ARTIST HUB

About the Artist Hub

Each year, Ocean Week Canada features artist-led talks, creative community workshops, concerts, and immersive experiences across the country. These artist-led creations, musical events, and activities flow into the national program of Ocean Week Canada events every June.

OWC 2023 Featured Artists: Performing Artists

The Public Service

The Public Service (formerly George Woodhouse and the Public Service) bring their love letters and goodbye notes in the form of indie folk-rock songs — on May 26th they’ll bid adieu to spring and welcome back the summer… Dartmouth style, with a free concert! Since performing at the 2023 World Junior Fan Fest, The Public Service are heading into their biggest summer yet, with upcoming performances at Full Circle Festival, Stan Fest, Granville Green and The Shore Club.

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Fortunate Ones

Fortunate Ones is a Canadian indie folk duo from St. John’s, Newfoundland, consisting of Andrew James O’Brien and Catherine Allan. Andrew and Catherine were raised in different parts of Newfoundland Island, with Andrew hailing from Mount Pearl and Catherine from Corner Brook. However, fate brought them together in St. John’s in 2010, where their paths crossed, and they began singing together.

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Geneviève Dupéré – écH2osystème

écH2osystème is a maritime acrobatic research-creation project on the St. Lawrence. Led by Geneviève Dupéré, this project makes this ecosystem resonate through the echoes of more than 300 collaborators from the marine science and freshwater sectors, fishing and the maritime and port industry. To cross from the river to the stage, the O of écH2osystème is hooked to a crane, above the St. Lawrence.

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The Public Service

Fortunate Ones

Geneviève Dupéré – écH2osystème

OWC 2023 Featured Artists: Visual Artists

Christine Fitzgerald

Christine Fitzgerald is a photo-based artist who grew up in the Eastern Townships in Québec, who now lives and works in Ottawa, Canada. Her work is inspired by her French-Canadian roots and her love of the natural world. She sees photography as a medium for creating unique physical objects. This growing conviction is the basis of her current artistic practice, as she explores the possibilities of using antiquated methods of image and photographic print making as a means of expression.

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Meg O’Hara

Meg O’Hara is a contemporary Canadian landscape painter, she holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of British Columbia in Art History and Theory. In 2022 she was an Artist-in-Residence during an Ocean Conservation Expedition with the SOI Foundation. In December of 2022, she was one of ten Canadians chosen for a delegation to Antarctica with the SOI Foundation looking at Canada’s involvement in the Antarctic Treaty System and the impact of climate change on the region.

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Karen Tamminga-Paton

Karen, an artist and educator based in Alberta, revels in the thrill of adventure and cherishes strong community bonds while actively seeking out beauty. Karen’s artistic inspiration stems from the evolving narrative of her life, frequently sparked by thought-provoking questions or enlightening observations that stimulate contemplation. Karen is joining The Allied Arts Council of Pincher Creek for their event From Headwaters to Oceans: How Water Connects us with the community in Pincher Creek, AB.

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Christine Fitzgerald

Meg O’Hara

Karen Tamminga-Paton

OWC 2022 Featured Artists

Corina Brdar

Corina Brdar (M.Sc.) is a Great Lakes-based ecologist and passionate nature journaler. She led nature journaling workshops on the theme “How to Draw Water,” guiding participants in noticing the sights, sounds, and movement around them and to give visual form to water-related experience.

Geneviève Dupéré

Geneviève Dupéré navigates at the confluence of maritime vitality and acrobatic performance. She presented her work-in-progress From River to Stage featuring écH2osystème, a documentary-type performing arts project. The title refers to the marine ecosystem of the St. Lawrence River, to the richness of its waters, and how it echoes in our society.

Christine Fitzgerald

Christine Fitzgerald is acclaimed for her riveting images made by integrating obsolete photographic techniques and modern technology. She has been working with scientists at the River Institute in Cornwall, Ontario, to photograph species at risk. She discussed her approach to this important advocacy work and lead a public workshop teaching participants how to create their own photograms using light sensitive paper. The resulting images were arranged as a large-scale collage and installed on a wall indoors to review and discuss in the context of conservation efforts.

Patrick Thompson

Patrick Thompson has exhibited internationally, working in painting, sculpture, printmaking, and public installation. His social practice work in Embassy of Imagination and artist collective PA System (with Alexa Hatanaka) has relied on north-south collaboration. Patrick works and lives primarily between Kinngait (Nunavut) and the National Capital Region.

Dominique Normand

Dominique Normand created a powerful series of paintings based on her 2017 artist-in-residency on the Students on Ice Foundation Canada C3 Expedition. Aboard the icebreaker Polar Prince, Dominique travelled from St. John’s, Newfoundland, to Nain, Labrador. She discussed her experiences as an ocean artist-researcher and examples of her work were featured at various locations through the course of the Ocean Festival.

Robi Smith

Robi Smith is a community-engaged artist working principally on coastal ecosystem and climate impact themes. She introduced her work-in-progress Inland: An Unnatural History, and invited crowd-sourced “found object” contributions across the duration of the Ocean Festival. She also created a site-specific installation made from the collected “specimens,” encouraging people to explore the waterways in their local community and look closely for a small object that, if not collected, could end up travelling all the way to the ocean.