About the Artist
Andrew Thorne is an early career artist, born in Mi’kma’ki, or Moncton, New Brunswick. He received a BFA from NSCAD University in 2020 and relocated to Treaty Six territory, Edmonton, in 2021. Thorne has participated in the SNAP Emerging Artist in Residence, and an 8-week residency at the Yorath House in Buena Vista Park. Recently, Thorne has had exhibitions at Harcourt House Artist Run Centre and the Grande Prairie Art Gallery.
Andrew Thorne is passionate about arts education. He teaches printmaking classes at SNAP, and other artmaking courses through the Edmonton City Arts Centre. This summer, he will be participating in the RBC Emerging Artist Program at the Nina Haggerty Centre for the Arts.
hands holding
Sir Winston Churchill Square
ARTIST STATEMENT
My work is generated through a lifelong practice of journaling and collecting, and is translated through processes in printmaking, collage, and the exploration of sound. In all these materials, I am interested in subverting the performance of mass media and ordinary objects. To repurpose tools of mass communication to hold space for community and act as a living archive.
Growing up in a small, east coast community, being able to connect to a larger creative community through DIY media and music was crucial. This has informed my practice of creating print and sound as a way of connecting to those near and far in my life. I am interested in how community, care, and curiosity can be conveyed through small acts and little paper nuances such as handwritten notes, doodles, and other debris.
I am drawn to print mediums such as woodcut and etching, as porous materials that once rolled in ink have a memory and a voice of their own. Specifically, woodcut is an artistic expression that is slow, accessible, opposed to the practices of mass production, and the malpractice of late capitalism. I see woodcut as a medium of resistance and a means of elevating the personal.
Field recordings, homemade instruments, and other sounds have been another way of reimagining the world around me. The chatter of radio or people talking with each other, phone recordings or the knocking of wood and metal — these are some of the recurring sounds layered into each piece of audio. Here, I am looking for ways to share treasured moments from within my own personal archive. These instances are important because they offer us an alternative value system, one that replaces the monetary with the sentimental. I use sound to memorialize small moments buried in time and to look forward into the future.
