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Atmospheric Shifts

Wally Dion, Lisa Hirmer, David Spriggs

Curated by Helen Gregory

January 15 - May 16, 2026

David Spriggs, Aeturnum, 2025, acrylic, acrylic paint on layered acrylic sheets, LED light box. 

Opening Reception

Thursday, January 15, 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm

Remarks at 5:45 pm. Artists in attendance. 

Visitor Parking information

Free | Open to the Public

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Climate change is what philosopher Timothy Morton would describe as a hyperobject – an entity that is so massively dispersed across time and space that we are incapable of truly comprehending it. We can imagine ourselves in relation to the recent past, the here and now, and the near future. However, it is more challenging to understand the role we play in a trajectory that spans from the ancient past to thousands of years in the future. While our individual actions may not have any statistical impact on the environment, over time, the collective behaviour of the seven billion humans who inhabit the Earth have brought us to the present moment.

Our complicity in a planetary change – an atmospheric shift – that unfolds over millennia is seemingly ungraspable.  The artists in this exhibition have been invited to consider the current environmental moment – an era marked by the impact of global warming and the corresponding increase in severe weather events – and to imagine our human position within it. Lisa Hirmer presents a series of poetic images that reflect how the atmosphere is permanently impacted by the actions of humans. The effects of the Anthropocene are not only apparent on the surface of the Earth but also in the atmospheric boundary layer that surrounds it. Inspired by satellite imagery of storm systems, David Spriggs reflects on power systems and how technology mediates our understanding of nature. And Wally Dion combines subtle cinematic references and Indigenous perspectives to imagine the spiritual forces responsible for the creation of tornadoes.

These new works, all created for this exhibition, are placed in conversation with works from McIntosh Gallery’s permanent collection, public and corporate collections, and material culture derived from research performed by the Northern Tornadoes Project, the Northern Hail Project, and the Northern Mesonet Project in Western University’s Faculty of Engineering.

About the Artists

Wally Dion was born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and currently lives and works in Binghamton, New York. A member of Yellow Quill First Nation (Salteaux), Dion holds a BFA from the University of Saskatchewan and an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. Throughout much of his career, Dion’s work has contributed to a broad conversation in the art world about identity and power and can be interpreted as part of a much larger pan-American struggle by Indigenous peoples to be recognized—culturally, economically, and politically—by settler societies.

Dion has exhibited extensively throughout Canada and the United States and has had numerous solo exhibitions including skodenstoodis (2022), College Art Galleries, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon; Current (2019) Boise Art Museum, Color Wheel (2017) Urban Shaman Gallery, Winnipeg; Star Blankets (2011) Ottawa Art Gallery; Thunderbird Series (2010) Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba, Brandon; Red Worker (2008) Grunt Gallery, Vancouver; and Wally Dion (2008) MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina.

Dion’s work can be found the public collections of SK Arts, the Canadian Museum of Civilization, the Canada Council Art Bank, the Aboriginal Art Centre, Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, the MacKenzie Art Gallery, Remai Modern, the Portland Art Museum, and the Autry Museum of the American West, and in many private collections.

Lisa Hirmer is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the collective nature of being, particularly in human relationships with the more-than-human world and the planetary realities of climate change. Spanning photography, sculpture, installation, social practice, and sometimes writing, her work has been shown across Canada and internationally including at Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Gallery of Guelph, University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Mississauga, Tom Thomson Gallery, Art Windsor-Essex, Doris McCarthy Gallery, Peninsula Arts, CAFKA, Queens Museum, and Flux Factory, among others. She has done artist residencies with Arts House Melbourne, the Santa Fe Art Institute, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World, KIAC and Camargo Foundation, and Waterfront Toronto. She has received grants from Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, musagetes and the Culture and Animal Foundation, and has a Master of Architecture from the University of Waterloo.

David Spriggs is currently based on Vancouver Island, BC, Canada. He was born in 1978 in Manchester, England, and immigrated to Canada in 1992. He received his Master of Fine Arts from Concordia University, Montreal, and his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University in Vancouver. He undertook student residencies at Central St. Martin’s College of Art in London, England (1999) and the Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany (2006).

Spriggs has exhibited his work internationally at various galleries, museums, and biennales, including: Musée des Arts Décoratifs in the Louvre Paris France, Oku-Noto Triennale Japan, Sharjah Biennale UAE, Noor Riyadh Saudi Arabia, Chroniques Biennale Marseille France, Musée de La Poste Paris France, Powerlong Museum Shanghai China, Times Art Museum Beijing and Chengdu China, 5th International Digital Art Biennial Montreal Canada, the Prague Biennial 5 Czech Republic, the Louis Vuitton Gallery Macau, amongst others.

His work can be found in many private and prestigious public collections such as the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec, and on permanent display in the lobbies of high-profile hotels and public buildings such as the Las Vegas Conrad and Hilton in Resorts World, Shanghai C-Future City, Hyatt Centric Hong Kong, and the Queens Marque Halifax. Spriggs’ artwork ‘Red Gravity’ was used for the cover art of Peter Gabriel’s song ‘Panopticon’.

Spriggs is the recipient of the Académie des Beaux-Arts and Fondation & The Jacques Rougerie Award for Art in Paris, France.

 

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*(s)twerH

Andrew Maize

Curated by Helen Gregory

January 15 - May 16, 2026

 

Andrew Maize's exhibition title is derived from a hypothetical proto-Indo-European word meaning "rotate, swirl, twirl, move around" and is the speculative root of many words, including disturb, turbulence, tumult, turmoil, turbine, and storm. Maize embraces the unpredictable nature of turbulence and its relationship, both real and metaphorical, to fluid dynamics, climate change, and the societal moment in which we live. We are indeed living in turbulent times – socially, politically, and environmentally.  

*(s)twerH takes the form of a laboratory/studio where, from January 16 to February 12, Maize will work as an artist-in-residence to further develop a body of work that considers the fundamental nature of indeterminacy. Inspired by the work of climate scientists on the complexity of turbulence and the increased prevalence of severe storms, Maize explores potential common ground between scientific and artistic research. He considers how research methodologies from different disciplines might complement one another and lead to a more nuanced understanding of our relationship with the earth’s forces. With an art practice rooted in playful experimentation, Maize wonders what we might learn if, instead of relying on what can be predicted, we accept the chaotic and the unpredictable.  

The elements that comprise *(s)twerH will evolve and change over the course of the residency, and visitors are welcome and encouraged to return regularly to observe Maize’s process. 

 

About the Artist

Andrew Maize’s playful and improvised approach to his art practice is contingent on environmental, social, and material relations. Recent interests include mobile instruments for improvised performance, wind-powered kinetic sculptures, and experimental drawings using smoke and natural pigments. He is curious how transdisciplinary collaboration and improvisational methodologies can help embody more creative, adaptable and resilient ways of being in the world. As an arts educator and organizer, Maize has been involved in collaborative projects that engage communities with art in non-traditional spaces. Maize graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from NSCAD University in Halifax NS in 2012, and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Guelph in 2021.

 

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