No Vacancy Projects
Neighbourhood Watch: The rented house
29 O'Hara Ave, Main Floor
Artist's Biographies
Kaya Joan is a multi-disciplinary Afro Caribbean (Jamaican/ Vincentian)-Indigenous (Kanien’kehá:ka with relations from Kahnawà:ke) artist living in T’karonto (Dish with One Spoon treaty territory). Kaya’s work focuses on healing, transcending linear notions of time, blood memory and decolonial aesthetics rooted in imagery from the lands of their ancestors (Turtle Island and the Caribbean). Afro and Indigenous futurity and pedagogy are also centred in Kaya’s practice-working through buried truths to explore how creation can heal 7 generations into the past and future.
Kaya has been working in community arts for 5 years as a facilitator and artist. They are a core member of Weave and Mend, an Indigenous femme/non binary collective.
To view more of Kaya’s work:
Instagram @kayajoan
Sandra Brewster is a Canadian visual artist based in Toronto. Her work explores identity, representation and memory, centring Black presence. The daughter of Guyanese-born parents, she is especially attuned to the experiences of people of Caribbean heritage and their ongoing relationships with back home. Brewster’s work has been featured in a solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario (2019-2020), she is the 2018 recipient of the Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts Artist Prize and her exhibition It’s all a blur… received the Gattuso Prize for outstanding featured exhibition of CONTACT Photography Festival 2017. Currently on view through September 6, 2021: Sandra Brewster: Blur, special installation project at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre Queen's University, Kingston, Canada. Brewster holds a Masters of Visual Studies from University of Toronto. She is represented by Georgia Scherman Projects.
To view more of Sandra's work:
Instagram: @sabrewst
Laura Moore is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice is rooted in sculpture. The artist works primarily in stone, although her practice extends into mould-making, wood carving, drawing and photography. Recent exhibitions include Memory Bathing at Latcham Art Centre, Replika/ Replica at Galleri Babel in Trondheim, Norway, one man’s junk at the MacLaren Art Centre and Sculpture by the Sea in Aarhus, Denmark. Moore’s sculptures have been installed in numerous public settings, most notably at Google in Kitchener as part of the Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener and Area Biennial (CAFKA). Moore is a transient member of Studio Pescarella in Pietrasanta Italy and has participated in International Artist Residency Programs; most recently at Lademoen Kunstnerverksteder in Trondheim, Norway. In 2021, she’ll spend 4 consecutive months in Scandinavia working at two Artist in Residency programs. Moore is represented by Zalucky Contemporary in Toronto, Canada.
To view more of Laura's work:
Instagram: @lauramoore.ca
James Rollo is a new media, installation, and performance artist that grafts new narratives onto everyday objects and spaces for the audience to encounter, attempting to break the objects/spaces out of their systemic and preconditioned possibilities. This results in humourous anti-objects, visual glitches, and experiential anomalies, where the impetus is on the viewer to come to their own conclusions or engage in a different way.
Their practice is constantly reacting to the visual and experiential landscape, creating a tension between the familiar and unfamiliar, which makes the rules of engagement more flexible. Ultimately, they are interested in showing possible avenues of flux with everyday objects and spaces.
James Rollo has exhibited nationally and internationally, including their first solo show at OUTPOST in Norwich, UK (2018). They have participated in the Images Festival at XPace in Toronto, Canada (2015), the International Biennial of Humour and Satire in Gabrovo, Bulgaria (2017), and The Wrong Epicentre Biennale, at the Centre del Carme, Valencia, Spain (2019). They received their MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art (2017) and their BFA from OCAD University (2015).
To view more of James' work:
Instagram: @jamesthian
Cindy Baker is a contemporary artist based in Western Canada whose work engages with queer, gender, race, disability, fat, and art discourses. Committed to ethical community engagement and critical social enquiry, Baker's interdisciplinary research-based practice draws upon 25 years working, volunteering, and organizing in the communities of which she is part. She moves fluidly between the arts, humanities, and social sciences, emphasizing the theoretical and conceptual over material concerns. Baker holds an MFA from the University of Lethbridge where she received a SSHRC grant for her research in performance in the absence of the artist's body; she has exhibited and performed across Canada and internationally. Helping found important community and advocacy organizations over the course of her career, Baker continues to maintain volunteer leadership roles across her communities.
To view more of Cindy's work:
instagram: @cindebee
email: novacancyprojects@gmail.com
instagram: @novacancyprojects