Sean-William Dawson: Simple Abundance

Georgian College Campus Gallery, Barrie, ON

Images (left to right): SWD in Studio. Photo credit: Anton (Tony) Pickard. Georgian College Museum and Gallery Studies Students Aditi Desai and Katy Rodgers working with art that will be featured in the exhibition Simple Abundance. Photo credit: Yasmeen Kazak.

25 Year Retrospective

February 15 to March 26, 2023
Georgian College Campus Gallery, The Helen and Arch Brown Centre for Visual Arts, D building, Barrie Campus

Opening Reception: February 15, 6pm to 9pm
Artist Talk: March 9, 10am
ArtCrawl: March 23, 11:15am to 2pm. Artist tour at 1:20pm. In collaboration with the MacLaren Art Centre

Simple Abundance features Sean-William Dawson’s (SWD) work from his 25-year career of successfully creating art and teaching since graduating from Georgian College.

Through this exhibition, the artist aims to explore where he has been, where he is presently, and what he sees himself doing in the future. Utilizing nostalgic and upcycled materials, SWD uses his art practice to help inspire children and adults to continuously create. SWD considers art to be, “the most universal form of communication,” and through-out the exhibition there are many messages that he strives to convey through the richness of pop-culture.

Sean-William Dawson, Downward, 2021, 20 ½” x 20 ½”, silkscreen on vintage wallpaper. Photo credit: SWD.

Working in a unique curatorial collaboration with Georgian College’s Museum and Gallery Studies Students the exhibition features artwork created in a variety of media, from vintage books to bed sheets. The students selected all the work on display and wrote the accompanying interpretative labels.

Sean-William Dawson, Nothing’s Shocking, 2002, 48” x 96”, mixed media. Photo credit: SWD.

The opening reception will feature several special elements including a VR (virtual reality) experience. Additionally, tapping into his alternative punk background, SWD has partnered with local business Tarantula Tapes to create a soundtrack to the exhibition featuring all the bands he has collaborated with over the years.

About the Artist

Sean-William Dawson lives and works in Beeton, ON. An educator, performer, printmaker, painter, and multi-media, he is an artist who likes to use the discarded items of society to express the state of the modern world. He graduated from Georgian College graduated from Georgian College’s Design and Visual Arts program Fine Art program in 1998.

www.swd-art.com
Facebook @SeanWilliamDawsonart
Instagram @seanwilliamdawson

About Georgian College’s Museum and Gallery Studies Program

In Georgian College’s Museum and Gallery Studies Ontario College Graduate Certificate program, students acquire a comprehensive foundation in museum and gallery work. They develop capabilities in the main technical areas common to all museums and galleries: conservation and collections management, exhibition design, public programming, and administration. Students advance their existing knowledge through a blend of engaging academic instruction and experiential learning opportunities such as technical practice and an internship.

The Georgian College Campus Gallery is located in room 140, D building (Helen and Arch Brown Centre for Design and Visual Arts) at the Barrie Campus, Georgian College, 1 Georgian Drive.

Hours of Operation:
Monday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m.

Campus Gallery Website
Facebook @DVAcampusgallery
Instagram @thecampusgallery

Accessibility:
Georgian College Campus Gallery is fully accessible. For more information visit here.

Funding support provided from the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.

Image descriptions:
1. Left: Burley white man smiling, sitting on a chair, wearing a yellow t-shirt and blue denim overalls. In a cluttered space lined with plywood and art work, art making supplies, a red utility cart and other art making materials. Right: Two young women in the upper left corner looking over a table lined with brown paper. Four framed artworks are stacked in a grid pattern on the table along with four metal boxes on the right side.
2. Wreath design of pink and teal green over vintage floral pattern wallpaper. Repeated image in wreath design is of screaming woman with mouth wide open and short hair with bangs.
3. Relief painting that features the shoulders and head of a young boy painted in profile where a costume of a wavy red head piece and yellow conical beak. Over a grid of images featuring cartoon elephants and then framed with a linear sequence of photos of human-like monsters.