MOTHRA: Eclipse


August 5 – 27
Reception: Saturday August 19, 1-3 pm

Alison Thompson, Andrea Carvalho, Camille Myles, Cherie Harte, Kerri-Lynn Reeves, Lan Luo, Leah Gold, Marlene Yuen, Mary-Ann Alberga, Mary Dyja, Olga Klosowski, Rachelle
Wunderink, Sarah Cullen, Suzi Garner, Xiao Han

MOTHRA: Eclipse brings the MOTHRA: Artist-Parent Project to Hamilton.

MOTHRA was founded in 2018 by Sarah Cullen with the help of Alison Thompson. The project runs artist residencies, agitates around the rights of caregivers, produces a zine, and exhibits together.

The artists in this exhibition are all part of the MOTHRA network and have all been participants in a MOTHRA residency at some point over the last five years.

As a group we were intrigued by the themes of the eclipse: an event in which light is obscured from one celestial body by the passage of another between it and the observer. The feeling of a loss of significance, that one’s light has been obscured, can be common amongst parents and carers in relation to their child, but also in relation to how an artist-parent might feel in relation to their practice as well as with the art world in which they participate.

However, an eclipse is also a time when people come together. We marvel at the rarity, of the mystery, of the beauty of an eclipse. They are a spectacular sight. This is not unlike a MOTHRA residency, where for a short fleeting time we gather under the same roof with our children. We make work, cook, read, talk, and play together. After, we go back to our regular lives, albeit slightly changed forever, transformed.

A patriarchal mode of working and making art has dominated our lives as artists as it has throughout our culture. To be taken seriously in most fields you are expected to sever your links with personal relationships - such as family - in order to be successful. MOTHRA is attempting to push back against this.

We are here to acknowledge the parent/artist relationship, often overlooked in contemporary art, and to set a precedent that one can still be an artist and a mother/father/carer of a child and that these roles can conflate.

Workshop: Saturday August 19, 11-12 pm

MOTHRA: Workshop

Join a few of the artists in the gallery for a hands on workshop making 5 min sculptures, printing and paper works. Participants are welcome to leave a piece as part of the show. Materials will be provided. No experience necessary, open to parents, kids and kid-like creatives.




Artist Biographies - MOTHRA: Eclipse

Alison Thompson is an interdisciplinary artist raising children (4 & 9), in Tkaronto. The parameters for making art that Alison inherited from her university experiences at OCADU and the University of Guelph have been exploded in a beautiful way as she includes child and caregiving activity as necessary influences on her work. Alison has spent the past nine years being slow and studying the curious pathways that this shift has caused in her approach to creating. The result of this experience is an arsenal of new relationships to materials, techniques and ways of thinking that are directing her process.
During the past four years, under the influence of all the scrap paper waste from family life, Alison has found herself pushing at the boundaries of her painting and reaching for collage as a solution. Currently her practice involves lots of collage, mini art books, and drawing.
In 2017, after a year of participating in Lenka Clayton’s Artist in Residence in
Motherhood, Alison joined forces with Sarah Cullen to build and grow MOTHRA the Artist Parent Project. She is most pleased to witness the community it has become. aathompson.com IG:@the_misspencil

Andrea Carvalho is a multi-disciplinary, Portuguese-Canadian artist and mother
who’s practice is rooted within the language of sculpture and space. She holds an MFA from Concordia University and is based in Hamilton, Ontario. Her work is centred within a dialogue of place, built environments, and notions of belonging and longing. More recently, she has been concentrating on textile as embodied objects and sites of water as a connector to self, tradition, and home. She has participated in several group exhibitions at Eastern Edge, Cambridge Galleries, Dare-Dare, Art-Mur, Burlington Arts Centre, as well as solo exhibitions at Forest City Gallery, and Latcham Gallery. She has
been invited to participate in residencies in Windsor and speak in Newfoundland, Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia. She is a member of (F)NOR collective and a founding member of Assembly Gallery. Andrea began working with MOTHRA in 2021. andreacarvalho.ca

Camille Myles is a French-Canadian multi-disciplinary contemporary artist and
conservation activist exploring imagery that is grounded in our identity and reflects our impacts on the environment. Working in public art, painting, sculpture and installation, she creates art that tells a story linked to community connection, self-reflection and the restorative effects of nature. She received her BFA in Sculpture & Installation at Ottawa University and her MA in Heritage Conservation at Carleton University. Marrying her passion for conservation and art, she has worked as an archaeologist, in artist-run centres, the National Art Gallery in Ottawa, ICCROM in Rome, Canada’s National Trust and was a Park Superintendent at Parks Canada. Myles has exhibited extensively including Quest Art Gallery, Ottawa Art Gallery, BHA Gallery, Arts Mums United, Visionary Art Collective, Arts to Hearts Project, PxP Contemporary, Ottawa Art Gallery, Gallery 115, among others. Being drawn to the power of public art as a social community conversation, the artist has been creating murals and large-scale public art sculptures in Midland and in Penetanguishene. Her work has been featured by the Art Seen Magazine, Jealous Curator, Toronto Star, Create! Magazine, Visionary Art Collective, Arts to Hearts Project, Women United in Art Magazine and podcasts including Arts Mums United, Hot Mess to Awesomeness & CFRH. She’s won the Diamond Jubilee Medal and finalist of the Canadian RBC New Painting Competition.
Originally from Gatineau, Quebec, she now lives along the shores of Georgian Bay, in Tiny Ontario with her husband and three young children. camillemylesart.com
IG: @camillemylesart

