10/22/2025
Opening November 6th at the Sault Museum!
A Fragile Beauty: 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 th*****me. They have, in their
individual practices, overlapping motifs and concerns, centred 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."
