MARK PRIER
On Conjuration
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April 2nd to 28th, 2026
Closing Reception: April 24th, 2026, 6 to 9 pm
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For the inaugural exhibition at The Assembly’s new location at 486 Barton Street East in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, Mark Prier surrounds the gallery with an angled spell in vinyl text ruminating on beginnings, endings, aging, change, and routines. Strung along the words are paintings (done with artificial vanilla), maps of the night sky (created with asterisks), and a long fabric banner (one half of a toga praetexta). In the middle of it all, some sculptures (subject matter: death).
This is the first exhibition in the new space, so come help the The Assembly celebrate at the exhibition’s closing reception on April 24th from 6 to 9 pm.
Gallery hours: Thursday to Saturday, 12 to 5 pm. You can also arrange visits outside of these hours with me by replying to this email. Note:The Assembly will be closed April 3, 2026 for the holiday (Good Friday), but will be open April 2 and 4.
Background
Pulp mills and artificial vanilla. Pulp novels and playing pretend. Casting spells and telling stories. My previous exhibition was inspired by how my sister once mentioned that artificial vanilla could be made from lignin, a byproduct of the pulp and paper industry. I’m still playing around with this idea.
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We get old. We change and shapeshift. We repeat ourselves more than we’d like. Maybe we decline. As my family wrestles with the decline of my parents’ health, my siblings and I talk a lot about the past. We reflect.
On and on until we’re gone
Maybe life is a helix. There’s a familiar repetition to it, marked by work schedules and holidays and seasons. It’s slow at the start, picking up speed as we go, until the years seem to pass too fast for comfort. We return so many times to the same place, but we are never the same.
idem… the same
Somewhere along the way there’s a werewolf story called Bisclavret, handed down to us by Marie de France in the twelfth century, written in Old French. The English translation by Judith P. Shoaf ends just so:
To remember, forever and a day.
— Mark Prier, 2026.
Email: [email protected]
Facebook: @mark.prier
Instagram: @_hellothisisalex_
Website: www.markprier.com
Top Image: Black-billed cuckoo (Coccyzus erythropthalmus), artificial vanilla extract on watercolour paper, 2025.
This is the first exhibition in the new space, so come help the The Assembly celebrate at the exhibition’s closing reception on April 24th from 6 to 9 pm.
Gallery hours: Thursday to Saturday, 12 to 5 pm. You can also arrange visits outside of these hours with me by replying to this email. Note:The Assembly will be closed April 3, 2026 for the holiday (Good Friday), but will be open April 2 and 4.
Background
Pulp mills and artificial vanilla. Pulp novels and playing pretend. Casting spells and telling stories. My previous exhibition was inspired by how my sister once mentioned that artificial vanilla could be made from lignin, a byproduct of the pulp and paper industry. I’m still playing around with this idea.
⁂
We get old. We change and shapeshift. We repeat ourselves more than we’d like. Maybe we decline. As my family wrestles with the decline of my parents’ health, my siblings and I talk a lot about the past. We reflect.
On and on until we’re gone
Maybe life is a helix. There’s a familiar repetition to it, marked by work schedules and holidays and seasons. It’s slow at the start, picking up speed as we go, until the years seem to pass too fast for comfort. We return so many times to the same place, but we are never the same.
idem… the same
Somewhere along the way there’s a werewolf story called Bisclavret, handed down to us by Marie de France in the twelfth century, written in Old French. The English translation by Judith P. Shoaf ends just so:
To remember, forever and a day.
— Mark Prier, 2026.
Email: [email protected]
Facebook: @mark.prier
Instagram: @_hellothisisalex_
Website: www.markprier.com
Top Image: Black-billed cuckoo (Coccyzus erythropthalmus), artificial vanilla extract on watercolour paper, 2025.