When art evolves through a sensitivity to materials and care for the environment, it can illuminate the implications of our day-to-day behaviours as consumers and urban dwellers. In I’ve Been Here Before, Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation artist Cathie Jamieson and Barrie-based artist Jill Price share their land-based practices, which are both grounded in mindfulness and a commitment to opening up conversations around our collective responsibility to protect the earth.

Jamieson’s work is informed by ancestral Indigenous knowledge of harvesting materials in accordance with natural laws. Through a series of installations using supplies carefully gathered on her Manitoulin Island forest property, such as tree bark and branches, plants, and florals, she brings elements and gestures connected to her teaching practice and healing workshops into the gallery. By centring the medicinal properties and symbolic meanings of these materials, she offers a space for learning and reconnection.

Price’s work considers methods of unmaking systems of harm rooted in colonialism and global industrial capitalism. Her sculptural installations derive from discarded materials she has collected along Ontario shorelines, which are then cleaned, reused, recycled, and repurposed. Informed by a childhood spent along the shores of Lake Ontario and by a sense of ecological urgency, her work reflects the understanding that, in the artist’s words, “environmental harm is not abstract but deeply intimate and shaped by daily consumption and discard.” Jamieson and Price share important areas of connection in their distinct practices, both of which invite viewers to reflect on ways of generating acts of care and repair toward the land. Ultimately, I’ve Been Here Before evolves from an understanding that the living systems that sustain and surround us are not passive resources, but active relations whose well-being is deeply entwined with our own.

Curated by AGM Senior Curator Shannon Anderson