Current Exhibitions

FALL 2025


 

The More Elegant and Graceful Plant
Exhibition: October 9 – October 30, 2025 
Reception: Thursday, October 9 from 6–8PM
artLAB Gallery, JLVAC

Curated by Dr. Cody Barteet and Natalie Scola

 flowers and title (the more elegant and graceful plant)

This exhibition features works by Jamelie Hassan, Ron Benner, Olivia Mossuto, Steve Sabella, Carole Conde’ & Karl Beveridge, Julio Jorge Celis Polanco and archival materials from Western Archives and Special Collections and The Dr. Laurie L. Consaul Herbarium. Music for the exhibition is shared courtesy of the Digital Analysis of Chant Transmission (DACT).

Botanical art captures the worlds plants inhabit and the hands that study them. For centuries, artists have turned to plants not only as subjects to be studied and represented, but also as materials - pigments, dyes, and papers drawn from the natural world. These works map how plants were collected, named, and carried across continents. At the same time, they root us in gardens and communities, revealing how plants have cultivated knowledge, beauty, and belonging. Bringing together archival materials and contemporary art, this exhibition invites reflection on the intertwined histories of empire and science, and on the role of plants in shaping both past and future environments.

Support for this exhibition is provided by Western Research.

 

reframing STEM
Exhibition: October 9 – October 30, 2025 
Reception: Thursday, October 9 from 6–8PM
Cohen Commons, JLVAC

exhibition title reframing STEM

featuring works by: alexandra molenkamp, ambar kaushik, claire huizenga, elyse hughes, ellie marie smith, emily jane margaret taylor, fong lam nicole iun, jamie vojvodin, jennah hynds, karam bhuee, klay van lankveld, laura clavijo gutierrez, lauren grace zeleny, leo hodgson, matthais leon hayes, miaka duan fredin, parisa lahooty, soraya patel, sofia isabel mendoza martinez, sydney elizabeth norton, urvi uppal, vanesa lares diez, violet dieroff, zoe mckeon-shaw, wilson atterson

the history of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics is often told as a linear ascent, a sequence of singular discoveries attributed to a narrow pantheon of celebrated men. yet this narrative is less a neutral chronicle of progress than a frame: constructed, rehearsed, and institutionalized to eclipse entire constellations of knowledge. reframing STEM intervenes in this story, foregrounding women whose contributions fracture the myth of the solitary genius and reveal science as a profoundly collective, contingent, and contested pursuit.

developed by the students of ah2690f: art and science unbound, the exhibition bridges historical research and creative inquiry to illuminate the intellectual labour of women in STEM across centuries and geographies. together, these projects form a constellation that resists linear historiography, instead orbiting around a pluralized understanding of innovation.

to “reframe” is not merely to recover what was forgotten, but to interrogate the epistemological architectures that produced absence in the first place. the works on view ask how disciplinary boundaries, institutional gatekeeping, and cultural bias have shaped whose knowledge counts as scientific truth. by entwining rigorous archival research with speculative and imaginative response, students invite audiences to not only remember these women but to reconsider the very frameworks through which knowledge, and its authority, is produced.

reframing STEM opens onto larger questions: what might science become when its history is told not through the lone voice of invention but through a chorus of minds, each embedded in its own time, culture, and ecology of thought? what new possibilities unfold when we acknowledge science as a site of entanglement—of cross-cultural transmissions, embodied insights, and cosmological wonder? by situating women as vital participants in shaping STEM, this exhibition does not simply fill historical lacunae; it insists on a reimagining of how we conceive knowledge itself: relational, interstellar, and in constant motion.

 

 

LiminalEnergyZeroSignalStillDevilObject

Natasha Beaudoin, Eric Cameron, Sebastian Evans, Jennifer Hamilton, Moira Hayes, Cassie Packham, Emelie Robertson

Exhibition: September 4 – September 28, 2025
Reception: Saturday, September 27 from 2-4PM
artLAB Gallery, JLVAC

80s style emojis over brick wall

We occupy an entangled circuitry of institutional connections and nodes, a shared bandwidth, where disparate practices hum, flicker and interfere.

At the midpoint of their academic journey, candidates of the 2026 Master of Fine Arts program come together to explore themes and mediums ranging from the natural and the haunted to painting and video. This exhibition is not curated. It is not a thesis, nor a resolution. Each work in this show is a signal: sometimes clear, sometimes scrambled. Together they build a constellation of transmissions that do not seek to align but rather to co-exist. The artists have chosen not to resolve their differences, but to amplify the static between them.

Instead of a curated narrative, this exhibition offers a linkage, a connective tissue made of tension, refusal and resonance. The artists invite viewers to tune in, sit with the noise, and find meaning in the gaps.

 

LiminalEnergyZeroSignalStillDevilObject | artLAB Gallery Documentation: Dickson Bou, artLAB Gallery Preparator

Human Impressions: Traces from the Western Print Archives

Exhibition: September 4 – September 28, 2025
Reception: Saturday, September 27 from 2-4PM
Cohen Commons, JLVAC

Curated by Jennifer Hamilton 

portrait prints
Image(s): Laura Payne, N. Schlesak and Dan Vogel

The multiple exists to disseminate—and from that, archives emerge. This exhibition features a selection from the Department of Visual Art’s print collection at Western University, showcasing work completed over the past 50 years. These alumni artworks highlight the human experience embedded within the technical processes of printmaking. The human form is embodied within these selected works, showing a historical collaboration between machines and the individual.

This exhibition attempts to challenge critiques of human authenticity within a reproduction while highlighting a printshop’s ability to create a community within any arts institution. The prints chosen for this exhibition include examples from each decade with a varied selection of printmaking, including relief print, intaglio, lithography and serigraphy.

Human Impressions: Traces from the Western Print Archives | Cohen Commons Gallery Documentation: Dickson Bou, artLAB Gallery Preparator