SEAN ALWARD’s practice is generally rooted in painting and drawing. A number of his recent projects have investigated the intersection between subjective experience and historical representation. One project, for example, looks to the cultural and political history of the 1980s as a means of exploring how personal memory and subjectivity are constructed within the larger global influences of an era, as well as how representation itself has helped define these events.

While in residence, Alward will be working on projects that have evolved from this creative strategy. He will be working on a series of drawings done within the pages of an 1810 legal text book, embroidering an imitation wood-grain pattern into linen, and also working on some paintings that look to the frontier history of Dawson City to investigate the connection between remote locations and global contexts.

BRANDON VICKERD is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice generally involves sculpture, site specific interventions, kinetic works and digital technologies. His work often draws upon current events, popular culture and contemporary mythologies such as comic books, heavy metal music and popular science to investigate issues of disposibility, collective reverence and the reciprocal relationship between high and low culture.

During his two months in Dawson City, Vickerd will be working to create an outdoor public installation for the ODD Gallery’s annual thematic project, The Natural & The Manufactured, which will open August 13 as part of KIAC’s Riverside Arts Festival.

For this project, Vickerd will be constructing a detailed, exact-scale replica of a Global Positioning (GPS) Satellite out of spruce wood. The work will be installed as if the satellite has crashed into the local landscape.

SEAN ALWARD is originally from Halifax, N.S. and is currently living in Vancouver, B.C. He Completed his BFA at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and studied on exchange at the Cooper Union For the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City. He completed his MFA at the University of British Columbia.