Emergence 2025 Catalogue

EMERGENCE

Amy Bugera

Faith Bye

Ella Cottier

Vernon Public Art Gallery

May 22 - July 11, 2024

Catalogue of an exhibiti on held at the Vernon Public Art Gallery, 3228 - 31st Avenue, Vernon, Briti sh Columbia, V1T 2H3, Canada

May 25 - July 12, 2023

Producti on: Vernon Public Art Gallery

Editor: Lubos Culen

Layout and graphic design: Vernon Public Art Gallery

Front cover: Fredrik Thacker: Tight, 2025, (detail), acrylic, oil sti ck, and conte on canvas,

60 x 50 inches

Printi ng: Get Colour Copies, Vernon, Briti sh Columbia, Canada

ISBN 978-1-927407-90-5

Copyright © 2025 Vernon Public Art Gallery

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitt ed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any informati on storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitt ed by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writi ng from the Vernon Public Art Gallery. Requests for permission to use these images should be addressed in writi ng to the Vernon Public Art Gallery, 3228 31st Avenue, Vernon BC, V1T 2H3, Canada, Telephone: 250.545.3173, website: www. vernonpublicartgallery.com

The Vernon Public Art Gallery is a registered not-for-profi t society. We gratefully acknowledge the fi nancial support of the Greater Vernon Advisory Committ ee/RDNO, the Province of BC’s Gaming Policy and Enforcement Branch, Briti sh Columbia Arts Council, the Government of Canada, corporate donors, sponsors, general donati ons and memberships. Charitable Organizati on # 108113358RR.

This exhibiti on is sponsored in part by:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 Executive Director’s Foreword · Dauna Kennedy

3 Emergence - Introduction · Victoria Verge

7 Message From Co-Instructors of Advanced Art Practices Courses · Samuel Roy-Bois

9 Artists and Works in the Exhibition

10 Amy Bugera

12 Faith Bye

16 Ella Cottier

20 Brenna Lam Kennedy

24 Kate Nicholson

28 Fredrik Thacker

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S FOREWORD

On behalf of the Board of Directors and staff at the Vernon Public Art Gallery, we are happy to welcome students from the 2025 graduating class at University of British Columbia Okanagan’s Bachelor of Fine Arts and the Bachelor of Media Studies program in this year’s exhibition Emergence.

This exhibition showcases the various mediums and styles being explored by some of the top students from this graduating class. Included in this year’s Emergence exhibition are the following graduates:

Amy Bugera

Faith Bye

Ella Cottier

Brenna Lam Kennedy

Kate Nicholson

Fredrik Thacker

Congratulations to each of you in achieving this milestone in your artistic exploration. Guiding these graduates through their studies were Co-Instructors for Advanced Art Practices Courses: David Doody and Samuel Roy-Bois with the Faculty of Creative Studies, UBC, Okanagan Campus. Included in this publication is a message from Samuel Roy-Bois.

I would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Province of British Columbia, the Regional District of the North Okanagan, and the BC Arts Council, whose funding enables us to produce exhibitions such as this for the North Okanagan region and interested parties across Canada.

Regards,

Dauna Kennedy Executive Director Vernon Public Art Gallery

EMERGENCE 2025 – INTRODUCTION

Emergence is an annual group exhibition showcasing the work of graduating students from the University of British Columbia Okanagan’s Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Media Studies programs. This year’s exhibition features six emerging artists working across painting, photography, sculpture, installation, assemblage, and digital media.

Each artist draws from personal experience, critical theory, or cultural observation to create work that engages with pressing contemporary themes. From interrogations of consumerism and environmental degradation to explorations of memory, grief, sexuality, and identity; Emergence presents a deeply considered and diverse body of work. These practices traverse the boundaries between tradition and experimentation—some manipulating family archives and found materials, others working with digital manipulation or painterly abstraction.

Since 2009, the Vernon Public Art Gallery has proudly supported the final exhibitions of BFA/BMS graduates from UBC Okanagan. This annual showcase continues to serve as a platform for emerging artists to present ambitious work to new audiences and step into the next phase of their creative journeys. Emergence invites viewers into intimate, challenging, and thoughtful visual worlds shaped by a generation of artists who are attuned to the complexities of the present moment.

