Thursday August 17:Please join us in our gallery for artist talks featuring the faculty of the 2023 Summer Institute: Slow Wonderings, Maggie Groat and Crystal Mowry.

FACULTY: 

Maggie Groat
Maggie Groat is a visual artist who makes images and objects from found and salvaged materials. Her work considers the utility of images, possibilities of alternative archives, and the transformative, ritual potential of reuse, while living in times of climate emergency. Her methodologies are informed by states of being in-between, intuition, acts of care, responsiveness, decolonization, Indigenous Futurism, strategies of collage, and hopeful speculation. Many of Groat’s recent projects, including STSTS (Western Front, Vancouver), Deep time, portals, particles & pulls (Armory Street, Toronto), flowers also gardens, gardens also seeds (AKA, Saskatoon) and The Future is Dark…I think (La Datcha, Project Space Festival, Berlin), engage with public space through considering researched based, deep time approaches to working site-specifically. She has taught at Emily Carr University, Algoma University, and in the role of Lecturer and Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto.

Crystal Mowry
Crystal Mowry (she/her) is a curator and collaborator based in Treaty 4 (Regina). Her work often explores the tension between perceived authenticity and troubled forms of representation. As a curator operating primarily within the context of a public art museum, she treats her role as equal parts co-conspirator and translator, often seeking ways to support artists in the development of new, site-responsive projects. Her curatorial work includes group exhibitions such as The Brain is wider than the Sky, I’ll be your Mirror, The Perennials, What the Bat Knows, and Romancing the Anthropocene, one of the three zones commissioned by the City of Toronto for its annual Nuit Blanche event. Her solo projects with artists Maggie Groat, Ernest Daetwyler, and Deanna Bowen have received Exhibition of the Year Awards from the Ontario Association of Art Galleries (now Galleries Ontario Galeries). Her writing has appeared in various artist-focused publications on the work of internationally active artists Shary Boyle, Brendan Fernandes, and August Clintberg. Mowry held the position of Senior Curator at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery where she oversaw the gallery’s exhibitions, collections, and publishing activities for over a decade. She currently holds the position of Director of Programs at the MacKenzie Art Gallery.

Guests

Nic Wilson (they/he) is an artist and writer who was born in the Wolastoqiyik territory known as Fredericton, NB in 1988. He graduated with a BFA from Mount Allison University, Mi’kmaq territory, in 2012, and an MFA from the University of Regina, Treaty Four Territory, in 2019 where he was a SSHRC graduate fellow. In 2021 they were long listed for the Sobey Art Award as a representative of the Prairies and the North. Fluent across media, Wilson creates videos, performances and artist books, and writes essays and art criticism. Their work often engages time, queer lineage, decay, and the distance between art practice and literature. They were the 2022 writer in residence for G44 Centre for Contemporary Photography. Their writing has appeared in publications such as BlackFlash Magazine, Peripheral Review, NORK, C Magazine, and Border Crossings.

Acknowledgement

We are on Treaty 1 Territory. Plug In ICA is located on the territories of the Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples, and the National homeland of the Red River Métis. Our water is sourced from Shoal Lake 40 First Nations.