Brought to our knees to feel as a Rock

Exhibition: July 24th – August 12th, 2025 | artLAB Gallery. Photography by Danielle Petti and Dickson Bou

This exhibition is the culmination of my research-creation practice over two years of the MFA program at Western University. It encompasses the (re)connecting with Land through found colour from rock, the mark-making by transformation, the repurposing of found materials to echo geological formations, and the re-enactment of deep time using paper pulp. Creating modular, repeated, yet distinct, components that build into a larger whole, the work expresses the universe’s sculptural tendencies.

To feel as a rock is to have awareness without self. To feel as a rock is to embrace and contribute to geological and other nonhuman processes. To feel as a rock is to escape human notions of time.

This work has been made possible by the support from family, friends, and colleagues; my supervisor Sheri Osden Nault, my partner, my kids, my cohort, the ecologies I inhabit, and the enduring caretaking of the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak  and Attawandaron. I am grateful to share this place with a diverse world of flora, fauna, fungi, microbes, soil, and rocks, each with kin’s own life and entangled relationships. Kin's presence continue to guide my art practice.

Click Here to read poetry and exhibition text by Katie Lawson.

Click Here to see exhibition map and more information on individual works.