Breakaways

The Stewart Hall Art Gallery is pleased to present Breakaways, the most recent project by Andréanne Abbondanza-Bergeron. Compelled by the Gallery’s atypical architecture and its location on the shore of Lac Saint-Louis, the artist has conceived an installation that occupies the entire exhibition space, and also presents a recent photographic series on water and its elusive quality.

In keeping with Abbondanza-Bergeron’s approach to spatial exploration, Breakaways was inspired by photographic research that began with an examination of the lakeside areas of the West Island, near where she lives. This was followed by encounters with different water sources in Italy during her artist residency in Rome, near her family’s ancestral region, in February and March 2023. The result of these inquiries is an architectural installation made from common industrial materials that have been manipulated and tensioned to create an immersive work that embodies the movement of a fast-flowing current of water, a deluge.

The large-scale weaving expanding in the exhibition space, between the wooden beams and the brick chimneys, unfolds like a massive three-dimensional drawing that transforms our relationship to space and our orientation in the gallery and to the windows that look out over the water. A direct relationship is established between the installation and our body. It generates feelings of calm and turbulence simultaneously, inviting us to think and to daydream. Breakaways elegantly evokes the power of water, its flow and movement; it invites us to think about nature and the impact we have on it, to consider its precariousness, but also to contemplate its beauty.

Andréanne Abbondanza-Bergeron studied architecture before completing an MFA in Sculpture and an MA in Art Education at Concordia University. Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions across Canada and internationally, most recently at FOFA Gallery. In conjunction with Breakaways, her work can also be seen in the exhibition Sorgente – Source at Galerie Z Art Space from September 16 to October 21.