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Exhibitionists

From hybrid animals to human hearts, this artist is using ceramics to question our ideas of Canada

Janet Macpherson's exhibition at the Gardiner Museum creates a medieval bestiary, Canadiana-style.

Janet Macpherson has created a medieval bestiary, Canadiana-style

Mercedes Grundy · CBC Arts ·

This artist created a medieval bestiary, Canadiana-style

8 years ago
Duration 3:43
Ceramist Janet Macpherson's exhibition at the Gardiner Museum uses porcelain hybrid animals to stand in for human relationships

Toronto-based ceramist Janet Macpherson makes porcelain animals, human body parts and hybrids of both in pristine white ceramic form. They're elegant, endearing and a bit eerie — and for her A Canadian Bestiary exhibition at the Gardiner Museum, Macpherson was asked to bring her signature style to bear (no pun intended) on thinking about Canada's 150th anniversary. It took a lot of reflection — and what she ultimately created was a compendium of animals that seem rather human, involved in narratives that question our treatment of the environment and each other.

All these themes question ideas of what we should be doing as a country.- Janet Macpherson, artist

The show is comprised of over 100 pieces of Macpherson's slip-cast porcelain ceramics (in addition to her own music, and also video installations by artist Renée Lear) that create an immersive environment ripe for contemplation. In this video, Macpherson speaks about her intentions for the exhibition, and lets us into her studio to see how she creates her hybrid porcelain creatures.

Janet Macpherson: A Canadian Bestiary. Until May 22 at the Gardiner Museum. 111 Queen's Park, Toronto. 416.586.8080.

Watch Exhibitionists on Friday nights at 12:30am (1am NT) and Sundays at 3:30pm (4pm NT) on CBC Television.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mercedes Grundy

Mercedes Grundy is a producer for CBC's Unscripted division. She has played an integral role in the creation of series like Exhibitionists, The Filmmakers and Canada's a Drag as well as special projects like Superqueeroes and The 2010s: The Decade Canadian Artists Stopped Saying Sorry. Collectively, these projects have won Grundy 5 Canadian Screen Awards. She has an educational background in photography, and produces film and theatre when not busy here at the CBC.

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