Cherie Harte is a Métis European artist following in the tradition of Art Brut. Harte utilizes gestural painting techniques that juxtapose a character’s complex inner life with tangible expressions of naïveté and innocence. Her paintings trigger a blending of feelings that express the full gamut of emotions. She accomplishes this feat by tapping into her own life experiences, from the saddest to the most uplifting. Cherie's work is held in collections throughout Canada, USA, England, Australia, Korea, China and Japan.
"My work transports me to this magical place. A space where social constructs and labels dissolve and all that remains is the essence of love, vulnerability and deep abiding connection often felt in childhood. It is a place where my memory and life experience meet my inner child and all of me can come out to play. A place where I can dive in and explore love, unity and the power of transformative work. My deepest desire, my dream, my promise to myself, is to make the world a more inclusive and loving place. I believe love is contagious and creating art allows me to explore and amplify that love both in and out of the studio!" cherieharte.com
IG: @cheriehARTe_studio

Kerri-Lynn Reeves (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and mother
originally from rural Manitoba, where she grew up as a European-Canadian settler on Treaty 2 land. At the heart of it, her work explores the relationship of the social and the material through the use of spatial, relational, and craft practices. With a commitment to blurring the lines between life and art, Reeves earned her Master of Fine Arts - Studio Arts in Fibres and Material Practices from Concordia University in 2016 with her first child strapped to her chest. Reeves, now a mother / step-mother of four, continues to explore the confluences of her art making, teaching, and parenting practices. Reeves is a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Studio Arts at MacEwan University in Edmonton, AB, ᐊᒥᐢᑿᒌᐚᐢᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ (Amiskwacîwâskahikan), Treaty 6 Territory. kerrilynnreeves.com

Lan Luo is a Wuhan-Mississauga-based painter, animator, experimental artist. Luo graduated from Hubei Academy of Fine Arts with a master's degree in Animation. Specially invited painter of Chinese Poetry and Film Association (Hubei Mass Art Museum) ; Director of Confucius Cultural Development Promotion Association; Special Researcher of Hubei Intangible Cultural Heritage research centre. Luo’s works have been exhibited in Mississauga Visual Arts Center, Hubei Provincial Art Museum, 403 International Art Center and other art institutions.
As a painter, Lan Luo is committed to the research of oil painting creation and the exploration of the nationalization of oil painting. Luo tries to combine the intuitive and vividness of oil painting, the richness and exquisiteness of colours with Chinese traditional cultural elements, artistic spirit, and aesthetic ideals.
As an animator and experimental artist, Luo’s works include illustrations, new media artworks, interactive design works, installation art. Mostly involving the relationship between humans and nature, feminism, family and parent-child relationships. works often express children psychology and female adolescence. Lan Luo is also a mother of two children. Her creative inspiration and enthusiasm often come from the feelings of a mother. Luo’s creations often revolve around children and families. Lan Luo hopes to use her visual media to record life and children's growth. martyshub.com/user/Lan

Leah Gold is a multidisciplinary artist who has been involved with MOTHRA for the last five years. Her drawings, prints, and ceramics use playful and fantastical imagery to explore emotional states and imaginary worlds. Leah’s studio practice overlaps with her work as a community artist and educator, where she uses the same materials and approach to compose coherent artworks that may involve contributions from 100 or more participants. She creates approachable, low barrier settings for community members of all ages to experiment with drawing and printmaking processes that may be completely new to them. She then takes the products of these workshops, and uses them to compose large scale artworks. Her recent projects include a residency at Maria Shchuka Library, where Leah worked with library patrons to produce a kaleidoscopic print and collage installation, transporting viewers to an idyllic garden setting - an escape from our current reality, built on our collective efforts and creativity. Along with sound artist Apè Aliermo, Leah also makes up half of the multidisciplinary duo known as Hijinks Collective. Hijinks Collective produces professional calibre sound and art projects, with a DIY ethos. Leah holds a BFA from Concordia University, and is currently based in Toronto. leahfgold.com IG: @leaheffgold

Marlene Yuen (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works on the
unceded and ancestral home territories of the xwməθkwəyə m (Musqueam),
Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səlí lwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Her current focus is on illustrations, comics and handmade books. Marlene’s artist books have been retained in special collections archives nationally and internationally. She has created artworks about Vancouver’s historic Chinatown and Chinese Canadian workers for museums, galleries and public art programs. Marlene just finished a mural, The Journeys Here, for the new permanent location of the Chinese Canadian Museum. Marlene works as a studio technician at Emily Carr University of Art & Design. She is also known as Ada’s mom. marleneyuen.com IG: @marleneyuen

