Currently on display from July 13th until September 5th, the IN DETAIL exhibition examines the communal history of sewing, needlework, and textiles while challenging traditional conceptions of craft, raising the ordinary to the extraordinary. Featuring the work of multimedia artists Kristina Corre, Amy Barker, and Kathryn Shriver, they explore the various cultural styles of guild work, traditionally secularized as being distinct from the realm of Fine Art as well as deemed “women’s labour”, while incorporating aspects of contemporary design to make a strong statement about the intersectionality of women’s art.
A life-long imaginer of new worlds, Kristina Corre is a Filipina-Canadian artist and architecture graduate whose meditative collage works explore cultural and personal identity. She received a Bachelor of Architectural Studies and Master of Architecture degrees from the Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism at Carleton University in Ottawa. Kristina’s architectural education and background instilled a meticulousness in her artistic practice, a love of materiality, and the importance of narrative within her image-making, threading compelling collage elements into her uncluttered compositions. Her featured collage series Cat’s Cradle (2018) employs minimalist design to explore the notions of both giving and taking up space.
Amy Barker, Entwined 3 (2018). Print, hand-pulled linocut on paper, 15 x 22in. / 38.1 x 55.88cm.
Amy Barker is an emerging, multidisciplinary visual artist and art educator based in Ottawa, Ontario. She received a B.F.A. Honours from the University of Manitoba and a Postgraduate Certificate of Education in Art and Design from Goldsmiths, University of London, England. With a background in photography, sculpture, and printmaking, Amy’s work explores the emotional and physical connections one has to their own past, themselves, and to the people who influence and inform the person they become. Her printed series, Entwined (2018), features the artist wrapping herself in various woven artworks of the women who have touched her life, including her family and close friends.
Kathryn Shriver’s handmade beadwork strings together beads in a beautiful yet disquieting exploration of cultural creativity and dismantles the hierarchy between Art and Craft. She received an MFA in Painting and Drawing from Concordia University in Montreal and a BFA in Studio Arts from Wells College in Aurora, NY, and has also studied New York and Paris and exhibited throughout Canada and the United States. Through her utilization of painting and design techniques, Shriver’s work focuses on the ways in which materials themselves and making processes can influence public perception and valuing of made works along the shifty spectrum of Art and Craft. Her beaded paintings, or ‘wall jewellery’, examine craft methods and materials of fashion and interior design industries and how they raise three major points of contention within the art world – that of decoration, function, and trendiness.
Corre, Barker, and Shriver undertake a quest that focuses on bringing attention to the historical and cultural significance of Craft, and assert its importance by incorporating a mixed-media format.