Alexis Bulman

White walls have long been the standard contemporary gallery backdrop because they create supposedly neutral and context-free environments for viewing art. However, the power dynamics that are at play in art institutions are far from impartial and many artists have prodded and criticized an art world that alleges to be unaffected by systemic bias in their programming and policies.

Remodel uses the symbolism of the white wall to address the current limitations to access in the arts. By breaking, crumbling, snapping, and stacking sheets of drywall, she demonstrates how ableist systems, often viewed as static or rigid, can be reconfigured and rebuilt through creative action. The work is a call for re-invention, characteristic of Canada’s larger disability arts movement.

(Remodel exhibited in a gallery while 360 product photographs photographs and image descriptions of each sculpture exhibited on the galleries website, additionally artist Aislinn Thomas coordinated a workshop around the sculptures called Archive of Sensation ).

Exhibited:

MAKE/SHIFT, Artspace, Peterborough, ON

Support by:

MAI Alliance, the Government of Québec and the City of Montréal as part of l’Entente sur le développement culturel de Montréal

Canada Council of the Arts, Concept to Realization: Explore and Create Program

Interrogating Access Residency, OBORO and Spectrum Productions, Montréal, QC

Walking as a routine mode of transportation converts an active movement into a passive experience.

Sidewalks become live art arenas as they cover with snow and ice. To avoid uncertain ground walking occurs beyond the sidewalk onto yards and roads. 

The same city block was travelled on winter days and recorded using a GPS app. This project integrates physical ability into a study that explores the push and pull relationship between body and place as the two co-exist to find the paths of least resistance.

One GPS path was installed on a gallery wall with black gaffer’s tape and accompanied by a free-standing heap of 200 sacks (4000 lbs) of sidewalk salt.

Exhibited:

New Positions, Group exhibit, Confederation Centre Art Gallery, PE. 2017

Support by:

PEI Art Grant, Emerging Professional Artist Dissemination Grant
 

Nature can never be entirely predicted or foretasted.

Based on a recent shoreline camping excursion gone awry, camping equipment is converted into illuminated water vessels. 

Exhibited: 

Art in the Open, Charlottetown, PEI (Juried) 2016

Lumière Art Festival, Sydney, NB (Juried) 2016

Support by:

Canada Council of the Arts, Cultivate Professional Development Grant
 

Bound Between Seasons is a series of strange sculptures, stormed forms and familiar shapes based on a seasonal phenomenon that appears scattered across Canadian properties in late Autumn: objects tightly swaddled in neon tarps in preparation for winter.

Bound Between Seasons studies and celebrates the behavioural similarities between the human body and the places where we converge with the land. In one instance a form could be a fishing boat under a tarp, or, beneath the surface may lay something more internally complex, less easily understood, and more isolating in nature.

Exhibited:

Third Shift Festival, Saint John, NB (Juried) 2018

Art in the Open, Charlottetown, PE (Juried) 2018

Connexion Artist Run Centre Residency, Fredericton, NB (Juried) 2018

Nocturne, Contemporary Art Festival, Halifax, NS (Juried) 2018

Rainbow Valley pays tribute to the imagination and sense of adventure at Rainbow Valley, an amusement park in Cavendish, PEI that closed a decade ago.

For many people, their memories of the park were formed as children, when it seemed to exist outside of reality. It closed before that generation could experience it as adults, so it still exists there, trapped in their memories. 

Exhibited: 

Art in the Open, Charlottetown, PEI. 2013

A former government building was converted into condominiums while the bottom floor, approximately 30,000 sq-ft has remained in a gutted transitional state for a decade.

During Flotilla (A biennial gathering of Canadian artist-run centres); Tarp It, Run a Cord occupied the west end of this building, a vacant 6,259 sq-ft space with windows on three sides, high ceilings, a non-functioning duct-system and the reminiscence of a grid drop-ceiling. In recent times the site held potential to be a working artist space. 

Informed by the architecture and the practical handling of the materials present an installation of built structures became an extension of the building to demonstrate the symbiotic relationship between art and space while simultaneously speaking to the lack of artist spaces in Charlottetown, an urban area with frequent vacancies in commercial properties.

Collaboration by:

Alexis Bulman and Norma Jean MacLean

Exhibited:

Flotilla, Charlottetown, PEI, 2017

Support by:

Flotilla (The Association of Artist-Run Centres in the Atlantic Region)

Journée Sans Culture (Partnering organization)

J's Windows & Castle Building Centre (In-kind sponsor)

Receiver Coffee Co. (In-kind sponsor)


 

The two-part work, installed in large frames dividing the seating area of the Charlottetown Farmer’s Market, was conceived as a tribute to the hard work, means of livelihood, and seasonal rituals of Island living.

Following the exhibition, the wood used in the installation became a complete full-circle process: that of the elevation of functional items of daily life into an art installation and their subsequent return to again function as firewood.

Exhibited:

Small Town Market Gallery, Charlottetown, P.E.I. 2014 (solo)

Another winter, another collection of firewood for warmth.

Following the exhibition, the wood used in the installation became a complete full-circle process: that of the elevation of functional items of daily life into an art installation and their subsequent return to again function as firewood.

Exhibited: 

Working Title,  Saint John Arts Centre, Rotunda Gallery, Saint John, NB. 2015