Artist residencies
The Atrium of the Sutton School of Art
Since 2020, The Sutton School of Art offers artists a creation studio, providing them with an inspiring space for retreat and creative work.
An all-white space, underfloor heating and a glass roof opening onto the sky. Here, the artist-in-residence is enveloped in natural light, silence and tranquility.
Contact us to arrange your next residency at: direction@ecoleartsutton.ca
Dominique Paul
August 9–14 and September 26–27
Artist-in-Residence and Summer Exhibition. Come meet the artist August 9–14 and September 26–27. Exhibition open to the public every Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Exhibition – June 21 to September 27, 2026
Artist Statement
Dominique Paul’s work is deeply compelling; it addresses the major challenges we are currently facing through a practice that combines photography, video, sound, interactivity, and performance. It reflects both our natural environment and the economic world in which we live.
Bio
Born in Montreal, Dominique Paul is a multidisciplinary artist who in recent years has divided her time between Longueuil and New York. Her work has been exhibited in more than twenty events and venues.
The exhibition Seeing Red (Voir rouge), bringing together major work since 2012, was presented at the Maison de la culture Marcel Robidas in Longueuil in 2024. This exhibition followed on from several collaborative works developed in the city, where she resides, including the major performance work Animal Population Decline, created with Jacques-Rousseau high school. Recently, in 2023, a solo exhibition of her work, Silent Fall, was held at the Art Museum of the Americas (AMA) of the Organization of the American States (OAS). There she presented the performative work Red|Rojo|Rouge|Vermelho, created specifically for a special meeting of the OAS in Washington, D.C. She also took part in UnHomeless NYC at the Kingsborough Art Museum and in Mapping Life at the NJCU Visual Arts Gallery. Her videos have been shown at 10 Times Square and at Miyako Yoshinaga gallery, where she is represented. In Europe, her work has been exhibited primarily in France.
Her work can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution, the AMA and other public and private collections.
Publications which have written on her work include HuffPost, Time Out, New York: The Cut, Art Slant, SFAQ, Photograph, Whitehot Magazine and The Washington Post.
Dominique Paul has a master’s degree from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia, where she lived from 1998 to 2000, and obtained a Ph.D. in art studies and practices from the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) in 2009.
Her publications include Entre chair et lumière : De la possibilité d’une distance critique par l’objet-image (L’Harmattan, Paris, 2019) and the monographs at Centre SAGAMIE: Silent Fall | Devenir oiseau | Becoming Bird | Convertirse en ave, 2023 and Déclin des animaux | Animal Population Decline | Disparaître, Disappearing, Desaparecer, 2024 and Tout rouge | All About Red | Al Rojo Vivo, 2025. These monograhs’ texts are in French, English and Spanish.
Website: www.dominiquepaul.net
PDF of publications on the artist's work are available at the following link: https://www.silentfallexhibition.org/publications
Migrations of the Arthropods: DUMBO, Dominique Paul, 2012
Philou & Maude, artists + architects
July 13-14, August 3-4, August 10-11, 2024
In winter 2024, violent winds tore the roofs and walls off the sculpture and metalwork studios at the Sutton School of Art. Faced with the impossibility of preserving these ruins, rich in history, the Sutton School of Art welcomed two young artists in residence, Maude and Philou, in the summer of 2024.
They will create a sensitive portrait of what is about to be dismantled.
In Situ architecture
APRIL - MAY 2023
SCHEDULE FOR VISITING THE EXHIBITION
Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. until October 3, 2023
in situ atelier d'architecture
The collective in situ has been working for over 25 years to define an architectural practice that explores the potential of contexts in its design process where the notion of site is approached as an active datum, of a
spatial and temporal nature. In situ has developed particular expertise in integrating contemporary interventions into built contexts,
complex cultures and landscapes. The projects are thus part of a temporality in which, in a catapult effect, a look at the past informs the future. This understanding enables the workshop to create projects that are resilient to the transformations of our environments in the face of rapid social change.
