| ARTIST BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: | Jennifer Wanner is a multidisciplinary artist – painting, collage, stop-motion animation - who has taken the medium of watercolour and transformed a “traditional” art form into a convincing tool for contemporary art making. Able to use watercolour with the kind of adept and sensitive handling reminiscent of an earlier era in Canadian art, the artist examines the subject of nature through botanical art. In her series Florilegium, Wanner appropriates images of genetically modified plant crops from the internet and depicts new altered plants in carefully composed watercolours, collages, and stop-motion animations. Part of her intent with these beautifully rendered works is to critique human dominance over nature and our complacency in the face of its uncertain transformations.
Jennifer Wanner holds a BFA in Drama from the University of Calgary (1995), a BFA with distinction in Visual Arts from Alberta College of Art + Design (1999), and an MFA from The University of Western Ontario (2009). She has been awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Scholarship (SSHRC) in 2008, a Visual Arts and New Media Project Grant from Alberta Foundation for the Arts in 2014, and a Calgary Arts Development Artist Opportunity Grant in 2016.
Recent solo exhibitions with the theme of botanical art include Immuto (Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina, SK; Okotoks Art Gallery, AB; The Art Gallery of St. Albert, AB; the Two Rivers Gallery, Prince George, BC, 2012-2013) and Florilegium: Jennifer Wanner (Glenbow Museum, Calgary, 2012). Her work was exhibited in the 2013 Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art (Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton, AB) and Made in Calgary: The 2000s (Glenbow Museum, Calgary, AB, 2014). The OZON 2nd International Video Art Festival in Katowice, Poland screened a Wanner stop-motion animation video in 2014. In 2017 her work will be exhibited at University of Lethbridge Art Gallery and the Glenbow Museum in recognition of Canada’s 150th Anniversary of Confederation. |