The work in this exhibition is intimately tied to the immediate surroundings of D’Andrea Bowie’s studio and home. In both site-responsiveness and form, this exhibition reminds us of the worldbuilding materials that surround us. The materials borrowed to make these works are both the commodities of our extractivist society as well as those which afford us the opportunity of making our way along a more ethical path. By choosing a lens of respect, we can change how we engage with these materials as long as we remain cognizant, and wary, of practices of excess.

Throughout the process of planning this exhibition, questions of materiality and materialism, process and place, were constantly being raised. The local sourcing of the raw materials for these works is a condition not of convenience but of intention To borrow from landscape architecture, this exhibition is at its core an expression of genius loci (a concept of contextual rooted-ness. This work arises from the specificity of place, of a place that is now, temporarily, translated to this space, this gallery.

Winter Wheat is curated by Michael Maranda, assistant curator, publications. This exhibition would not have been possible without the support of the Department of Visual Art and Art History of York University, in particular for providing access to their kilns. Bowie would like to thank the Ontario Arts Council for an Exhibition Assistance grant in preparation for the exhibition. 

Please follow link for full intro text written by curator Michael Miranda (read here).