July 9 – August 7, 2021

Opening Friday, July 9 | Water Street Gallery

art400² – Exhibition Catalogue

The pastiche or collage of curatorship is only as good as the materials it is given. What is fabulous can be augmented, unveiled, turned upside down, or made meta for the universally curious, but it needs to be interesting to begin with, passionate already, even if by quiet means, even if by loud. The materials in this exhibit are fabulously different from one another and yet raucously grounded in the artisanal scene of the crafting culture and memory of this place. Art400² is a collective of artists and curators from New Brunswick who is currently floating between physical spaces. The previous artistic director, Sara Brinkhurst, invited them in to share their current processes with us using the stage of our physical space (a space we are blessed to have and blessed to work for its endurance and evolution).

Here in the Now of Art400²–here at Sunbury until August 7th 2021–we meet textile sculpture setting the texture tone for the room, birch bark basket wraps halfway to becoming stone, metal bones of birds or chipmunks for the breast plate, and fanciful scenes of quotidian life moving through mugs with the lightest patina backgrounding ‘the image’. Deep dark dank plein air of our own beloved area adorn the large wall, and the research-creation of scarves as leaf catchers, as imprinters of their light, step up to give us their memory. What is present for me as we open the show is the multi-perspective into what it means to take time to make in partnership with the materials. Where to make is not only to do something physical, but rather reconsider the physical ‘output’ as a mark of a process, and a relation. So here with Art400², we are gifted with a many sided story, physical insights into the intimacy of matter, of mater, materiality and all that it brings forth from us.

– Joel Mason, Artistic Director, Sunbury Shores

Clare Bridge    Renata Britez    Darren Emenau    Five Crows Silver (Patty Goodine)    Maru Pottery (Maria Guevara)    Good Fibrations (Liz Miller)    Morning Sun Pottery (Krysta Oland)    Joanna Pottle    William Robinson    Ralph Simpson    Matt Watkins    Kate White