Public Space

Image credit: Nicolas Fleming, Public Space, installation view, 2021.

What does it mean for a gallery to create community-focused programs that respond to and inquire about art’s role as public engagement? The Visual Arts Centre of Clarington (VAC) is pleased to present Public Space, a year-long transforming project founded on artistic and cultural collaboration. Over 2021, four artists will facilitate collaboration-based participatory and community-focused programming for underserved Durham Region groups and non-profit organizations. Public Space represents a new way that artists, community, and galleries can work together for inclusive experiences that specifically serve multiplistic publics. 

Co-existing as artistic, cultural, and community-collaborations, each artist will transform the VAC Loft Gallery through ongoing architectural interventions that will facilitate cooperative skill-sharing workshops, group discussions, and educational opportunities for local equity-seeking groups. Working with a number of local community non-profit organizations, Artist Nicolas Fleming will collaborate with Sahar Te, Josh Vettivelu and Waard Ward to help design and produce site and project-specific environments for community-activated events. Featuring both individual and collaboratively created artworks, each project’s exhibition/participatory needs (display structures, furniture, physical environments) will be co-designed with Fleming and produced with his signature construction material practice. Fleming will recycle, adapt, and re-organize select components for each subsequent installation to feature each artist’s site-specific artwork. By featuring an evolving but malleable exhibition model, Public Space marks a radical new shift towards experimental iterative exhibition-making within VAC programming.

Artist biography:

Nicolas Fleming’s cross-disciplinary artistic practice spans over 15 years. He completed an MFA in Visual and Media Arts at Université du Québec à Montréal in 2007. Since 2006, Fleming has presented numerous solo exhibitions across Quebec, notably at UQAM Gallery, McClure Gallery, AXENÉO7, Galerie Trois Points, L’Oeil de poisson, Maison des Arts de Laval, Centre CLARK, Centre Plein sud, as well as at ISE Cultural Foundation (New York, NY) and Harcourt House (Edmonton, AB). He attended artistic residencies in 2017 at Rupert (Vilnius, Lithuania) and in 2018 at Sculpture Space (Utica, NY). Since 2018, Fleming has been blurring the definitions of artist, art installer, art director and curator and contributed in putting together projects resulting group shows at Evans Contemporary (Peterborough), Koffler Centre for the Arts (Toronto), Art Gallery of Burlington (Burlington) and Musée d’art de Joliette (Joliette).