Mary Dyja (Minsk, 1987) She/They Lives in Toronto since 2010 BFA York University 2014. I work with discarded yarns creating free hand crochet soft sculptures and wearable knittings. Exhibiting two matching hand knitted balaclavas made for myself and my kid. I have started knitting balaclavas few years ago thinking about face coverings as identity protection, something done with intention during acts of rebellion or violence, but also as side effects of pandemic masking. IG: @marydyja

Mary-Ann Alberga (she/they) is a French Canadian and Italian visual artist and
facilitator living and working in the Burlington, Ontario which is part of the Treaty Lands and Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit. They are a graduate of both YorkU (BA English 1998) and OCADU (BFA Drawing & Painting 2011) and have been a commissioned portrait painter since 2004. As an artist-mother, Mary-Ann’s practice has been deeply influenced by children’s creativity and is currently concerned with a playful exploration of materials and processes both in the studio and out in the community.
Their mixed media, process-based work engages with drawing, painting, printmaking and textiles often using up-cycled, found and foraged materials. Mary-Ann is the Volunteer Coordinator at the Joshua Creek Heritage Art Centre (Oakville), a founding member of the Elizabeth Gardens Creative Collective (Burlington), and has been involved with MOTHRA since summer of 2022. mary-annalberga.com IG: @maryannalberga

Olga Klosowski is a multidisciplinary artist based in Mississauga. She is a graduate from Art and Art History at the University of Toronto. She focuses her practice on drawing, installation and sculpture. She has attended residencies at Artscape Gibraltar Point, Centre [3] and the Living Arts Centre and has been involved with MOTHRA since 2019. She has participated in several exhibitions including Art Gallery of Mississauga, DesignTO, Gladstone Hotel, and the Living Arts Centre. Her work explores the themes of home, memory, archives, collection and the perception of forms. Recently, with a new fascination in clay, she is exploring how the material relates to these various themes and her role as a mother. olgaklosowski.com IG: olgaklosowski

Rachelle Wunderink is an interdisciplinary artist originally from Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, and is currently based in Niagara Falls. She recently finished her Masters of Fine Arts at York University, where she was awarded The Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship, (SSHRC) for her thesis exhibition. Over the past 10 years she has co-founded two separate artist collectives working mostly abroad in Taipei, Taiwan and Grand Rapids, Michigan. She has two upcoming solo exhibitions at Duluth Art Institute (2023) and Eastern Edge Artist-Run Centre (2025) and was featured in the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art’s Jump- Off exhibition, Free Art Taipei through the Songshan Cultural Art Park and Young Art’s Taipei with Archetype Gallery among other exhibitions. Rachelle is a proud mother of a one year old, and can be found in her studio listening to podcasts such as Normal Gossip, or This American Life rgwunderink.com IG:@rgwunderinkart


Sarah Cullen is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in Toronto. She is the founder of MOTHRA: Artist-Parent Project, and has a practice which currently incorporates walking, drawing, letter-writing and stitching. Sarah is the mother of two children and it is thanks to them that MOTHRA emerged from her cocoon. sarahcullen.info IG:@sarahvbcullen

Suzi Garner collaborates with individuals, communities and the environment to create situations/processes which culminate in video and installation. She sees her work as a vehicle for evolving her relationship with the community and the environment. Recent projects include interactive map making, shadow theatre and video projections in collaboration with residents of a homeless camp along the I-580 interstate freeway in California; and the creation of a painting, burning, and installation ritual using her breast milk in collaboration with burnt forest in Robert Louis Stevenson State Park, California.

Xiao Han is a Saskatoon-based artist and curator originally from Wuhan, China. Han's creative practice focuses on photography, video, performance, and socially engaged practice. Han's research explores diaspora identity, contemporary gender issues, and environmental media through decolonial lens. Han produced numerous projects investigating the Chinese one-child policy, Chinese-Canadian restaurant and family businesses, immigrants' identity, and the aesthetic of community relationships through visual art and curatorial practice. In 2017, Xiao Han installed her first public art, "Yee Clun," at Regina's Art Park. In collaboration with curator and art historian Ronald Rudin's "Lost Story Project," Yee Clun speaks of the racial discrimination suffered by Chinese restaurant owners under Saskatchewan's "White Woman Labour Law" passed in 1912. Since then, Xiao has devoted herself to researching Saskatchewan's Chinese restaurants' history and the culinary culture of Asian restaurants in North America. In October 2021, Han curated a community-based project, "MIXING RICE," which facilitated a 6-month-long in-situ exhibition in three Asian restaurants. In 2022, Han created the socially engaged project, "Dough Nation," as a gesture of compassion. "Dough Nation" organized a series of food-sharing day between a Chinese restaurant and a community fridge weekly as a means of communication. xiaohanart.com