The Fabric of Clay: Alexandra McCurdy

Alexandra McCurdy
Black box with raffia, 2009
Porcelain, wire, beads, raffia
13 x 13 cm

photo: Chris Myhr

25 May - 29 July 2012

Main Gallery:
The Fabric of Clay: Alexandra McCurdy
in collaboration with Burlington Arts Centre
Curator: Gloria Hickey

This career retrospective of work by Nova Scotian ceramist Alexandra McCurdy is organised around the artist's ongoing engagement with textiles. Her work often directly reflects, not only the surface ornament, but the structural patterning of fibre media. As curator Gloria Hickey notes in her catalogue essay, McCurdy "has never made pots about pots or ceramic history," but "about textiles and autobiographical ceramics." The exhibition pairs McCurdy's ceramics with their textile and fibre companions and displays them against the backdrop of the artist's personal narrative. Saint Mary's University Art Gallery produced the full-colour exhibition catalogue in partnership with the Burlington Art Centre.

Side Gallery
Lorenzen Pottery: 50 Years in the Making
Curator: Victor Owen

The Fabric of Clay exhibition will be accompanied by a small retrospective of the ceramics of Alma and Ernst Lorenzen- a Danish immigrant and his Canadian-born wife- who were active in the Maritimes for four decades, starting in the 1940s, and helped to introduce modernist ceramics to the region. Dr. J. Victor Owen, of the Saint Mary's University Geology department, has assembled a detailed narrative of their careers and examines the chemistry of their ceramics.

For more info: http://www.smu.ca/administration/externalaffairs/artgallery/ex.html

Saint Mary's University Art Gallery
Location:
5865 Gorsebrook Avenue, B3H 1G3 (street address)
The Gallery is located on the 1st floor of the Loyola Academic Complex on the Saint Mary's University Campus, accessible from Gorsebrook Avenue or off Robie Street south of the McNally Building.