Fall Exhibitions at Rodman Hall Art Centre/Brock University

Opening Reception: Thursday, November 14, 7 pm

Danny Custodio, Rose of Sharon, Euonymus, Sumac, 2019, archival pigment print, from the series Flower Carpets/Tapetes Floridos.

Danny Custodio
Flower Carpets/Tapetes Floridos

Curated by Marcie Bronson

November 2, 2019 to March 22, 2020
Artist Talk: Thursday, November 28, 7 pm

Danny Custodio uses photography to explore his familial histories and cultural traditions, reinterpreting them from his position as a second-generation Portuguese-Canadian. For this new body of work, Custodio made and photographed flower carpets like those found on the cobblestone streets of his parents’ birthplace. During annual religious festivals on São Miguel Island, Azores, each family adorns the section of street in front of their house, arranging regional plants and coloured wood chips in designs that are passed down through generations. Using flowers and foliage gathered across the Niagara region, including his suburban St. Catharines neighbourhood and the Walker Botanical Garden at Rodman Hall Art Centre, Custodio continues this custom in his studio, developing his own designs that incorporate his own family’s motifs and traditional Portuguese tile patterns.

Custodio’s lens affords an intimate view of these transient installations, drawing attention to the many individual elements of each flower carpet, and the careful and intensive labour their creation entails. The species in Custodio’s flower carpets are both native to Niagara and introduced, like the hydrangea, a flower emblematic of the Azores. For Custodio, at a remove from his parents’ homeland and Toronto’s Little Portugal, where he was raised, the process is a means of maintaining connection to his community while forging his own place within it.

Danny Custodio gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council.

Teresa Carlesimo, Untitled, 2018, digital image, from the series more light than heat.

Teresa Carlesimo with Michael DiRisio
more light than heat

Curated by Carina Magazzeni

November 15, 2019 to March 15, 2020
Artists and Curator in Conversation: Thursday, January 16, 7 pm

more light than heat invokes an uneasiness with space. The exhibition features common construction materials manipulated into sculptural forms, participatory installations and fictional spaces, and video works that push recognizable forms to their formless limits. Hamilton-based artists Teresa Carlesimo and Michael DiRisio present an exhibition that exposes their behind-the-scenes inquiries into the built environment through a series of works that play with the authenticity of building materials and inexpensive “fast construction.” Through this, the exhibition gestures towards the ways by which our everyday spaces cannot be separated from capitalism, nor our world’s current environmental shift. more light than heat is a discussion that doesn’t necessarily provide the answers or illuminate a solidified thesis—rather, the exhibition exists as an agitation with materiality, the built environment, and natural resources to pose questions about our everyday spaces. Acting as an extension of their recent presentation of a form of formlessness presented at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, this exhibition at Rodman Hall Art Centre can be understood as an elongated exposure of artistic process and labour.

Rodman Hall Art Centre / Brock University
109 St. Paul Crescent, St. Catharines, Ontario L2S 1M3
905.684.2925 | brocku.ca/rodmanhall
Facebook: RodmanHall
Twitter: @RodmanHall
Instagram: @RodmanHallArtCentre

Gallery Hours
Tuesday, Wednesday & Friday: 10 am to 5 pm
Thursday: 10 am to 9 pm
Saturday & Sunday: 12 to 5 pm
Closed Monday and statutory holidays

Admission is by donation ($5 suggested)
Partially Accessible

Contact: Lauren Regier, 905.688.5550 ext. 5802, lregier@brocku.ca

Rodman Hall gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council.