FLOW exhibition
An exhibition of works meditating on Schneider Creek by Deborah Carruthers and Sydney Lancaster (held at Inter Arts Matrix | May 29th - June 29th, 2024)
“A Hole in the Ground” artists Deborah Carruthers and Sydney Lancaster used their time at Sandhills Park in summer 2023 to connect with the land and locals with shared interests and sensibilities. With writer Geoff Martin, Deborah and Sydney learned about the geology, hydrology, and urban planning history of Kitchener, and formed a group called The Creek Collective. Since that time, a series of artist-led, community-driven initiatives have taken place in response to the re-naturalization of Schneider Creek. Deborah Carruthers and Sydney Lancaster will start off The Creek Collective’s summer 2024 programming with the opening of their exhibition FLOW, featuring a graphic score, a book work and a video projection.
The exhibition was co-presented by Inter Arts Matrix and The Creek Collective. The exhibition was funded by a grant from the Waterloo Region Community Foundation. Past support for the “A Hole in the Ground” residency came from Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund, and the Musagetes Fund at the Waterloo Region Community Foundation.
Above photograph and portraits taken by Brenda Mabel Reid. Exhibition photographs by Meg Ross.
Artists
Sydney Lancaster is a multi-disciplinary settler artist and writer who works through installation, print, audio, and video to consider the intersections of place, memory, history, and identity – particularly as they pertain to issues of relationship and responsibility to the environment and both human and more-than-human beings. They received a BA Special (with Distinction) in English from the University of Alberta, and an MFA from Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador; her MFA research-creation was awarded scholarship funding from both Memorial University and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Her work has been shown across Canada, and in the US and UK in artist-run centres, and both public and commercial galleries. Their most recent publications were “Saying Yes: Family, Permission, and Communities of Care,” (2023) the feature article in SNAPline Family Edition, vol. 3, and a chapbook of poetry co-authored with Jannie Edwards, entitled Learning Their Names: Letters from the Home Place, published by Collusion Books in Kjipuktuk/Halifax, Nove Scotia. She is deeply grateful to call Esoqwatik/Mtapan/Wolfville, Nova Scotia home since 2021.
A Montréal native and resident, Deborah Carruthers is an inter-arts artist-composer who frequently collaborates with scientists, activists, and other artists to explore environmental issues, particularly solastalgia: the distress caused by the lived experience of environmental change. Her multimedia work often includes the composition of graphic scores and their performance; these works are often presented alongside her research materials, including video, notebooks, paintings, photographs, drawings, assemblages, and field recordings. These scores are usually performed by musicians, even symphony orchestras, although Carruthers is a non-musician and uses no traditional musical notation. She sees these scores as a synthesis of her obsessive research, recording the essences of an environment and marking its transformation. Her work has been supported by Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ), and private foundations, and is in private/public collections in Canada (notably, the Canadian Woman Composers Archive), the USA, and Europe.
