17:1
20 January - 19 February 2017
Unit 17 is pleased to announce its inaugural exhibition featuring recent photography, painting and sculpture by Derya Akay, Tiziana La Melia and Tristan Unrau. These artists live and work along the west coast of Canada and the United States of America - in Vancouver and Los Angeles. Each approach their work with poetic intention through complex material investigations around diverse subjects such as domestic, mental and vehicular interiors, the cinema and divining.
Over the next year, Unit 17 will present solo exhibitions by each artist.
Derya Akay (b. 1988, Turkey) is an artist living in Vancouver. He received the 2016 Portfolio Prize Emerging Artist Award in Vancouver, and was shortlisted for the 2015 RBC Emerging Artists People’s Choice Award at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto. Solo exhibitions include Campbell River Art Gallery, 2017 (forthcoming); Pumice, Del Vaz Projects, Los Angeles, California, 2017; Painting with Light, Kunstverein Toronto, 2015; Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner & Supper, Centre A, Vancouver, 2014. Group exhibitions include Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, 2017 (forthcoming); The Gardiner Museum, Toronto, 2015; Geometry of Knowing Part I, Simon Fraser University Gallery, Vancouver, 2015.
Tiziana La Melia (b.1982, Italy) grew up in the Okanagan region of British Columbia and now lives in Vancouver. Her paintings, textiles, installations, collaborations and writing are concerned with overlapping registers of perception, feeling, memory and narrative. She has recently exhibited at Oakville Galleries, Oakville; Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles; Galerie Anne Barrault, Paris; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Cooper Cole, Toronto; Mercer Union, Toronto. She holds a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver and an MFA from the University of Guelph. La Melia won the 2014 RBC Canadian Painting Competition.
Tristan Unrau (b.1989, Canada) holds a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design, was a 2013 resident at the Banff Centre, and is currently an MFA candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2015 the artist had a solo exhibition at CSA Space, Vancouver and was a finalist for the 2015 Royal Bank of Canada Painting Competition.
Akay, La Melia and Unrau are currently included in 'Vancouver Special: Ambivalent Pleasures' at the Vancouver Art Gallery, until April 17, 2017.