La Laiterie - The exhibition
In situ launches the first Printemps de l'architecture exhibition at the Sutton School of Art. This exhibition is a gateway to this new place in the making, an industrial infrastructure housing a former dairy that is undergoing a transformation into a regional cultural infrastructure dedicated to learning, teaching and showing of art. In situ retraces the lines of thought developed since 2019 during the four years when it accompanied its founder in the transformation of various buildings in this industrial complex.
This exhibition takes the form of a large-scale architectural ideation workshop, presents the workshop's approach in a fun and educational way, to stimulate young people's interest in architectural thinking and help them understand the issues involved in an architecture project: taking on the memory of the place, the spatial context of the different scales it addresses, to stimulate young people's interest in architectural thinking and help them understand the issues involved in an architecture project: and its deployment over time, and the uses that change with the seasons. The workshop aims to open a dialogue with young people, organizations and the community, to imagine and grow the project. It invites young people to imagine the next stage of the project, to build it up and integrate it into the model, a playground for the imagination.
Stéphane Durand
October 2022 - June 2023
Aesthetics, imagination, reflection
(Art and science: connections to contemplate)
Stéphane Durand completed doctoral and post-doctoral studies in theoretical physics in Montreal and Paris. He is professor of physics at Édouard-Montpetit College and a member of the Centre de recherches mathématiques (CRM) at Université de Montréal. He published the books“Comprendre Einstein en animant soi-même l'espace-temps” and “Les carnets insolites du prof Durand”, the latter inspired by his 150 radio columns for Radio-Canada's Années-lumière. He has been the recipient of several popularization awards.
His artistic approach can be summed up in five points:
- A parallel reflection on the evolution of “sensibilities” in art and science, i.e. why and how innovative and revolutionary concepts (artistic and scientific) end up becoming well accepted, even commonplace. In other words, to show how art and science change our sensibility, i.e. our way of seeing and understanding reality; how they shake our certainties and push back the limits of our imagination. Many works have caused a scandal before being accepted, and this is true of both science and art.
- Develop conceptual imagination through multimedia, artistic and metaphorical processes.
- To provoke reflection on the concept of time and the 4th dimension through important works of art history and interactive multimedia installations.
- Get people thinking about the power of aesthetics in science.
- Highlight the role of constraints as a catalyst for creativity. This is true in literature, poetry, visual art, architecture and science:
Constraint and freedom are inseparable functions of the work. (…)
Constraint is what allows freedom, freedom is what arises from constraint.”
Georges Perec
Through his practice, Stéphane aims to :
- Introduce a physics principle into every work of art.
- Introduce the public and day campers to science through aesthetic constructions, artistic presentations, scientific puzzles (in the field of architecture), machine bikes, etc.
Jeremy Le Chatelier
JUNE - OCTOBER 2022
Jeremy Le Chatelier is a Quebec-based multidisciplinary artist who combines painting, photography and sculpture whenever opportunities and inspirations arise. Experimentation, abstraction and recuperation are at the heart of his practice, shaping work that is refined, tactile and tangible. His fascination with children's creative freedom often brings him back to an honest, spontaneous brushstroke. With a degree in design, aspects of composition and form play an important role in his work.
The works in this exhibition are the result of three years of work on a series entitled Sienna. A dozen paintings and over twenty sculptures make up this ensemble. These works are created entirely by hand, using mostly found and salvaged materials from rubbish dumps, building sites and the like.
Beyond the individual works, this exhibition seeks to highlight the spatial relationship between my creations and the architectural canvas of the Sutton School of Art.
Maxime Brouillet
MAY - SEPTEMBER 2021
Recognized for his perceptive look at architectural projects, Maxime Brouillet began his architectural photography practice in 2013. Focusing on the detail of the built environment, his work has won several awards since the beginning of his career. Beyond photography, Maxime values the experience of the space and an artistic collaboration between the designers and the photographer.
