Wakin' On a Pretty Day

Sunny, oil on canvas, 2019

Whale Fall

Whale Fall

Strange bodies meet

where taxidermists stitch

by tall tales and lamplight

Flesh erupts in putrid neon,

and bones float softly in their sockets.

Filtering anodyne dreams, you sleep

wrapped in sweat-damp sheets

yellowed and rippling.

A wake attended by the hungry.

And I'm standing here,

sucking in iodine tears

for a fallen whale.

 "In this collaborative exhibition, artists Nicholas Crombach and Nurielle Stern explore subject matter derived from the complex, problematic and often mythologized human relationship to the natural world." On at the Clay & Glass Gallery until September 8, 2019

The blind boy and the loon

The blind boy and the loon.
Happy Nunavut Day! July 9 celebrates two acts passed in 1993, the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act and the Nunavut Act. Nunavut then officially became a territory on April 1, 1999. This beautiful animation is based on a traditional Inuit tale that explains the origins of the narwal and the perils of revenge.

Spray Don't Say

'Spray Don't Say' oil on canvas 2019

Love, live

Love, live. Oil on canvas, 2019

From Here to There

'From Here to There' oil on canvas, 24x36"

Centrepiece - Samara Contemporary

Apologue I (The Anteater) - Emily Jan

Resilience Plate - Kent Monkman

David Salazar

From the elaborate to the absurd, centrepieces can direct and command attention or initiate and guide conversation. A centrepiece can exist as a concept, such as a central political or social issue in a debate. It can aesthetically unite a space, or set the tone for a soirée. 

SAMARA Contemporary's inaugural exhibition joins a whole array of centrepieces, drawing the surreal and fantastical into a competing environments where each individual seeks the spotlight. The diversity of the works means that most function as their own 'centrepiece' though some more so than others. Described as curated islands, many of the works are transportive, fantastically bizarre dreamworlds where animals merge with plants, or fairytale like creatures come to life. David Salazars wall of floral-bird like forms could be crash landing or emerging from hibernation. Emily Jan's anteater bursts into bloom as they eye the onlooker as though this is a regular occurrence. Kent Monkman's "Resilience Plates" re-imagines a famous portrait of the Canadian fathers of confederation where a nude Miss Chief Eagle Testikle gestures in front of John A. in 150 years of indigenous resistance. 

Tear in the fabric

Pen and ink, 2019

Reach Out

                             ‘Reach Out’ pen and ink on watercolour 2019

Suburbia

Small World, a series of sculptural vignettes by Julia Hepburn, explores traditional aspects of motherhood through eerie, surrealist snapshots. These tiny dreamlike worlds explore the changing power dynamics and shifting of individual freedoms in the "often undervalued" role of domesticity. Each of the scenes is contained within a box, it's own small world in which the subject is distanced and isolated from the viewer, allowing us only a small glimpse into their reality. For myself, a woman with no experience of having children or the seismic shifts that come with it, this is especially apt. I have that small window into the experience but it is in many ways incomprehensible, surreal and disconcerting. I can imagine that the subject feels something of the same. 

This series is part of a wider exhibition, Suburbia, at the Clay and Glass Gallery exploring the domestic experience, how we live, and what is home.