Michelle Bellemare has exhibited nationally and internationally over the past decade. Her work explores how materials can embody emotional or physical vulnerability. Provoking the body’s inherent reflexes, Bellemare’s approach is relational, experiential and phenomenological. Bellemare’s sculptural works and installations have been included in numerous group and solo exhibitions, including a solo survey of her work at the Kofller Gallery, Toronto, in January 2004 and the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge, in September 2004. Bellemare has received numerous awards and grants from the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts. Bellemare received a Chalmers Fellowship (2003) and was also shortlisted in 2004 for the K.M Hunter Arts Award. In 2005, her work Tease was exhibited in Madrid, Spain, at ARCO as part of the New Territories exhibition organized by the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art and Peak Gallery. A Collaborative publication, entitled blindside, produced in by the Koffler Gallery and the Southern Alberta Art Gallery was launched in late 2005, documenting her works from 1997-2004. Michelle Bellemare lives and works in Toronto.

Doormat - (2007) rubber welcome mat, gum

Post-it note - (2006) found post-it note, coffee stained post-it pad 3" x 3" x .5"

Casket - (2007) - detail 78" x 23.5" x 16" 
Copolyester vacuum formed tupperware tray and removable lid

Casket - (2007) - detail 78" x 23.5" x 16" 
Copolyester vacuum formed tupperware tray and removable lid

Google it - (2007) detail

Muffle
Muffle is a new body of work by Michelle Bellemare that explores notions of anxiety and desire emerging from the pressures of contemporary life. In particular, it examines the power these can exert over our psyches, and observes that suppression can make anxiety all the more powerful.
Reflection and human connection have increasingly been replaced by efficiency, consumption and conformity – often leaving us disconnected, and unable to reflect. Bellemare has subverted common objects and technologies – usually associated with efficiency and communication – to evoke senses of doubt, loss and anxiety.

The works suggest traces of bodily-based performances: a six foot long disposable Tupperware container resembles
a casket; a coffee-stained pad of Post-It notes reveals the word “floundering”; a calculator tape adds 1+1+1 until it reaches 365; the accumulation of chewing gum discarded on a rubber “Welcome” mat suggests the opposite of its original meaning; and a Google search asks a question that a search engine could not begin to answer.

Through modifying familiar materials, Bellemare attempts to construct conditions that lend form and voice to the psychological residues of contemporary experience. Ambiguity and contradiction often form the catalyst for her works. “What is the value of an individual’s life?” she asks, “What value remains in making real human connections? Are we consuming -– or being consumed?”