a juried exhibition

November 23, 2023 – March 17, 2024

Andrew McKay, Anne Cavanagh, Anshul Roy, Brad Copping, Bukunmi Oyewole, Calla Moya, David Bigg, Don Kwan Elayne Windsor, Ella Verner, Farzaneh Ali-Hosseini, Fiona Crangle, Garrett Gilbart, George Hall, Greg McHarg Heather Doughty, Henry Fernandes, Henry Gordon, Holly Edwards, James Matheson, Jeffrey Macklin, Jenny Kastner  Jill Letten, Jordan Dunlop, Julie Hinton Walker, Justin Mezzapelli, Katherine Pittman, Kei Ito, Kelly O’Neill
Kesang Nanglu, Laurel Paluck, Lisa Martini-Dunk, Maria Moreno, Marianne Collins, Mary-Anne Johnston
Megan Ward, Melissa Neil, Michael Vahey, Miguel Hernandez Autorino, Molly Moldovan, Niloo Inalouei
Parisa Heydari, Patrick Moore, Peer Christensen, Peter Barron, Rob Niezen, Rod Mireau, Roshan James
Spencer J Harrison, Stephanie Ford Forrester, Steven Vero, Tayler Morencie, Tim Forbes, Yangyang Pan
and Zenon Bigg

 

“Art is a kind of mining,” he said. “The artist a variety of prospector searching for the sparkling silver of meaning in the earth.” ― Jane Urquhart, The Underpainter, 1998 [1]

As the Art Gallery of Peterborough enters its 50^th anniversary year in 2024, we are digging into our archives and reconnecting with our founders to engage with our past. Looking through old photographs and archives offers us a chance to marvel at where we’ve been and where we’ve come from; at what has changed and what remains. Sifting through filing cabinets packed with layers of paperwork, notes, and images feels a bit like an archeological dig. We make careful work of it, pausing when we unearth something precious, like a handwritten letter on fine paper or a photograph with younger versions of familiar faces.

This juried exhibition invited artists to submit original works of art that resonate with themes of legacy, archives, nostalgia, ghosts, memory, survival, and growth.

Tree rings and stratified rock mark the passage of time and changing conditions, like layers of once fashionable wallpaper. The strata of our lives can be studied and excavated, unleashing seams of joy, curiosity, wonder, or grief. Throughout three ramps and the main gallery, works by fifty-five artists bring forward the findings of their own excavations.

[Ghosts] are, in their very bodies (or lack thereof) inhabiting the present and the past, at once. A ghost is a memory.
– GennaRose Nethercott, 2022 [2]

 

We would like to thank each of the 140 artists who submitted work to this call. We were blown away. On behalf of the Art Gallery of Peterborough, as well as the jurors who helped us select work for this exhibition, Clayton Windatt, jes sachse, and Kelly Egan: Thank you.

 

[1] Jane Urquhart, The Underpainter, Penguin Random House Canada, 1998.

[2] GennaRose Nethercott, “‘A Ghost Is a Memory.’ On Bodies, Belief, and the Places Ghost Stories Live.” Literary Hub, 2022.

 

---

Meet the Jurors:

Clayton Windatt is a curator, multi-arts performer and filmmaker living and working in Ontario. As the former Executive Director of the White Water Gallery, Aboriginal Curatorial Collective and current Executive Director of the Artist-Run Centres and Collectives Conference, Clayton has an extensive history working in Artist-Run Culture and Community Arts. Clayton maintains contracts with various governments, colleges and non-government organizations as a writer, consultant and knowledge broker negotiating between peoples, places and communities. Clayton works in/with community, design, communications, curation, performance, theatre, technology, and consulting, and is a very active artist.

jes sachse is an artist, writer and dancer who addresses the negotiations of bodies moving in public/private space and the work of their care. Often found marrying poetry with large scale sculptural forms, their work has been presented and supported by Dancemakers, the Centre de Création et Recherche O Vertigo (Montréal), Harbourfront Centre, among other centres. Their work has appeared in and been profiled by NOW Magazine, The Peak, Canadian Art, C Magazine, CV2 -The Canadian Journal of Poetry and Critical Writing, Mobilizing Metaphor: Art, Culture and Disability Activism in Canada, and the 40th Anniversary Edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves. jes is currently living in Tkaronto,

Kelly Egan (she/her) is an associate professor in Cultural Studies and Media Studies at Trent University whose work focuses on materiality and obsolescence. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (2001) in Mass Communication from Carleton University, a Master of Fine Arts (2006) in Film/Video from Bard College (2006), a Certificate in Film Preservation from the Selznick School of Film Preservation at George Eastman Museum (2012), and a Master of Arts (2003) and PhD (2013) in Communication and Culture from the York/Ryerson Joint Graduate Programme in Communication and Culture. Her award-winning experimental films have exhibited extensively nationally and internationally at festivals/venues including the Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Images Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival, and TIFF Lightbox, amongst many others. She has lived and worked in Peterborough since 2014.

 

---

RELATED EVENT:

Opening Reception: November 23, 2023, from 7:00 – 9:00 PM

Curator Talk & Tour: Saturday, February 24, 2024 at 2:00 PM

 

Recording: Curator Talk, seams and strata

In this video, Fynn Leitch, Curator at the Art Gallery of Peterborough, gives a talk flowing from the exhibition: seams and strata and the AGP’s 50th anniversary.

This talk was recorded on Saturday, February 24, 2024. Videography by Zach Ward, We Design Group, Peterborough.