Résurgence - The exhibiti
Fig. To reappear, to re-emerge. If (architectural) photography is a device for framing spaces and buildings removed from their real context, why do we read it as objective documentation? How is this invisible seal of truth affixed? The photographer scoured his archives to find out where visual elements had been excluded or replaced. By removing the visual elements that make up the final image, the broadcast image, the consumed image, he attempts to demonstrate that architectural photography is part of the visual arts, a fabrication of the image.
What are the standards of architectural representation that justified the decisions to remove or modify these visual elements? These choices have multiple origins: photographer, architect, user, owner and distributor. They highlight the symbiotic nature of architectural photography. These reversals are an invitation to multiply readings to understand the interplay of signs. The image becomes a game of speculation about the original space, what has been masked, or what has replaced a revealed element, a game of constructing reality. Make visible what is invisible in the final broadcast image.
Marie-France Bourbeau
APRIL - SEPTEMBER 2021
During my residency at the Sutton School of Art, I worked in the Atrium of the former creamery through the long winter and spring months that followed the pandemic. In this unique space, I was set apart from the world, yet I had access to the sky through the magnificent skylight. In the end, I created a dozen sculptures there, made from assemblages of salvaged wood pieces and other organic materials, among other things.
The theme of my residency emerged over the course of the creative process: starting from darkness, from everything that has been lost, destroyed, or is destined to disappear (the burnt materials serve as a metaphor for this), letting light rise up and emerge. To answer the whiteness of the space, I created, from half-charred branches and stumps, more "earthbound" sculptures that seem to emerge from the ground. To make room on the ground, I suspended the ethereal white creatures I created, inspired by birds. Once suspended, they seemed to take flight (or fall from the sky?). A dialogue was established between these two monochromatic worlds, one I broadened by making use of the Atrium's scenic space. I now see these hybrid creatures as so many symbols of biodiversity. Emerging from scorched territories, they express a desire to survive by rising above resources burned and plundered by humankind.
Rebecca Brilvicas-Pinsonnault
MAY - SEPTEMBER 2020
With a Bachelor's degree in Visual and Media Arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal (2015), Rébecca Brilvicas-Pinsonnault is an emerging visual artist. Born in Cowansville, she was naturally drawn to art and creativity from an early age, to which she quickly added a passion for travel and flavors. To satisfy her wanderlust and pay for her art studies, the young woman began a career in reforestation in British Columbia. Eight years of learning, traveling, tree-planting and enriching experiences later, she embarks on the year 2020 as a springboard for her artistic career.
After an introductory course in the Japanese language, she began a month-long artistic residency in Japan. She is inspired by the country that has long been her dream. On her return from her travels, she had the chance to work on a vision that was close to her heart, that of a unique art school in Sutton.
Expo Shizen O Toshite - Through Nature / À Travers La Nature - the exhibit
The world of wabi-sabi (侘寂), a Japanese perspective on existence that transcends all matter and manifests itself in time. This aesthetic can be defined as a love of impermanence or of all that is ancient. It's the wisdom of beings who have come through trials, and it's also the beauty of things said to be fallen or considered incomplete, imperfect. We can learn to cherish our breaks and scars and draw from them a tremendous truth and authenticity.
In these times of reflection on the urgency of living through our modes of consumption, it's good to dare to remain quiet (within oneself) to contemplate (one's world). Enter the space to follow the traces in which the body reveals itself without having physically remained there. We can see that the artist has stripped himself of all figurative reference points to offer his being to the design of the nature that inhabits him. His drawings thus express the uniqueness of his person, and it is precisely in this individual expression that a fundamental individual power manifests itself, to be passed on to children. The very fact of existing forces us to deal with the unexpected, with chance and coincidence. During the meditative sessions that are the preludes to her creative work, Rebecca finds the concentration she needs to fix her impulses on paper.
Mental abstraction or physical language? This enigmatic lucidity is a pictorial rendering that is only possible through the creative gesture. It's the result of the quiet strength of a plant and mineral intelligence that gives access, if we're willing, to the path mapped out for us by inner movements.
