Current and Upcoming Exhibitions
McMaster Gallery features approximately four exhibitions from visiting artists and
students each academic year. Join us for exciting exhibition talks, artist lectures,
and gallery receptions at programmed times.
Socially Engaged Ceramics
August 25 - September 29, 2022 | Socially Engaged Ceramics is a two-person exhibition
of ceramic artwork by Julie Schnell-Madden and Lydia C. Thompson. Schnell-Madden and
Thompson’s ceramic artworks are stylistically distinct but united by their intention
to present timely, yet historically informed, sociopolitical commentary through the
medium of ceramics. The dilapidated house structures in Thompson’s Relic series represent
the working-class family home. The broken shards that fill these houses, made from
her grandmother’s reclaimed ceramic figurines, symbolize negative memories, family
loss, unemployment, shattered dreams, and the change evoked by removing confederate
monuments. Schnell-Madden's spiral rosettes—floral abstractions of femininity—reflect
her despair and fears concerning the ongoing corrosion of women’s reproductive rights
and bodily autonomy. Presented together, both artists’ work explores and visualizes
our contemporary confrontations, fears, and triumphs related to systematic racism,
inequality, and women’s rights.
The Voyage of Life
October 24 - November 29, 2022 | The Voyage of Life is a two-person exhibition
that combines the sculptural artwork of Christopher Mahonski and Eli Kessler. The
installation will contain a series of sculptures that focus on the tension between
ecological and socio-cultural developments throughout time. When combined, both artists'
work examines existence within a world of hyper-digital industrialization and ecological
uncertainty by incorporating subject matter and materials from a timespan predating
humanity to contemporary. Processes such as metal fabrication, woodworking, casting,
video, and digital fabrication techniques are combined with biological specimens and
geological forms, further intermixing history and materiality.
Call / Response
January 12 - February 16, 2023 | Call / Response is a collaborative exhibition
by Hannah Barnes and Susan Klein, two artists with a history of working in dialogue
with each other. Barnes and Klein share a lifelong engagement with abstraction and
a regard for process-based making. For both artists, making is a responsive act, guided
by attentive engagement with the observed world and an embrace of their mediums’ unpredictabilities.
In their collaborative projects Barnes and Klein mine the fruitful depths of friendship
and exchange through sustained dialogue, playful improvisation, and intentional collaboration.
This exhibition presents paintings, sculptures, and drawings resulting from two years
of conversational and collaborative making.
68th Annual Juried Student Exhibition
March 2 - March 17, 2023 | The School of Visual Art and Design's Annual Juried
Student Exhibition. Students are awarded cash prizes for Best in Show; 1st, 2nd and
3rd Place Undergraduate Awards, and 1st, 2nd and 3rd Place Graduate Awards.
