Hypersubconsciousness
Kristina Durka
Sarah Sproule
Sarah Sproule
October 9th - 30th, 2026
Reception: October 16th, 6 - 9 pm
Reception: October 16th, 6 - 9 pm
What does it mean for our subconsciousness to permeate our surroundings? To enter digital landscapes, shrinking ourselves into personal handheld devices, or to take a physical form and expand into our surroundings. Both feel uncontrollable and symptomatic of modern expectations of engagement.
Durka’s work explores the precious and the precarious, the feelings around nurturing something small and ephemeral, a caretaker for a virtual consciousness. Digital pets may act as a primer on the responsibility of pet ownership and the anxiety that can come with it as their quality of life lies in the user’s hands. They also teach that you start to love something when you take care of it. Something of my very own seeks to embody these early lessons in empathy and human-animal relationships, and the multifaceted role of caretaker and companion.
Sproule brings the subconscious to life by creating a domestic space left in disarray, with undulating, unformed secretion meant to symbolize consciousness coming to life. Here, plaster takes the form of abstracted fat expanding beneath its layers of paint as suppressed feelings expand beyond control. I swallow what I want to say is a representation of repression and how it impacts our domestic lives and how no matter how hard we try, these feelings will always come back to us.
Durka’s work explores the precious and the precarious, the feelings around nurturing something small and ephemeral, a caretaker for a virtual consciousness. Digital pets may act as a primer on the responsibility of pet ownership and the anxiety that can come with it as their quality of life lies in the user’s hands. They also teach that you start to love something when you take care of it. Something of my very own seeks to embody these early lessons in empathy and human-animal relationships, and the multifaceted role of caretaker and companion.
Sproule brings the subconscious to life by creating a domestic space left in disarray, with undulating, unformed secretion meant to symbolize consciousness coming to life. Here, plaster takes the form of abstracted fat expanding beneath its layers of paint as suppressed feelings expand beyond control. I swallow what I want to say is a representation of repression and how it impacts our domestic lives and how no matter how hard we try, these feelings will always come back to us.
About Kristina Durka
Artist's Statement: Durka’s work explores human and non-human relationships, often through investigating parallels between humans and animals through craft and technology. First-wave feminism suggests the removal of all dominance in all relationships. Her work explores the balancing of the tension this philosophy brings to embodying a caretaker for small animals.
Bio: Kristina Durka is an interdisciplinary artist, arts administrator, and rabbit enthusiast from Hamilton, Ontario. Her work explores the intersections between humans and animals, often through craft and technology. She holds a BFA in Studio Art from McMaster University, has completed residencies throughout Canada and has shown work in group exhibitions and film festivals within the GTHA. She was awarded a Hamilton Arts Award Creator Award in 2022. Selected public presentations include Assembly Gallery, Photophobia Contemporary Moving Image Festival (Art Gallery of Hamilton), Hamilton Artists Inc., and Video Fever (Trinity Square Video).
Artist's Statement: Durka’s work explores human and non-human relationships, often through investigating parallels between humans and animals through craft and technology. First-wave feminism suggests the removal of all dominance in all relationships. Her work explores the balancing of the tension this philosophy brings to embodying a caretaker for small animals.
Bio: Kristina Durka is an interdisciplinary artist, arts administrator, and rabbit enthusiast from Hamilton, Ontario. Her work explores the intersections between humans and animals, often through craft and technology. She holds a BFA in Studio Art from McMaster University, has completed residencies throughout Canada and has shown work in group exhibitions and film festivals within the GTHA. She was awarded a Hamilton Arts Award Creator Award in 2022. Selected public presentations include Assembly Gallery, Photophobia Contemporary Moving Image Festival (Art Gallery of Hamilton), Hamilton Artists Inc., and Video Fever (Trinity Square Video).
About Sarah Sproule
Artist's Statement: Working primarily with the casting process, using plaster, found objects, ceramics, and latex paint to create sculptural impressions of abstracted bodies. Her practice examines identity, disability, and embodiment through intersecting lenses of queerness, fat politics, and material transformation.
Sproule’s work draws on the aesthetics of the ghost story to explore how domestic spaces become sites of both comfort and repression. Influenced by the concept of Heterotopia, first articulated by Michel Foucault, she approaches space as something that can simultaneously mirror and disrupt dominant cultural structures. Within her installations, the haunting within the home is reimagined as a physical manifestation that speaks to religious control, familial memory, and cultural anxiety surrounding bodily and spiritual transformation.
Bio: Sarah Sproule is an artist and cultural worker based in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. She holds a BFA in Studio Arts and a BA in Art History from McMaster University. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally, most recently at Art Windsor-Essex in Windsor, Ontario; Tangled Art + Disability in Toronto; and the Grand Valley State University Art Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In 2023, she received the Hamilton Arts Award’s Creator Award.
Artist's Statement: Working primarily with the casting process, using plaster, found objects, ceramics, and latex paint to create sculptural impressions of abstracted bodies. Her practice examines identity, disability, and embodiment through intersecting lenses of queerness, fat politics, and material transformation.
Sproule’s work draws on the aesthetics of the ghost story to explore how domestic spaces become sites of both comfort and repression. Influenced by the concept of Heterotopia, first articulated by Michel Foucault, she approaches space as something that can simultaneously mirror and disrupt dominant cultural structures. Within her installations, the haunting within the home is reimagined as a physical manifestation that speaks to religious control, familial memory, and cultural anxiety surrounding bodily and spiritual transformation.
Bio: Sarah Sproule is an artist and cultural worker based in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. She holds a BFA in Studio Arts and a BA in Art History from McMaster University. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally, most recently at Art Windsor-Essex in Windsor, Ontario; Tangled Art + Disability in Toronto; and the Grand Valley State University Art Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In 2023, she received the Hamilton Arts Award’s Creator Award.