AMY BUGERA

Amy Bugera critiques the spectacle of consumer culture through print-based installation. Drawing influence from Guy Debord’s theories on media, advertising, and capitalist disillusionment, Bugera examines the ways in which platforms like Amazon mediate our experiences through reductive, persuasive design. Her work manipulates familiar digital commands such as “Add to cart” or “Buy now,” transforming them through encaustic print processes to highlight their absurdity and ubiquity. By repeating and distorting these icons, Bugera reveals how advertising functions as a tool of disconnection—encouraging consumption while suppressing reflection. Her practice is both satirical and sincere, inviting viewers to pause and reconsider the systems we navigate daily.

BRENNA LAM KENNEDY

Brenna Lam Kennedy is a multimedia artist and photographer whose work reflects on intimacy, time, and digital mediation. In her photographic series Proximity, Kennedy captures tender moments between subjects, where these images exist outside linear time, imbued with warmth and a quiet sense of longing.

Subtle digital interventions and filmic colour grading collapse the distance between viewer and subject, heightening the emotional resonance of touch and gesture. Kennedy’s interest in the temporality of relationships is central to her practice: how we mark moments of closeness, how we remember them, and how digital technologies alter our perception of time itself.

ELLA COTTIER

Ella Cottier’s sculptural installation Cans investigates the ecological, archaeological, and philosophical implications of what we leave behind. Working with slip-cast ceramic forms derived from discarded aluminum cans, Cottier explores the tension between the “natural” and “unnatural” in the Anthropocene. Her practice considers trash as artifact, reframing the overlooked or unwanted as future remnants of our current civilization. While the work is rooted in environmental concern, it also evokes a meditative sensibility—drawing attention to our embeddedness in ecological systems. By casting everyday waste in fragile ceramic, Cottier prompts viewers to reflect on legacy, permanence, and the quiet material traces of human activity.

FAITH BYE

Faith Bye’s mixed-media paintings explore the emotional weight of everyday objects through acts of memorialization. Created in the aftermath of her grandmother’s sudden passing, Bye’s assemblages incorporate inherited domestic items—band-aids, sheets, household ephemera—embedded into sculptural grounds of modeling paste, gesso, and acrylic medium. These physical materials are then overlaid with painted still-life scenes, allowing the boundary between the real and the represented to blur. Her work speaks to the quiet rituals of grief and remembrance, and how material things—once ordinary—become saturated with memory. Through painterly layering, Bye constructs intimate dialogues between loss, family, and the texture of daily life.

FREDRIK THACKER

Fredrik Thacker’s expressive paintings are visceral interrogations of queer desire, sexual consumption, and the politics of visibility. Drawing on pornography as both subject and conceptual framework, Thacker collapses bodies into abstracted forms that pulse with intensity and urgency. Influenced by theorists like Linda Williams, his work probes the ways pornographic images are consumed, fragmented, and fetishized— particularly in relation to queer and trans identity. Through rapid paint application, mixed media layering, and disrupted figuration, Thacker recreates a “frenzy of the visible,” evoking what he describes as visual

“regurgitation” of desire and disgust. His paintings simultaneously seduce and resist, offering no stable ground for interpretation.

KATE NICHOLSON

Kate Nicholson’s paintings reflect on the instability of memory, the complexities of growing up, and the disorientation of nostalgia. Using family photographs as source material, Nicholson reinterprets childhood scenes through a mix of figuration and gestural abstraction. Her works disrupt the original images with energetic markings and overlays, creating a sense of interference—like a corrupted digital file or fleeting mental image. The result is a visual language that is both deeply personal and broadly relatable, capturing the tension between sentimentality and unease. Nicholson’s practice sits at the intersection of memory and media, probing how we reconstruct the past and contend with its emotional residues.

IN CONCLUSION

Together, the works in this years Emergence exhibition reflect a generation of artists attuned to the social, environmental, and emotional contours of contemporary life. With practices grounded in research, lived experience, and material experimentation, these artists offer not only a snapshot of where they are now, but a glimpse of where they are headed. The Vernon Public Art Gallery is proud to support these emerging voices at a pivotal moment in their creative evolution, and we look forward to seeing how their practices continue to develop and resonate beyond this exhibition.

Victoria Verge Curator Vernon Public Art Gallery

TO THE BFA AND THE BMS GRADUATES

Congratulations to the Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Media Studies cohorts on this spectacular achievement! What you have achieved is truly outstanding and leaves us with deep satisfaction of knowing we have all contributed to something remarkable. The quality, diversity, and the dept of the work accomplished over the past eight months is a testament to a bright future for culture. The enthusiasm, perseverance, and dedication you have demonstrated are undeniably worthwhile. What you have created is truly inspiring!

