Three artists unveil summer explorations of matter, memory, form and narrative
August 17, 2026 • WestmountMag.ca
The Visual Arts Centre (VAC) will present the work of three ceramic artists-in-residence at the McClure Gallery in Westmount on Thursday, August 20, from 6 to 8 p.m. Selected by a jury for the summer 2026 residency, Emma Ongman, Quinn Thibault and Vinicius de Aguiar Sanchez will share their works in progress in a presentation followed by a discussion.
Although their approaches differ, the three artists use ceramics as a space for experimentation and transformation.
The VAC’s artist-in-residence program provides creators with a fully equipped ceramics studio and encourages exchange within a community of practice devoted to clay. For summer 2026, a jury selected Ongman, Thibault and Sanchez to develop their research in this setting.
Their practices approach ceramics in distinct ways: as a support for images and narratives; as sculpture informed by the natural world; and as a means of addressing memory, the body and practices of healing.
Visual artist Emma Ongman works at the intersection of photography and ceramics. Using obsolete technologies, recycled materials and experimental processes, she explores productivity, obsolescence and value. During the summer, she continued developing a body of work that combines hand-built ceramic frames with photographs transferred onto reclaimed ceramic tiles. These works construct fictional narratives from everyday life and vernacular photography, transforming ordinary materials into sites of memory, healing and play.
A graduate with distinction from the University of Guelph, Ongman has received support from the Fonds de recherche du Québec, the Ontario Arts Council and the Guelph Arts Council. This fall, she will begin a Master of Fine Arts in Studio Arts at Concordia University.
Quinn Thibault made ceramics their principal medium after exploring film, writing, sewing and papier-mâché. Largely self-taught, they create works that are at once alluring and unsettling, functional and awkward. Their visual language draws on the defensive mechanisms of plants and animals, as well as horror and science-fiction films, Art Nouveau and wrought iron.
During the residency, Thibault developed new sculptural forms and hanging planters made from two components assembled once suspended. Both organic and artificial in appearance, these flower-vessels seem to emerge from a futuristic Earth.
Vinicius de Aguiar Sanchez — also known as Vico — is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher. His practice encompasses animation, printmaking, sculpture and sound, drawing on diasporic imaginaries, Latin American folklore, speculative fiction and contemporary technologies.
At the VAC, Sanchez is developing a series of sculptures inspired by ex-votos and milagros, votive objects associated with the fulfilment of a promise or recovery from illness. Through enlarged anatomical fragments, hybrid figures and relief elements, he transforms the body into a symbolic site of memory, resilience and transformation. Ceramics become both medium and metaphor, evoking fragility, repair and rituals of care.
About the Visual Arts Centre
Founded in 1946, the Visual Arts Centre is a bilingual, not-for-profit cultural organization that brings together Canada’s largest independent bilingual art school, the McClure Gallery and the ARTreach cultural mediation program.
Through more than 300 courses and close to 4,000 annual registrations, the VAC has contributed for nearly 80 years to arts education, creative practice and the vitality of Montréal’s artistic community.
About the McClure Gallery
The McClure Gallery is located within the Visual Arts Centre. It is open Tuesday through Friday, from noon to 6 p.m., and Saturday, from noon to 5 p.m. For information, call 514-488-9558, extension 226, or email.
350 Victoria Avenue, Westmount
info@visualartscentre.ca
centredesartsvisuels.ca
Images: Courtesy of the Visual Arts Centre
