think that is really a key thing,” added Doull. “As far as the jury goes, that is one of the unique things that they are totally separate from the university … that is part of the value of the experience. People get a chance to know someone in the art world. We bring in a respected person from Toronto and they come and spend the day with us.”
Last year’s jurors included Corwyn Lund, a sculptor from Toronto, Erin Stump, a curator who works with Board of Directors gallery in Toronto, and Ivan Jurakic, a U of G Studio grad and the curator of the Cambridge Gallery.
Both Stemp and Doull said that Univeristy of Guelph grads are now becoming an extremely hot commodity in the Toronto art community. Members of the “Guelph Mafia” as they are known in Toronto, have seen their work displayed in top galleries in the city. Doull thinks over half the galleries in Toronto have someone from Guelph working in them.
Along with the top ten prizes as well as the 20 honorable mentions selected by the jury, each discipline in the studio art department will award it’s own prizes as well. The Juried Art Show is free and open to the public.
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