J. Morgun

Sacred time; digital space

In response to the conference theme of time in measure (International Society for the Study of Time, Yamaguchi Japan), the digital art installation “Sacred Time; Digital Space” examines the concept of sacred time through a series of social media filters representing various ritual measures such as the breath, phases of the moon, and ancestral time. This project aims to highlight contemporary tensions within spiritual and religious practices as traditional knowledge is now accessible online within digital spaces designed for consumer engagement.

The project invites viewers to consider the cognitive dissonance between digital spaces designed for distraction and the measures of sacred time as possible spatial disruptions. It poses a question on whether spiritual practitioners can reconcile with the use of social media as a tool for engaging prospective followers while also maintaining the contemplative notions of sacred time.

Think of a lost thing

“The Art Gallery of Regina presents tactile sculptures and evocative drawings by Saskatchewan artists Jessica Morgun and Tamara Rusnak in the exhibition Imagined Objects from August 6 to September 26, 2021. Lumpy, worn, rubbery, creased, incised, weighty: the tactile detail that the artists have lavished upon their creations makes their imagined objects corporeal and substantial. Morgun's work, in particular, resurrects items lost-to-time as recalled by Regina citizens.

Assisted by the Art Gallery of Regina, Morgun interviewed local community members this past February about their lost belongings. She asked participants to describe the lost thing, concentrating on non-visual senses. Working from these descriptions, Morgun then sculpted a replacement for the absent object. The resultant stoneware monuments to lost belongings are poignant and absurd. Rather than explaining away these mysterious forms, poetic snippets of interviews conducted by the artist heighten the enigma of her project for the Art Gallery of Regina, Think of a Lost Thing.

On the other hand, Rusnak creates without even the guide of a transient memory; she intuitively sculpts and draws ingenious tools that have never existed, including creating new works on-site for her exhibition at the Art Gallery of Regina.

A narrow ceramic funnel is upended on four inadequate-looking legs, each no bigger than a cigarette, its stem arches like a delicately searching proboscis. This sculpture, Signal, like many others in Imagined Objects, is animated by its artful grubbiness and touching awkwardness.

Rusnak accompanies her sculptures, assembled from humble materials such as papier-mâché, wire and clay, with a series of drawings that evoke educational wall charts. The artist organizes these ambiguous shapes according to some unfathomable taxonomy within a lustreless rectangle of colour.

Neither artist intends to answer the question "what is it?" but to spark countless responses in viewers' imaginations, arousing curiosity to be carried into everyday interactions with objects.”

• Sandee Moore, Curator, Art Gallery of Regina

Thoughts and Prayers

This project was generously funded by the Saskatchewan Foundation for the Arts in Spring and Summer 2020. During the first months of the pandemic I connected with artists across Canada via zoom to ask them about the phrase “thoughts and prayers.” These conversations generated a series of drawings and a prayer bead for each artist participant. This project touched on the overlapping spaces between art practice and spiritual practice.

The Int-eruption (seven stones)

The original billboard project and residency was generously supported by paved ARTS in Saskatoon Saskatchewan, 2019. The billboard image and experimentation was inspired by my residency at Murmur Land Studios field school in August of 2018. This project focused on land-markings in Saskatchewan that have emerged over generations in the Caron Hills of Southern Saskatchewan.

Video Credit: David LaRiviere, Curator and Artistic Director, paved ARTS

Water from Stone

Generously supported by Canada Council for the Arts through the Arts Across Canada Travel Grant, Water from Stone was a solo exhibition at the Lookout Gallery, Regent College on UBC campus.  In the project I considered the voice of the inanimate object through a series of minimal, apophatic gestures. See here for a link to a podcast I participated in during my time in Vancouver.

All Together Now

All Together Now was an open-call community art show co-curated by myself and Mindy Yan Miller, where professional artists and community members are invited to submit work to aka.  In this space people from all areas of the community will cross paths: students at schools in the neighborhood, clients of community programs, local craftspeople and professional artists.  The gallery will also be activated in a community cabaret during a family-friendly closing, celebrating the diverse work of the neighborhood and beyond. Opening the gallery in this way makes the space more accessible to local residents, and fosters awareness among professional artists of the creative work being made by community stakeholders. 

negAtive object/apophAtic gesture

I use the word “apophatic” to describe this body of work because there are parallels between my approach and that of apophatic theology, which attempts to describe the divine through negation, through naming what the divine is not, or what is not known or cannot be known about the divine. I am interested in how much the “unsaying” of everyday objects. These apophatic gestures insinuate not only the loss of everyday objects, but also the cumulative effect of the absence of things either through carelessness, inattention, or something more sinister, and the failure of monumentality to encapsulate such losses.   

AKA Project Residency

As a lead up to my MFA show, this project residency with AKA artist run was an experimentation in an apophatic art practice. Using gallery materials I recorded the absence of nails, brackets and light fixtures through a series of graphic drawings.

Landscape Index

The Landscape Index was a durational drawing performance performed on the University of Saskatchewan Campus in 2015. From the didactic:

“The Landscape Index is a research project to document and categorize notion of landscape. The aim of this project was to gather publicly sourced data regarding the most preferred aspects of landscape art, to organize data for future posterity, and to represent the data in the form of an ephemeral drawing performance.”

Photo Credit: Stephanie Strauss Hall, Retrospect Photography