Co.Lab Gallery presents

ASHLEY WALTER

IN VENERATION

OPENING FRIDAY MARCH 3RD, 2023 7-10PM

EXHIBITION CLOSES MARCH 19TH

Ashley Walter is an artist and arts educator currently based in Thunder Bay who uses various media to explore and address larger issues such as power relations and systemic barriers, as well as social and political concerns that our communities are now navigating. Her art practice offers a critical look at social positions, particularly those experiencing cultural disenfranchisement and considers intersecting perspectives, most recently in response to COVID-19. 

For her most recent work, she interviewed a group of mothers with one or more children under 12 years old. When the project began, her child was two years old and after a significant amount of time not creating,  Walter felt compelled to share their personal narratives through visual works of art. Objects provided by participants drive and inform these most recent works and are often incorporated into the piece. Use of an object from another person is meant to bridge the work of art and the viewer, offering a new perspective on everyday, mundane items as vehicles for storytelling.  

Storytelling can be healing for the narrator, the listener, as well as the viewer.

Ashley’s art is based in research and data; considers the macro and micro, but at the heart of the work are the voices of often overlooked but entirely essential mothers. In Veneration intends to honour the unpaid labour, mental load and sometimes invisible care and work of mothers.

Bio

Ashley Walter completed her undergraduate degrees in Education and Fine Arts at Lakehead University, as well as her Masters in Social Justice Studies with a specialization in Gender and Women’s studies. In Veneration is the culmination of her art-as-research Masters project. This collection centres the stories of mothers, and the objects provided informed the mediums: printmaking, drawing, installation, found object and sculpture. Ashley has taught art locally as well as in England, Scotland, China and Malaysia.