Gatineau, Québec, CA

Lucie Rocher, État des lieux, 2020. (c) Lucie Rocher
https://axeneo7.qc.ca/

M.A. Marleau from AXENÉO7 joins us for the onAIRISM - challenges and transitions conference in November 2021. Eric Trottier from AXENÉO7 joined us for the onAIRISM workshop in May 2021.

Founded in 1983, AXENÉO7 is an artist-run centre dedicated to advocating, promoting and exhibiting the visual arts, while developing critical discourse around them. The centre is a gathering place for sharing and experimentation. Through its programming, it endeavours to expand the parameters of artistic practice and its presentation, and to improve artists’ condition of production.

AXENÉO7 is supported by the fundings of the Conseil des lettres et des arts du Québec, Canada Council for the Arts and, the Ville de Gatineau.

Mandate

Led by a Board of Directors, multiple committees and a team formed of artists and art professionals, AXENÉO7 chooses to be a vector between generations of artists, bringing together emerging and more established practices. The centre aims to elaborate programming activities including residencies, artist talks, seminars and publications and present exhibitions and performances in or outside its spaces. AXENÉO7 has and will continue to be committed to the payment of royalties and fees according to the CARFAC/RAAV scale rates, and to offer professionalization opportunities to the artists.

Location and spaces

AXENÉO7 is located in Gatineau (Quebec) in the former factory of the Hanson Hosiery Company. Restored and converted in the early 2000s, the now renamed factory — La Filature — is a space and non-profit organization devoted to disseminating visual and media art and offering space for research and creation.

Home to AXENÉO7 artist-run centre, Centre de production DAÏMÔN and to artists’ studio spaces, the organization is managed through a Board of Directors formed of representatives from AXENÉO7 and DAÏMÔN and community members. For more information: La Filature.

Characterized by its architectural palimpsests and later additions, AXENÉO7 is divided into three large exhibition spaces; a residence space comprising a private apartment and studio; a communal woodshop and a small bookstore. The centre shares a large yard with views on the historical site of the Ruisseau de la Brasserie/Brewery Creek.

Marc-Alexandre Reinhardt, Allégories quelconques #1, 2020. (c) Jean-Philippe Pernot

Autorésidences

In spring 2020, in direct response to the Corona-pandemic crisis, AXENÉO7 launched the AUTORÉSIDENCES program with this call for projects:

In the current events which are causing us all to rethink our ways of doing things, the artist-run centre AXENÉO7 remains operational. As such, our spring programming of activities is not cancelled but reimagined.

AXENÉO7 is proposing the following remote initiative to artists in order “[…] to expand the parameters of artistic practice and its presentation and improve artists’ conditions for production”.* As such, through this initiative, AXENÉO7 is going to participate in the collective effort to support the work of artists in isolation.

Artists are invited to submit an independent residency project that they can work on from their homes or their studios during this period of self-isolation. AXENÉO7’s programming committee will meet virtually to select ten projects. In return, these selected artists commit to presenting the results of their residencies within the coming year, over the course of regular events to be held at AXENÉO7, depending on how the current situation unfolds.

Due to the unique nature of this crisis, confusion is a natural response. AXENÉO7 proposes that we reframe this exceptional situation as a limiting imposition but as an opportunity for creative freedom, abundant in its virtuality. We aim to structure Autorésidences around the proposals we select and in collaboration with the artists. In the context of this call for proposals, AXENÉO7 wants to lighten the guidelines to allow artists to pursue their research and, in so doing, create a collaborative relationship that can extend beyond the limits of physical presence.

* From the artist-run centre AXENÉO7 Mission statement.

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