Keeping Time

Curated by Alix Voz

Keeping Time is a collaboration between Laura Peturson and Andrew Ackerman and reflects their shared experience as parents, their feelings on the insularity of family and the nature of time, which is often made so evident in the rapid and dramatic changes of children.

When the artists first moved to their home in Callander, Ontario, they would come across remnants of structures and spaces in various degrees of deterioration constructed by children who had come and gone in the houses around the bush. Over the years, their children have built their own structures and added on to existing ones. These forts serve as spaces of separation that allow for a kind of independence and interiority. Sometimes they serve as clubhouses for groups of children, while other times they offer a space for solitude and introspection. They are improvised, fragile, and last anywhere from a season to a handful of years. Their deterioration is a poignant reference to the aging of the children, the passage of time, as well as the constant and cyclical nature of the environment.

The exhibition combines painted imagery with woodcut and linocut prints, paper-cuts and hand-cut birch panels composed in the shallow relief of a stage set. With narrative imagery that references archetypes from children’s literature, these “murals” capture the peculiar experience of time as one that can expand and contract. The imagery combines markers of time measurable in the physical world such as erratic boulders, flora and decomposition, with moments that are unfixed, impressionistic, and layer observation with memory and imagination.
 

Laura Peturson is an artist based in Callander, Ontario, Canada. She holds a BFA from York University in Toronto and an MFA from the New York Academy of Art in New York. Laura’s studio practice integrates drawing, painting, small-scale traditional printmaking formats and large-scale, print-based installations. Her works are narrative in nature, with references to the archetypes and stylistic conventions of golden age illustration. Her work reflects the ways the domestic spaces we inhabit as children form our identity and a conception of our place in relation to family, geography, and nature. Her home of Northern Ontario is central to her work, and her interests include ecological systems, representations of landscapes, and the relationship between environment and culture. Laura’s work has been exhibited widely in Canada, USA, and internationally. Recent presentations of her work include solo exhibitions at Alberta Printmakers Gallery (Calgary, AB), Galerie Atelier Circularie (Montréal, QC), and Station Gallery (Whitby, ON). Laura is an Associate Professor in the Fine Arts program at Nipissing University in North Bay, Ontario.

Andrew Ackerman’s practice is situated in sculpture and installation. His work explores aspects of the human condition, the corporeal body, and place-making, and employs a variety of material-based approaches ranging from modelling and casting to wood and metal fabrication. In addition to his solo work, he maintains an interdisciplinary installation practice that explores visual, spatial, and embodied experiences. Andrew has exhibited his work both nationally and internationally at venues such as the Alberta Craft Council (Edmonton, AB), the Santa Paula Museum of Fine Art (Santa Paula, CA), and the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art (Gimpo-Si, Gyeonnggi, South Korea). Recent collaborative installations include Keeping Time at Martha Street Studio (Winnipeg, MB), as well as Embodied Terrains and im·pulse, two site-specific works completed for the Ice Follies Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary and Community-Engaged Art (Shabogesic Beach, North Bay, ON). Andrew is an Associate Professor in the Fine Arts program at Nipissing University, where he teaches courses in sculpture, interdisciplinary studio practice, drawing, and anatomy. He holds a BFA from York University and an MFA from the New York Academy of Art.