| Summer Residency, Film Screening, Workshop, Performance, O2 Exhibition + more Donate! Support your artist-run centre  RESIDENCYSummer Residency𝕋𝕙𝕣𝕖𝕖 𝕎𝕒𝕪 𝕄𝕚𝕣𝕣𝕠𝕣Daniel Barrow, Glenn Gear, Paige Gratland July 3, 2026 – August 7, 2026 Open Studio events Saturday, July 18, 2026, from 1:00 – 3:00pm > Film screening at 2:00pm Saturday, August 1, 2026, from 1:00 – 3:00pm Workshop Paper Doll Poems workshop with Daniel Barrow Wednesday, July 29, 2026, at 6:00pm Registration required Performance Winnipeg Babysitter (2005-2023) Written, Directed & Performed by Daniel Barrow Saturday, August 1, 2026, at 7:00pm 90 minutes, multi-media presentation All events are free to attend. Oxygen Art Centre is currently hosting the artist collective, Three Way Mirror, from July 3, 2026, to August 7, 2026. Three Way Mirror is composed of artists Daniel Barrow (QC), Glenn Gear (QC), and Paige Gratland (BC). The artists visit Nelson from Montréal and Vancouver for a six-week residency where they will develop their textile practices individually and collectively in what they call a craft ‘triangle’. For artists who belong to a social group that has often been marginalized, it is unsurprising that they are drawn to similarly marginalized crafts, art forms that link the personal and the political. Traditionally, a craft circle is a non-competitive circle of production where artists can create work and act on their concern for social justice. Three Way Mirror embraces this concept through a craft triangle where the artists create an intersectional queer space for textiles production and dialogue. The public are invited to attend two informal open studio events during the residency period to engage with the artists and encounter works-in-progress. Open studio events are scheduled for Saturday, July 18, 2026, and Saturday, August 1, 2026, from 1:00pm to 3:00pm. Admission is free. Everyone welcome to attend. During their residency, the artists present two open studio events, a film screening, workshop, and performance. Learn about the upcoming events below and on Oxygen’s website. All events are free to attend. This program is generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the BC Arts Council, the Vancouver Foundation, and the Regional District of Central Kootenay ReDi program. Special thanks to Dara van der Meulen for their support as Residency Coordinator (Canada Summer Jobs) and Kenton Doupe for their support as Gallery Preparator and Photographer.FILM SCREENING During the Saturday, July 18, 2026, Open Studio event, the artists share their individual video practices during a film screening at 2:00 PM.  Kablunât 2016 10min 32 sec Glenn Gear Based on an Inuit legend from Labrador, “Kablunât” explores the complex and intersecting histories of early Inuit and Settler life on the North Atlantic coast. Employing archival images, animation, collage, and time-lapse video, the retelling of this origin story unfolds in a poetic space between past and present, myth and lived experience.  Phranc: The Butch Closet2026 21 minutes with English subtitles Paige Gratland Legendary artist and musician Phranc makes beautiful sculptures from hand-painted paper and cardboard that trace the longing and belonging embedded in objects and clothing. The film maps connections between Phranc’s personal history, archive, and memories, revealing the stories behind each piece.  Handsome Devil2025 Animated music video Daniel Barrow This music video in romantic pink and green was created used Amiga software from the late 1980s (DeluxePaint 4). A green-skinned “sissy devil” probes the depths of internet intelligence, composing an “advanced search” on an antiquated search engine (using the lyrics of the Ballet’s song). Simultaneously, a naked, green, feminine artist traces the contours of her devilish destiny on her sketch pad, and then within an imaginary dating app. The “advanced search” becomes a kind of contemporary, queer, love poem.Handsome Devil premiered at the Ottawa International Animation Festival in 2024.LEARN MOREWORKSHOP  Paper Doll Poems workshop with Daniel BarrowWednesday, July 29, 2026, at 6:00pm Registration requiredFree to attend Participants will work with paper collaging techniques developed by the artist through their “paper doll poems” practice, which combines Barrow’s interests in the traditions of folk poetry and limericks, butterfly collections, emoji chains and pictographic languages. Barrow’s collaged pictographic poems have evolved over the past two years to explore symmetry in palindromic language, incorporating many precepts of floriography––the cryptological system of communication through the exchange of bouquets of flowers. The artist is particularly interested in the floriography which flourished in the 19th-century, when floral arrangements permitted the sender to express feelings which were forbidden to be spoken aloud in Victorian society. Participants can expect to spend time with the artist making and learning techniques together in collage and composition. This workshop is free to attend and limited to six participants. All materials and tools will be provided. Registration is required to attend.REGISTERPERFORMANCE   Winnipeg Babysitter (2005-2023) Written, Directed & Performed by Daniel Barrow Saturday, August 1, 2026, at 7:00pm 90 minutes, multi-media presentation Free to attendIn addition to their Paper Doll Poems workshop, artist-in-residence Daniel Barrow presents a multi-media performance entitled Winnipeg Babysitter (2005-2023) on Saturday, August 1, 2026, at 7:00pm. In the late ’70s and throughout the 80s, Winnipeg experienced a “golden age” of public access television. The performance draws on Barrow’s decades-long research and independent archive of Winnipeg’s public access television from the late 1970s and 80s presented as a 90-minute hybrid storytelling performance. Winnipeg Babysitter is an archival project that restores a previously lost history. Daniel Barrow travels to each screening providing an overhead projected commentary/context, tracing the histories of public access television in Manitoba, and describing the various and outrageous biographies of each television producer and personality. Presented at venues such as The Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, La Maison Rouge (Paris) and Light Industry (Brooklyn), Winnipeg Babysitter (2005-2023) features a live commentary by the artist from an overhead projector over excerpts of archival television. Barrow’s performance is not exclusively an exercise in nostalgia—it is also a critical gesture with deep relevance to our contemporary media landscape. Winnipeg Babysitter (2005-2023) foregrounds the politics of visibility and the value of infrastructures that support creativity without commodification. This performance offers audiences with a suggestion that the future of media art may benefit from looking back at a moment when the signal was open, and the screen truly belonged to the public. Join us at Oxygen Art Centre on Saturday, August 1, 2026, at 7:00pm for Winnipeg Babysitter (2005-2023).LEARN MOREABOUT THE ARTISTS  Daniel Barrow is a genderfluid, Montreal-based storyteller/artist uses simple (often antiquated) technologies to present pictorial narratives by merging the methods of cinema, comics, animation, and magic lantern shows. They are best known for adapting comic book narratives to “manual” forms of animation by manipulating drawings on an overhead projector. In recent years, they have been developing a unique pictorial language which they referred to as “paper doll poems”. Glenn Gear is an Indigiqueer filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist of mixed Inuit heritage living in Montréal. He is originally from Corner Brook Newfoundland and has family throughout Labrador and Nunatsiavut. His research creation-practice is shaped by Inuit ways of learning and knowing, through a hands-on and tactile approach incorporating installation, animation, photography, bead work, and the use of traditional materials such as sealskin. Paige Gratland is a visual artist and filmmaker producing projects and objects that engage with social history, design and craft practices. She learned to weave in 2019 at the Richmond Weavers and Spinners Guild and is currently completing the Master Weaver Program at Olds College. She is also 1/3 of the artist group Three Way Mirror with Daniel Barrow and Glenn Gear. LEARN MORE NEW EMPLOYEE |
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