BIO
Michelle Bunton is a multi-media artist/emerging curator/residency facilitator/arts worker/derby jammer residing as an uninvited guest in Katarokwi-Kingston. They currently work with the Vulnerable Media Lab, and previously held a curatorial position at Agnes Etherington Art Centre. Bunton is one of four co-founders of the micropress Small Potatoes, one half of the artist-duo Tear Jerkers, and assists with Ayatana’s Biophilium: Science School for Artists. Recent projects include the residency and exhibition Drift: Art and Dark Matter, the exhibition Shelby Lisk: Shé:kon se’onhwentsyà:ke ratinékere tsi nihá:ti nè:ne yesanorónhkhwa (there are still people in the world that love you), and the residency Mycophilia: Mycology for Artists. They hold a BFA from Western University alongside a UBC Award of Achievement in Creative Writing.Bunton playfully embraces the potential of failure, uncertainty and decay in their practice. Prioritizing femi-queer science, SF (speculative fabulation/science fiction) and diffractive pedagogies, they aim to embody a collaborative praxis that centers queer kinship. Recent work turns to slime mold/lichen/fungi and their attendant characteristics of collective action, decentralized organization and abject recomposition of matter.
ARTIST COLLECTIVES
Tear Jerkers is an artist collective creating works dealing with themes of public intimacy, shared embarrassment and queer karaoke. Currently they are working on a project series called Everything sounds like crying eventually. Michelle Bunton and G H Y Cheung are artists currently based out of Katarokwi-Kingston and Hong Kong respectively - they met while attending an artist residency (YOGS) in 2017.Small Potatoes is a micropress, creative network, and programming initiative operated by four artists—Michelle Bunton, GHY Cheung, Ella Gonzales and Carina Magazzeni. We are interested in supporting creative projects by fellow artists / writers / scholars that take the form of printed matter—in collaboration with these peers, we make chapbooks, zines, and artist books. We believe that collectively making and sharing work generates the intimacy necessary for networks of care within our communities. Our micropress takes its name from the idiom “small potatoes,” referring to its tiny roots and dedication to remaining a small operation. It also pokes fun at the idea of a small object being insignificant. Instead, Small Potatoes embraces the small-scale, local, and amateur. We are dedicated to the modest DIY ethos associated with printed ephemera—we believe this way of working lends itself to skill-sharing, alternative channels for circulating work, and stranger, queerer, less-commonly broached themes.