HAMILTON, ON.- Animals Across Discipline, Time & Space brings together works by five North American artists who use animal imagery to critically and dramatically address how we animals interact with the world around us.
The exhibition was conceived and curated by
McMaster history professor Tracy McDonald following a 2018 workshop she led that focused on human and nonhuman animals. Discussions revealed a clear connection among art, activism, the environment and animals, and inspired her to reach out to Carol Podedworny at the museum.
“This exhibition addresses animals and their fates in our current climate and at our hands,” says McDonald. “The artists engage matters of colonialism, urban versus wild, extinction, pollution, livestock and the many outlandish impositions we burden nonhuman animals with for our own perceived needs and gains.”
Animals Across Discipline, Time & Space shares concerns with the 2018-2019 Anthropocene exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the National Gallery of Canada.
“We need to see animals and the environment as a single integrated whole,” adds McDonald.
Animals Across Discipline, Time & Space includes sculptural installations inside and outside of the museum by Mary Anne Barkhouse, the interactive Urban Wild Coyote Project installation by Kathryn Eddy, large scale drawings by Erica Gajewski, a film installation by Hamilton-based artist Derek Jenkins and selected photographs by Colleen Plumb from her series Animals Are Outside Today.
The exhibition is complemented by a 26-page publication/guide with essays by Mandy-Suzanne Wong.
McDonald has also organized an interdisciplinary conference Animals Across Discipline, Time & Space, March 19-21, 2020 at McMaster University. The conference and exhibition are supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Socrates Project, the Faculty of Humanities Dean’s Office, and the Wilson Institute for Canadian History.
ARTISTS
Mary Anne Barkhouse was born in Vancouver. Her mother is from the Nimpkish band, Kwakiutl First Nation of Alert Bay, and her father is of German and British descent from Nova Scotia. Barkhouse is descended from a long line of internationally recognised Northwest Coast artists, including Ellen Neel, Mungo Martin and Charlie James. She graduated with Honours from the Ontario College of Art in Toronto and has exhibited widely across Canada and the USA. As a continuation of her personal and family experiences with land and water stewardship, Barkhouse’s work examines ecological concerns and cultural intersections through animal imageries. Inspired by issues surrounding empire and survival, her installations consider the self as a response to histories and environments. She is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Her work resides in numerous private and public collections.
American artist Kathryn Eddy uses painting, drawing, collage, photography, sculpture, writing and immersive sound installation to explore complexities of relationships between nonhuman and human animals. She is a vocal activist against racism, domestic violence and animal abuse: her work, exhibited throughout the USA, challenges linked oppressions and the patriarchal power structures that perpetuate them. Along with Janell O’Rourke and L.A. Watson, Eddy is a founder of ArtAnimalAffect, an artist coalition dedicated to bridging art and activism within critical animal studies. In 2017, the group curated and participated in The Sexual Politics of Meat, an exhibition at the Animal Museum in Los Angeles. Eddy also served as co-author and co-editor of The Art of the Animal: Fourteen Women Artists Explore the Sexual Politics of Meat (Lantern Books, 2015).
Erica Gajewski is a Canadian visual artist who engages with issues surrounding biodiversity loss, human-nonhuman relations and socio-ecological systems. Her artistic practice employs a variety of materials, from traditional drawing and painting to soft sculpture, installation work and an expanded practice rooted in land. Gajewski completed a BFA and MFA at the Savannah College of Art and Design in the US and is pursuing a PhD in Environmental Studies at York University. Her practice-based, interdisciplinary research brings multispecies studies, environmental studies and cultural studies into conversation with the visual arts. Her pieces are held in many private and public collections, including collections at the Toronto Zoo and the US Department of State’s Moscow and Kabul Embassies.
Derek Jenkins is a filmmaker and lab technician based in Hamilton, Ontario. His practice is handmade, personal and documentary, with an interest in labour, ecology and social reproduction. His films have screened widely, most recently at Media City Film Festival, Experiments in Cinema, Fracto Film Encounter and Antimatter [Media Art]. His sound work, The E6 Process, was installed at Factory Media Centre in 2018 as part of HAVN’s Sonic Art Series. His film Contents was included in the 2019 exhibition Minding the Archive at Hamilton Artists Inc. Jenkins is an MFA student in Documentary Media at Ryerson University and works at Niagara Custom Lab.
Colleen Plumb makes photographs, videos and public video projections investigating the contradictory relationships that humans form with other animals. Her work is held in several permanent collections and has been widely exhibited. She has written for the Center for Humans and Nature as a contributor to their book, City Creatures (University of Chicago Press, 2015). Her first photography monograph, Animals Are Outside Today, was published by Radius Books in 2011. Thirty Times a Minute, on the plight of captive elements, followed from Radius in 2019. Plumb’s work has appeared in LitHub, Psychology Today, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Village Voice, New York Times LENS, Time Lightbox, Oxford American and Photo District News. She has taught photography and video at Columbia College, Chicago, since 1999.