Throughout this academic year, you’ve undoubtably experienced a mix of emotions – excitement, doubt, discovery, and growth, to name a few. Embrace the unknown with courage, resilience, and a heart full of passion. Stay curious, seek out new perspectives, and never be afraid to take risks. Any successful endeavour is born from the willingness to try, to fall, and to try again. Remember that the most important lessons often come from the moments when things don’t go as planned.

Working with students on the verge of graduation is an exceptional experience. Not only do we get to be amazed by the progress made over the years, but also witness a group of individuals becoming more confident in who they are. As we observe these transformations, we continue to offer guidance and share our knowledge, hoping that these final pushes will help each of you gain spectacular momentum.

This exhibition is the culmination of years of commitment worth celebrating. While it marks the end of one of the most significant chapters of your life, it most importantly signals the beginning of a new journey – one we hope will be filled with enjoyment, growth, and meaningful contributions to your community.

Samuel Roy-Bois & David Doody Co-directors of Advanced Art Practices Course

ARTISTS AND THEIR WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION

Amy Bugera

It is hard to lead a frugal life with everything at the tip of your fingers. Online shopping platforms like Amazon.com dominate our lives. I am working with iconic symbols of consumerism to invite viewers to consider the role it plays in our lives. My work is influenced by the writing of Guy Debord, a philosopher who critiques the role of media and advertising in constructing a superficial, image-driven culture that leads to disillusionment.

Debord argued that in modern capitalist societies reality is replaced by a constructed spectacle. An illusion that keeps people passive, consuming, and disconnected from real life. He identified advertising as a key tool of the spectacle. My artwork aims to highlight that, despite new formats, the spectacle continues to operate under different disguises.

Text is a large part of my work. I found the slogan “this box is now made with less material” printed on the Amazon delivery boxes to be highly ironic and, therefore, decided to work with it. These prints are encaustic, which uses beeswax to increase transparency and add colour to reference iconic markers of advertising.

Debord used détournement, a French term meaning the hijacking and transformation of media to expose its manipulations. Similarly, I transform these symbols by isolating, distorting, repeating and rearranging them to highlight the irony of how we consume, as well as the absurdity of the repetition around us.

At the Push of a Button, 2025, Ultra-violet screen print, encaustic, 74 x 57 inches

Less Material, 2025, Ultra-violet screen print, encaustic, 57 x 38 inches

Faith Bye

This developing body of work is an ongoing personal reflection on the sentimentality of everyday objects. Created in the wake of my grandmother’s sudden death, it explores how memory and emotional association has informed my perception of ‘ordinary items’.

My grandmother passed away in late summer last year. In the months following, her house was sorted through — most of her belongings were thrown away, donated, or put into storage. The rest were brought into my home. Since then, her sheets and towels have been tucked away in my hall closet; a fistful of bandaids along with a parking ticket pulled from her purse now sit in my bathroom cupboard. Even a jar of jam found in her fridge last summer still sits in mine. I feel compelled to hang onto these things. They lay around my home as wonderful little anecdotes of her, slowly integrating themselves into my everyday.

And so, I have begun incorporating some of these possessions and inherited items into my paintings as part of the ground, embedding them with acrylic mediums, gesso, and modeling paste. I then reapproach the work to impose still life imagery on top of my sculptural base with oil paint. I believe the people these items belonged to my grandmother and others are represented in the dialogue between the physical and painted subjects; the tensions between tangible and illusory.

Furthermore, through paint, I translate material things into self-examinations. I sift through what I own, pushing myself to understand how ordinary items— otherwise haphazard clutter—became meaningful to me; who made them meaningful for me.

Ella Cottier

I am interested in what we leave behind. The things we pay no attention to. Trash.

In the present day, where every environment has been impacted by the effects of the Anthropocene, how have the clashing worlds of “natural” and “unnatural” interacted? I am deeply drawn to how we perceive and experience the world around us – and how we define our place within it. There seems to be this idea in the modern age that people are not nature – “man-made”, and “unnatural” are words used to describe things produced by humans, so that it distinguishes us as other than our surroundings. We are not. We are nature and always will be.

Using a multifaceted approach, I explore the relationships between our selves and our environments in the modern day. Specifically, I focus on the items we discard and deem as “trash” and mix them in with more traditional depictions of landscape.

