Boreal Baroque (2007 | Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Ontario)

Gallery Stratford, Stratford, Ontario 2009
Art Gallery of Prince Albert, Prince Albert, Saskatchewan 2009
Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan 2009
Esplanade Art Gallery, Medicine Hat, Alberta, 2009
Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery, Waterloo, Ontario, 2008
Thames Art Gallery, Chatham, Ontario 2008
Agnes Jamieson Art Gallery, Minden, Ontario 2008
Art Gallery of Sudbury, Sudbury, Ontario 2007
Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Ontario 2007
 
Curator: Linda Jansma
 
From the curator:
 
Barkhouse’s work is a visual narrative filled with wild creatures that serve to transform our ideas of nature and perhaps make us, for the first time, genuinely consider nature at all. Indeed, many of the creatures found in this tableau are experienced by the viewer only through mass media, perhaps a zoo, but rarely in their own habitat. By juxtaposing, as Barkhouse says “the wild with the wildly opulent,” we are asked to think about our historical, as well as our present relationships with animals. Barkhouse is also keenly interested in concepts of survival, adaptation and evolution in the creatures she continously observes in their habitat.
 
(IMAGES: Mary Anne Barkhouse)