2026 JRSP Artist-Scholar Residency Announced:
Aaron Richmond: Meeting the Park through Relays of Attention
The University of Victoria (UVic), in partnership with the Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park (JRSP), is pleased to announce that Montréal based artist, scholar and curator Aaron Richmond has been selected as the 2026 recipient of the prestigious UVic x JRSP Artist-Scholar Residency.]
Richmond’s practice situates in the intersection of visual art, architecture and performance studies. He holds a PhD in Architectural History and Theory from McGill University and is currently an affiliated Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University. Following his residency at the JRSP, Richmond will be the Leonard A. Lauder Fellow in Modern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
“At the Rubinoff Sculpture Park, I hope to engage the park’s sculptural environment as a living archive, while also treating it as a prompt for the continued exploration of material practices, ideas, and gestures. While in residence, I will develop a body of work that moves, like a relay, from landscape-architectural drawings to the creation of lightweight temporary sculptures, which will in turn function as the setting (or scenography) for performative readings of texts drawn from the learning centre and archives.”
With this work, Richmond hopes to provoke a broader set of questions: about art’s continued relevance as a space for experimentation; about its dynamic interplay between graphic, formal, textual and performative modes of attention; and about the kinds of fleeting scenography suited to this moment of social and environmental uncertainty.
See his work at www.aaron-richmond.com and attend his free open studio event at 12pm on July 16th at the Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park. “For the open-studio event, I will share my working process while guiding visitors through an attentional walk: an embodied on-site demonstration of the relays, prompts, and curiosities that animate it.”
Richmond was among the 56 distinguished international artists and scholars who applied for this year’s residency. Following his three week stay on Hornby Island this July, he will return to Victoria in November to present his works, offer student engagement at UVic, and host a public talk during the week of November 17, 2026.
Keep an eye out for updates on the residency and event dates at www.jrsp.uvic.ca, @uvic_rubinoff and https://finearts.uvic.ca/research/ and @uvicarts.