As of recent, I have been focused on the idea of archeology, specifically, how artifacts were once considered “modern”. These artifacts become buried, returned to the earth. What will our future artifacts be? What legacy will we leave? It appears that it’s a lot more than pottery sherds. Our time on this earth is dotted in layers of ash, carbon and plastic. And one day when history moves on without us, that will be our legacy. Though I don’t try to be too negative within my Art, climate change does play a large part in it, and I like to use this “future archeology” to represent the very real lasting impacts we have on our planet.

I care deeply about the environment, and I think that it is incredibly important that we connect with it, because we are part of it. In bridging the “natural” and “unnatural” I hope I can inspire people to think critically about their own role within these spaces.

Brenna Lam Kennedy

Brenna Lam Kennedy is a multimedia artist, photographer, and graphic designer whose practice is centered on the digitally constructed image. In her work, she explores themes of intimacy, relationship, and the imminent passing of time by way of digital manipulation and colour exploration. Proximity captures moments of closeness segregated in time. This photo series illuminates the personal relationship of the subjects and their ability to lose track of time in each other’s presence. Warm colours and digitally manipulated film qualities of the images create proximity with the subjects and their tie.

Proximity (middle panel), 2025, photography; vinyl on aluminum, 50.5 x 41.5 inches

Kate Nicholson

Kate Nicholson is an artist from Vernon, BC. Her work reflects on her childhood and disorienting feelings around becoming an adult. She uses family photos as a source of inspiration and a tool for reflection. Her images reflect her unease around growing up, and her homesickness for the simplicity of childhood. Her works are largely figurative, with some loosely abstracted elements, and often reference analog and early digital media through the use of unconventional composition and movement.

Fredrik Thacker

My body digests images rapidly; sometimes the freshly swallowed stimuli seems to snake their way back up like acid reflux, and I am left with something disfigured and hot to look back on.

Those who watch porn are, in a clear linguistic sense, consumers of the body. The flesh is visually cut apart by the camera and by our attention spans. Viewers are hungry to fast-forward, skip, repeat scenes, to time their climax with a fragment of intangible flesh that they deem appropriate and worthy enough to finish on. When we consume pornography, the bodies featured exist purely for our own satisfaction and are quickly forgotten about once the magazine or website is closed, the cum is cleaned up, the life is returned to. Is this a relationship that is entirely negative? Is it simply a part of our lived experience?

My current body of work is influenced by the pornography that I view and collect. Each image that I create is a disfigured collage or decades of desires and disgusts. My work simulates a process of regurgitation; it is an exploration into the intricacies of queer sex, intimacy, and the consumption of the pornographic image.

Pornography’s role within the queer world is major; not only did it once act as the reason to create spaces that were safe for queer cruising, it is also a large source of representation for queer and trans people beyond the small amounts seen in popular media. Through the use of iconography, narratives, and interior cruising spaces that exist as a source of respite for the queer and transgender community amidst political unrest, I am creating a space that exists both as safe and unsafe, a stranger and a loved one. The pornographic image, and the pornographic within the fine art world, simultaneously acts as this safe and unsafe place, dependent on the viewers’ perspectives.

I am exploring, as Linda Williams states in her seminal book HARD CORE: Power, Pleasure, and the “Frenzy of the Visible”, the “root of all the genre’s attempts to solicit what it can never be sure of: the out-of-control confession of pleasure, a hard-core “frenzy of the visible”” (50). I am tying this terminology directly to the usage of the painted image to portray a sexual venture. As one cannot visually nor concretely confirm what act is taking place or identify who is involved within my work, the painting genre, like pornography, is consistently attempting to depict a “frenzy” through a static or flat image. The paintings become representations of the desperate nature of the viewer to take in as much of the image, or, rather, pieces of bodies, as possible before climax.

I call back to the pornographic within my work because it is the quickest way to discover a society’s expectations and cultural boundaries at any given moment. The depiction of queer bodies engaged in abstracted sex acts, with an emphasis on a fast-paced paint application and mixed mediums, recreates the “viscerality” of sexual experiences through sensual spills of paint and layered bodies. I experience brief flings with each figure I am painting, just long enough to satisfy myself.

Works Cited Williams, Linda. HARD CORE: Power, Pleasure, and the “Frenzy of the Visible”. University of California Press, 1989.

Acknowledgement of a Third, 2025, acrylic, oil stick, and conte on linen, 72 x 48 inches