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Summary
Public Studio is the collective art practice of filmmaker Elle Flanders and architect Tamira Sawatzky. Public Studio creates and exhibits lens-based works, films, and immersive installations, and creates large-scale public art works. Grounded in the personal, social, and political implications of landscape, their multidisciplinary practice engages themes of ecology and urbanization through the activation of site. Based in Toronto, Canada, Public Studio often works in collaboration with other artists, regionally and internationally. Since forming Public Studio, Sawatzky and Flanders have garnered critical attention, having been featured in a number of prominent group and solo exhibitions, and winning public art commissions and awards including the 2013 Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts Award. A publication about their work is forthcoming in 2018.

Elle Flanders
Elle Flanders completed her PhD at York University and has mentored with some of the art world’s most notable artists, including Mary Kelly and Martha Rosler, at the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Studies Program and Rutgers University, respectively. Flanders has a strong history of community engagement and has created award-winning films and installations. Her longstanding interest in the socio-political realm and how it relates to landscape have led her, in collaboration with Sawatzky, to produce site-specific public art installations that are immersive and re-examine the role of audience as participant.

Tamira Sawatzky
Tamira Sawatzky is an architect by training, having worked for the firm MJMA in Toronto from 1999–2010, designing large-scale, award-winning, community-based projects. Sawatzky began a collaborative art practice with Elle Flanders in 2009, bringing a spatial focus that contributes to the development of immersive installations and multifaceted exhibitions. Sawatzky’s architectural background lends itself to an emphasis on the structural, provoking a conversation between art and architecture and the politics of landscape and place.

Collaborators
Public Studio often collaborates with other artists, such as Anna Friz, Etel Adnan, Eshrat Erfanian, and Adrian Blackwell , among others, who contribute to or lead specific projects. The commitment to a collaborative and multi-faceted base of knowledge, experience, and creative practice is critical to Public Studio's work.

Exhibitions and Public Artworks
Public Studio has an extensive exhibition record and has been awarded bids on a number of major public artwork projects, both locally and internationally. The contract for their recent notable work My 9am is Your 10pm, a site-specific installation and public artwork located at the Canadian Embassy in Paris, France, was awarded to Public Studio from among a shortlist of renowned international artists. The work explores the concept of people moving across lands and continents, looking to the horizon in search of a future. It is an immersive work consisting of 48 LED screens laid out in two rows of 24, displaying a horizon, and fusing the fields of time and perception. Other works of note are: What We lose in Metrics, The New Field , Migrant Choir , and Drone Wedding. The following are abbreviated lists of notable recent exhibitions and public artworks.

Awards and Accolades
Since forming Public Studio, Sawatzky and Flanders have garnered critical attention, winning a number of public art commissions and awards, including the 2013 Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts Award, and the 2016 Artist in Residence at the Art Gallery of Ontario. A publication about their work is slated to be published by Black Dog Press in 2018.

Selected Reviews and Further Reading
Carlesimo, Teresa. "Public Studio" (exhibition review) in Public 54, 2016. pp192–193. Samuel, Clare. "Public Studio," (exhibition review) in Border Crossings, 2016. p92. The Artful City. "The Artful City: An Interview with Public Studio," theartfulcity.org, July 21, 2016. Canadian Art. (Review), in Canadian Art, Summer 2016. p118. “5 Things We Want to See at Toronto’s Nuit Blanche,” Canadian Art, October 2015. Balzer, David. “Public Studio Turns Images into Witnesses at O’Born Contemporary,” Canadian Art, July 2015. “5 Shows to See at the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival,” Canadian Art, May 2015. Loney, Heather. "WorldPride art exhibits showcase celebration, solidarity and loss," Global News, June 2014. [Work featured in] Lord, Barry.Art & Power: How Culture Changes, Chicago: AAM Press, 2014.