What does water have to say to us?
Art exhibit explores relationship between humans and water
WINNIPEG, MB—What does water have to say to us? That is the question eight artists are exploring in the Mennonite Heritage Centre Gallery’s (MHCG) latest exhibit.
Titled Shhh! Water is Talking! A Troubled Love Affair Between Humans, Rivers, and Lakes, the exhibit explores the damaging, mending and delights of rivers and lakes. It features the work of artist/educator Bob Haverluck, as well as seven other artists--paintings by Rhian Brynjolson and Patrick Dunford; photographs by Sam Baardman and Simone Allard; fabric art by Heidi Hunter and Joy Eidse; and drawings by Cullen Bingeman.
“It’s all artwork observing both the beauty of water and our reliance on it,” says Lori Matties, interim curator at the MHCG. “It also explores the ways water is being overused and degraded.”
The exhibit is one part of a year-long Talking Water project that uses the arts to tell stories “of waters mending as well as what makes for its being endangered.”
Matties says the gallery is hosting the exhibit because of its interest in the intersection between art and social justice.
“Art can probably wake us up in ways that words and lectures don’t,” Matties says. “Artists reach us on an emotional level more than just on an intellectual level.”
The exhibit is on display until January 18. On January 11, the gallery hosted an all-day event with an eye to the justice and peacemaking dimensions of spirituality.
Matties believes Haverluck’s cartoon-like work, which includes retellings of biblical stories, has a wide appeal.
“He uses humour to kind of wake us up about how we are living with the animals and the trees and the rivers and the lakes,” she says.
“I think people will be delighted by Bob’s humour and be invited to reflect on their relationship with water by the [other artists].”
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