Exhibition 'Fragile Beauty' in Sault Ste. Marie Museum
Gordon Burke, Michael Burtch, Annie King
As independent artists, the three artists have, over the years and decades produced solid bodies of work, each in a distinctive style and in a variety of media. They have collaborated together on numerous occasions but never as a threesome. They have, in their individual practices, overlapping motifs and concerns, centered on the natural world and in particular, the threats imposed on our environment by climate change. This exhibition includes sculpture and painting, multimedia works, ceramics and natural specimens. They have taken as a starting point work that they have independently created that revolve around butterflies, moths and small birds. Eschewing the trap of facile prettiness that each subject engenders in popular culture, they have instead investigated, among many other things, the existential threat that faces, in a microcosm, their chosen subjects, but in a macrocosm, all humanity and the planet itself. There is also in their work a thread of celebration of the wonder of nature, the instinctive drive that informs the behaviour of all life at a deeply unconscious level; the metamorphosis and cycle of migrations of the monarch butterfly, the attraction of the moth to light, the collective murmuration patterns of the starling and the dazzling colour patterns and luminescence of butterflies, moths and birds. Michael Burtch's sculptures combine human form with butterfly wings, suggesting the interrelationship and interdependence of all living creatures. The sculptures are in high relief and are wall mounted. Annie King explores life, death and rebirth through both her sculpted collages and crystal clear starlings, each individually cast and hung from above, to gently sway in air currents. Gordon Burke's ceramics celebrate the natural beauty of the butterfly and its life cycle and his butterfly collection represents specimens from around the globe.
