Current Exhibitions

September 16 – December 22, 2017

Opening reception: Friday, September 15, 6-10pm

Guest curated by Jennifer Rudder

The artistic practice of Mary Anne Barkhouse is deeply engaged with environmental and indigenous issues and incorporates in a central role a visual iconography of animals. Barkhouse situates her work between the two worlds of the human and the natural and employs the beaver, raven, wolf, and coyote as symbols of the ability to adapt, persist, regenerate, and repair throughout endless environmental incursions. Her skilled handling of traditional sculptural materials such as wood, bronze, porcelain, metal, and glass bring both a refined sensibility and serious tone to her often-playful installations. The works reflect on our skewed experience of nature as a resource for human needs rather than as an ecosystem with its own intrinsic value.

In ‘Le rêve aux loups’ (The Dream of Wolves), Barkhouse invokes the animal inhabitants of the land and the flamboyant interiors of the Sun King, Louis XIV of France, in artworks that reveal the transitory nature of empire, and highlight both the triumphs and betrayal that delineate history north of the 49th parallel.

‘Le rêve aux loups’ originated at the Koffler Gallery, Toronto.

September 16 – December 22, 2017
Opening reception: Friday, September 15, 6–10pm

‘A Very Long Line’ by artist collective Postcommodity is an immersive four-channel video installation comprised of four screens of moving images, featuring desert landscapes, that are framed by the constant presence of a fence.

Viewed from the perspective of what appears to be a moving car, the video has a disorienting effect. This sense of unease is heightened by a discordant soundtrack, a composition created by the artists from objects and improvised hacked instruments. Shot along a portion of the border ‘fence’ between Douglas, Arizona, USA and Agua Prieta in Sonora, Mexico we see variations of the fence with its surrounding neighbourhoods and landscapes – although it is not clear which side we are viewing from and to. Beyond documenting a section of the US-Mexico border, ‘A Very Long Line’ captures the deep complexity of border-related issues, with its varied pacing and uncomfortable noise, it acts as a metaphor, critiquing, and asking questions on colonization and contemporary culture.