Jim Holyoak

(français en dessous) Following his artist residency in Mumbai (India), Jim Holyoak created The Thicket, whose title refers to tufts of vegetation or a dense growth of bushes or small trees. More specifically, the artist was inspired by the banyan fig trees that were frequent subjects for his observational drawings while in India. This tree often … Continue reading “The Thicket”

Over the month of August (2016) ten artists from six countries occupied the Verksmiðjan art centre, at the vilage Hjalteyri, on the Eyjafjörður fjord (north coast of Iceland,) for a project entitled, ‘Sumarryk / Summer Dust.’ Responding to the site and to one another, the artists developed a large-scale, process-based, collaborative installation. The ‘Sumarryk / Summer Dust’ … Continue reading “SUMARRYK / SUMMER DUST”

pl. hi·ber·nac·u·la (-lə) Biology A protective case, cover, or structure, such as a plant bud, in which an organism remains dormant for the winter. The shelter of a hibernating animal. With Hibernacula, Jim Holyoak and Matt Shane were commissioned by the Musée d’art contemporain des Laurentides to transform a cabin in the Parc Bois de Belle-Rivière, into a refuge for … Continue reading “HIBERNACULA”

From November 2015 through February 2016, I attended the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec Residency in India, at the What About Art? studios in the Bandra district of Mumbai. Included here is documentation from my studio and sketchbooks, workshops and wanderings. Niyati Upadhya (of What About Art): What have some of the … Continue reading “Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec Residency, Mumbai, India”

With the support of a William Blair Bruce European Fine Art Travel Fellowship, in the summer of 2014, I embarked on a three-month mission to see and draw the strangest and most spectacular landforms I could find throughout Nordic Europe. I traveled by boat, bus, bike, train and foot (plus a flight to Iceland) from: … Continue reading “Lofoten, Lapland, Iceland”

A permanent installation on the third floor the American Can Co. building, 2030 boul. Pie IX, Montréal. “Matt Shane and Jim Holyoak have been collaborating for over 15 years on large-scale, immersive drawings on paper, yet ‘A Hole in the World’ is their first permanent installation. In their shared artistic practice, Shane and Holyoak create exquisitely … Continue reading “A Hole in the World”

For the summer of 2014, ‘Six ghosts spell unknown alphabet’ was on exhibition at Tegnerforbundet (Drawing Association) in Oslo, Norway. This was a collaborative, postal-art project between six artists: Jim Holyoak and Matt Shane (Montréal), Cathrine Dahl and Ørjan Aas (Trondheim), Ola Jonsrud (Oslo) and Gowara Minsa (Berlin). The artists made unfinished drawings, and mailed … Continue reading “Six Ghosts Spell Unknown Alphabet”

Energy is immanent in Jim Holyoak’s creative universe, where the various facets of our existence are intertwined with natural phenomena. Inhabited by extinct species, fabulous creatures and animated matter, Holyoak’s pictorial world offers a glimpse of a labile and changing nature, where each component is part of a dynamic, moving whole. This evolving malleability is … Continue reading “Energy/Énergie”

Thus far, ‘Quagmire’ is the largest-scale collaboration between Matt Shane and Jim Holyoak. It was on display for the ‘Ja Natuurlijk’ (Yes, Naturally) exhibition at the GEM Museum of Contemporary Art in The Hague in 2013 and at the 2011 Triennale québécoise, at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MAC). Quagmire was originally created inside … Continue reading “Quagmire”