Hold Everything Dear
Siobhán Humston’s exhibition In the Garden of Exquisite Unknown is a curated world of found materials, drawings, sculptures, installations, photography, projected film and assemblage. It resembles the realm of a garden: at first complex, but, when inspected, a world to be understood as ordered, vital and necessary. As Humston has interpreted and translated meaning and ideas through her process, the “how” of her collaboration is of utmost importance. She creates with a sense of curiosity, wonder and responsibility, and with a strong sense of place.
Fully immersed in her landscape, Humston connects to place with a daily swimming practice, gardens tended and beach miles combed. After years of art residencies and exhibitions in Europe, New Zealand and across North America, Humston moved to Lambton County, on the shores of Lake Huron in Ontario, living on the land of her parents’ beautifully tended one-acre garden. Within the works of In the Garden of Exquisite Unknown there is a feeling of deep respect for home, where manual skills get passed from parent to child: sewing, embroidery, the growing of flowers and food. In this way, the works feel like a rediscovery of childhood, with Humston constantly paying attention to small details, those things we explore with our senses as children do. Humston chooses the joy of exploring the patterns and designs in nature — their colour and tone, form and function, life, decay and death — all that we see and perceive. I have watched Humston collecting her finds. She picks things up and stashes them away in her pockets and shoulder bag until they overflow. Once in her studio, she assesses the qualities of each material, be it soft, hard, dry, smooth or rugged, dark or light. The collected items, specimens, and materials have been held carefully in her studio and mind, then reassembled in the gallery space, as in Welcome Wall (2024). Humston’s collections suggest a taxonomy, counting or accounting for what is left of our natural world.
The construction of Humston’s multi-dimensional work is guided by the materials collected and her daily observations. Her drawings are multi-layered, reminiscent of a past printmaking practice which she carries with her and applies in the making of the series We Are the Seeds (2021–22). Here, her mixed media drawings are made with watercolour, graphite, coloured pencils and pastels, with layers and layers of free-flowing mark-making contrasted with intentional and meticulous precision. As the artist observes:
This series of drawings explores beyond the surface, the seen, the known of the natural world. They are roots, branches, wings, mycelium, seaweed. They are energy and vibration. To some they appear to be akin to blood vessels or lungs, connecting nature to bodily form. They are my versions of how living elements communicate with each other; measurable, recorded energetic language.1
The works in the gallery flow from being intimate and contemplative to being sculptural and investigational with the actual found objects. For instance, in Samara Forms (2021), Humston’s collected Lake Huron clay and maple leaf keys are at work and in action themselves, for that which is decaying is also full of life and intent. This work is both fine and raw, not altered from its original found form. This solidity provides the base for hundreds of fallen maple leaf keys, now rooted with clay. From this base, the keys seem about to take flight.
This brings me to thinking about the artwork of the Italian Arte Povera Movement, Land Art, also known as the Earth Art Movement and Andy Goldsworthy. These artists, like Humston, created art without the constraints of traditional practices and resources. They sought ways of reconnecting with nature through found substances and organic materials. They let the materials speak for themselves, believing in the expressive possibilities of nature. Humston has been influenced and inspired by these artists, and her work becomes an extension and evolution of their political and conceptual ideas. At the same time, she conveys the desire to protect and preserve nature in all its forms. Unlike mass-produced plastics and synthetics, the materials she uses to construct the work do not add to our modern cycle of consumption and disposal that produces — and accumulates — unmanageable waste.
To build the sculpture The Long Story (2024), Humston wrapped thousands of collected and categorized pine needles with
Samara Forms, 2021
Installation view (left-to-right): Home, 2021–24; The Long Story, 2024
embroidery thread around an eight-foot length of flotsam rope hung from her studio ceiling. She began by sitting on the floor, then moved up the vertically situated rope, balancing on a ladder for the upper section. This piece marries vulnerability and boldness, perhaps presenting a perfect metaphor to describe our natural world. It speaks to Humston’s desire to work with existing organic materials that could be returned to the garden/forest/ beach to be composted and not be made into more “stuff,” with manufactured products that end up in a landfill site. This work and others equally speak to Humston’s family history and stories told and passed down through generations. Her mother was a “war baby,” having been raised during and after the Second World War in England. She grew up with rations and learned early in life to preserve, reuse and repurpose everything. Transferring from mother to child, the ideas of sewing and mending, creating something beautiful from “waste” have also influenced and inspired Humston’s work.
Humston’s cross-pollination of practices enriches the world as well. In I feel I know you (2023) and Lift you like a prayer (2023–24), the embroidery speaks to a practical beauty which transcends the technical braille writing system with which it is collaborating. Humston actually constructs braille characters with unconventional and repurposed thread and yarn, shifting the scale, and transforming meaning. The work I feel I know you also
exposes a discourse we can see but cannot readily understand, as if the answers to our problems are in front of us in the shape of a leaf or a flower petal, but we must look deeper to unearth meaning. Its braille pattern suggests the colours and textures of a lush forest floor, while its embroidered text intimates a call and response: one side of the work reads “I feel I know you,” the reverse side’s cursive replying “I feel I know you too.” With this piece there is a thin veil between known and unknown, both a holding together and a separateness. For the shroud installation, Lift you like a prayer, close to 400 dots are embroidered onto the transferred photographs and reclaimed hand-dyed bedsheets, spelling out a poem by 13th-century mystic poet (Jalāl al-Dīn Muhammad) Rūmī. The words, “I have come to drag you out of yourself and take you into my heart. I have come to bring out the beauty you never knew you had and lift you like a prayer to the sky” speak to Humston’s interest in linking life with death, beauty with demise, and in being aware of beauty as it is all around and inside us.
