Michael Fernandes

Michael Fernandes is many things: an interdisciplinary artist, an educator, an improvisational musician, a gifted ping pong player and an avid garlic farmer, among others. Born in Trinidad in 1944, he immigrated to Canada in the 1960’s, living in Montreal and Toronto before settling in Nova Scotia. Michael has taught at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) since 1973. In describing his work Michael rejects many notions associated with a conventional understanding of art. For him there is no framing of what art is and is not, everyday actions and objects all have something to contribute. In turn, he considers his life an evolving artwork, something which can be shared with a public audience but does not have to be. These ideas are explored through painting, photography, sculpture, video, performance, and installation.

No Sphere (1988), Michael Fernandes’ work at the Embassy Cultural House was a two-part installation, occupying one of the hotel’s 2nd floor guests' rooms and spilling over into the main floor gallery/cafe area. Conceived as a meditation on dreaming, the hotel guest room featured a large pink wall painting made to be seen through a full-length mirror. Inscribed within the painting was a modern-day parable about a man’s journey to rid himself of the fly he had eaten by mistake. In the story several doctors are unable to cure the man’s condition (the buzzing fly inside) with modern medicine. He finds relief when a stranger asks him to lay down with eyes closed and point to the fly’s location. The stranger places a glass with a freshly caught fly on the spot and convinces the patient he is cured. The choice to physically carve the letters into the wall was made in reference to the inscribed signatures of former tenants found in the room’s closet. The second component to No Sphere consisted of a set of printed placemats that were used in the ECH gallery/cafe area. Written on the placemats was a related poem on dreaming, made to capture the attention of those who had just awoken, perhaps still thinking about their own dreams from the night past.
Michael had previously exhibited at the Forest City Gallery in the early 1980's when Ron Benner was the gallery's manager. During his visit to London at that time, Ron took Michael to the clay cliffs of Lake Erie, between Plum Point and Patrick Point - where upon after descending the heights of the cliffs, Michael found a fallen tree to rest upon where he had a view of the sky and the sound of the waves.

Michael Fernandes has exhibited extensively in galleries across Canada and internationally. His work was included in Traffic: Conceptual Art in Canada 1965-1980, the nationally touring exhibition which positioned his work within the concepts of Fluxus movement and conceptual art. In 2020, he received the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts. His iphone work was the first work submitted to the open-call exhibition Hiding in Plain Sight. Please visit his website for more information.

Michael Fernandes, "Writing on the Wall", 2020, Iphone video

Recent Work

Pinocchio's Assistant, 2020

Before and After the Electric Car, 2020

Grow Rock, 2020

This One, 2020

EDITORIAL TEAM

ONLINE FOUNDER
Tariq Hassan Gordon

COFOUNDERS & CURATORIAL ADVISORS
Jamelie Hassan & Ron Benner

ADVISORY CIRCLE
Samer Abdelnour, Wyn Geleynse, Fern Helfand, S F Ho, Lorraine Klaasen, Judith Rodger, Ruth Skinner, Mary Lou and Dan Smoke,  and Lucas Stenning

COORDINATING EDITORS
Tariq Hassan Gordon & Olivia Mossuto

WEB DESIGN & SOCIAL MEDIA
Tariq Hassan Gordon, Ira Kazi, Olivia Mossuto, Niloufar Salimi,   JoAnna Weil

VIRTUAL TOUR
Andreas Buchwaldt

PRINT PUBLICATIONS
Blessy Augustine, Shelley Kopp, Olivia Mossuto

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Andreas Buchwaldt, Blessy Augustine, Anahí González, Ira Kazi, Shelley Kopp, Ashar Mobeen, Niloufar Salimi,  Jenna Rose Sands, JoAnna Weil & Michelle Wilson.

OUR STORY

Artists Jamelie Hassan and Ron Benner and jazz musician Eric Stach founded the Embassy Cultural House (1983-1990) located in the restaurant portion of the Embassy Hotel at 732 Dundas Street in East London. Other former members of the board were: Debrann Eastabrook, Henry Eastabrook, Sharron Forrest, Wyn Geleynse, Janice Gurney, Jean Hay (1929 - 2008), Doug Mitchell, Kim Moodie, Gerard Pas, Peter Rist, Wanda Sawicki, Jean Spence and Jennie White. In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Embassy Cultural House was re-envisioned as a virtual artist-run space and website.

This project is supported by the Ontario Arts Council and the London Arts Council through the City of London's Community Arts Investment Program.

Thank you to our partners

E M B A S S Y C U L T U R A L H O U S E . C A

London, Ontario is on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabeg, Haudenosaunee, Lenape, Attawandaron and Huron-Wendat peoples, at the forks of Deshkan Ziibi (Antler River), an area subject to the Dish with One Spoon Wampum and other treaties.