2024 University of Toronto MVS Studio Program Graduating Exhibition

The Art Museum, in partnership with the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto, is pleased to exhibit the graduating projects of the 2024 Master of Visual Studies graduate students a. portia ehrhardt, Adrienne Scott, Cason Sharpe, Rachel Ormshaw, and Sandy Callander.

This exhibition is produced as part of the requirements for the MVS Studio degree in Visual Studies at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto.

a. portia ehrhardt (b. 1986) is a dancer, astrologer, and multidisciplinary artist from/in/around Toronto. Their work has been supported across Canada and internationally, including OFFTA (Montréal), SEAD (Austria), Mile Zero Dance (Edmonton), and HATCH/Harbourfront Centre. A dancer with two decades of performance experience, they have appeared in works by Susie Burpee, Willi Dorner, Menaka Thakkar and Suzy Lake and trained extensively with renowned Ballet for Contemporary Dancers teacher Janet Panetta. ehrhardt was the Curator of Dancemakers Centre for Creation from 2015 to 2019, received a 2017 danceWEB scholarship, and was a 2016 TAC/Banff Centre Leadership Lab fellow.

Adrienne Scott is an artist and occasional writer based in Toronto, Ontario. A current MVS candidate at the University of Toronto, she holds a BFA from the University of Ottawa (2016), where she was a recipient of the Edmund and Isobel Ryan Scholarship in photography. She has shown work at Karsh-Masson Gallery (Ottawa, Ontario), Idea Exchange (Cambridge, Ontario), and Gallery 44 (Toronto, Ontario). Her writing has appeared in online publications including off centre, and she most recently curated a screening of Vera Frenkel’s work, The Last Screening Room: A Valentine, at Trinity Square Video.

Cason Sharpe is a writer and artist currently based in Toronto. He has presented work in collaboration with various friends and institutions across the country, and his fiction and criticism have appeared in various places in print and online.

Rachel Ormshaw is a multi-disciplinary artist originally from the Prairies. Her work considers histories of objects using careful gestures to create intimate relationships between works, audience members, and herself. Her work is deeply rooted in material practice, and she works extensively with natural fibres, sound works, and specificity of found objects. Rachel is a graduate of OCADU in Material Art and Design with a specialization in Textiles, and has been a resident at the Contemporary Textile Studio Co-Op. Rachel is a musician and her band Scout’s Honour recently released their self-titled debut EP through all streaming platforms.

Sandy Callander is an artist based in Toronto. Spanning print, sculpture, image, and text, Callander’s practice examines connections between labour and capitalism, often through historical fact and industrial development. His recent work is focused on the interrelations between work, time, and meaning.