Humston’s film First You Must Learn To Fly (2024) evokes unique perspectives, encourages contemplation and again offers both universal and personal observations. This film invites us to keep our eyes open, to see what is being presented and join in the journey of looking up through branches, redefining negative spaces as shapes and participating in a curious dance of
Lift
a prayer, 2023–24 First You Must Learn To Fly, 2024 One Hibiscus, two seasons, 2022–24
Installation view (left-to-right):
you like
adoration. A meander through a neighbourhood of tree limbs, a wander through the seasons of evolution.
The assemblage works From the Garden to the Sea (2023), The Long Story (2024), Garden Queens (2023) and Home (2021–24) are constructed with flower petals, pine needles, eggshells, twigs and branches. All are organic, impermanent materials. At first glance, perhaps Humston assembled the materials in order to analyze or inspect. Under a more sustained gaze, it appears that the materials themselves are being re-presented to us in a new and experimental light. The materials hold meaning; they demonstrate their story.
After Life (2024) simultaneously evokes awe and alarm, for the work could be interpreted as things being upside down these days, literally and metaphorically. It makes me stop and question what is real, what am I really looking at? Am I being invited into a surreal dreamscape of the artist’s creation? What once was is transformed with intent and purpose. As in the installation Room For Us All (2023–24), there is a contradictory ephemeral and solid feeling about these pieces. It presents a chimerical place where recognizable items such as vintage books, a chair woven with spent tree branches, colourful hand-sewn bunting, a rhubarb leaf-embossed ceramic cup, dogwood branches, a suggestive shape sewn from reused teabags, a trail of lady bugs — all situated around a cotton rug hand-embroidered with the artist’s own hair — perform to entice the viewer’s imagination, to allow each person to build their own narrative. Where there is clearly a single chair and cup, the title suggests a gathering of sorts, an entry into a non-dualistic ontology, an interweaving with nature’s symbiotic connective energy.
In the exhibition In the Garden of Exquisite Unknown, Siobhán Humston constructs her mix of the known and unknown worlds, making it a visual representation of ideas. With intrigue and honest curiosity, she addresses that about which we cannot speak in an attempt to grasp or understand what is happening all around us. Humston presents an invitation to admire nature’s gifts, to ponder and contemplate our connection to them — to communicate with each other, and to share a gratitude for the entire and still-unknown depth of our natural world’s complexities. I imagine that those who engage with her works and with her practice will tread more slowly and lightly as they go.
Rosa Quintana Lillo is a British Columbia-based multimedia installation artist and painter. She has been a practising visual artist for over 30 years. Social justice and environmental justice are central pillars in her present art practice. As an arts council board member, she has advocated for artists and has volunteered countless hours for artists’ rights, economic justice and inclusion. www.rosaquintanalillo.com
Note
1. Siobhán Humston, Reflection on We Are the Seeds series (2021–22). Accessed at: www.siobhanhumstonart.com.
The Long Story, 2024 (detail)
Siobhán Humston
In the Garden of Exquisite Unknown
April 19 – September 1, 2024
Curator Sonya Blazek
Writer Rosa Quintana Lillo
Editor Alison Kenzie
Installation Dale Workman, Tim Churchill, Shelly Mallon
Photographer Toni Hafkenscheid
Publication Design Otto Buj
Printing Aylmer Express
On behalf of the Judith & Norman Alix Art Gallery and the County of Lambton, we gratefully acknowledge the support of JNAAG members, donors, sponsors, and volunteers.
The artist would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Ontario Arts Council.
© 2024 Judith & Norman Alix Art Gallery
ISBN 978-1-7753346-2-0
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Siobhán Humston : in the garden of exquisite unknown.
Other titles: In the garden of exquisite unknown
Names: Blazek, Sonya, organizer. | Quintana Lillo, Rosa, writer of added commentary. | Kenzie, Alison, editor. | Container of (work): Humston, Siobhán. Works. Selections. | Judith & Norman ALIX Art Gallery, publisher, host institution.
Description: Curator, Sonya Blazek; writer, Rosa Quintana Lillo; editor, Alison Kenzie. | Catalogue of the exhibition “In the Garden of Exquisite Unknown” held at the Judith & Norman Alix Art Gallery from April 19 to September 1, 2024.
Identifiers: Canadiana 2024033051X | ISBN 9781775334620 (softcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Humston, Siobhán — Exhibitions. | LCGFT: Exhibition catalogs.
Classification: LCC N6549.H8564 A4 2024 | DDC 709.2–dc23
147 Lochiel Street
Sarnia, Ontario
N7T 0B4 Canada
www.jnaag.ca
List of Works (height x width x depth)
After Life, 2024; peach tree, organic matter; 210.8 x 193 x 276.9 cm
First You Must Learn To Fly, 2024; film; length variable
From the Garden to the Sea, 2023; driftwood, iris flower sheaths; 177.8 x 40.6 x 40.6 cm
Garden Queens, 2023; free range eggshells, zinnia petals; sizes variable Home, 2021–24; dogwood branches, nests, eggshells, zinnia petals; size variable
I feel I know you, 2023; embroidery thread, yarn, reclaimed sheer curtain, driftwood, projection; 213.4 x 396.2 cm
Lift you like a prayer, 2023–24; photo transfer, embroidery thread, reclaimed bedding, clay, organic matter; 226.1 x 111.8 x 55.9 cm
One Hibiscus, two seasons, 2022–24; hibiscus petals, reclaimed screen; sizes variable
Reciprocity, 2023–24; reclaimed plywood, organic matter; size variable
Room For Us All, 2023–24; reclaimed chair, vintage books, ceramic cup, bunting, organic matter, tea bags, unfired clay with pigment; size variable
Root Masses, 2022–24; roots with attached plants; sizes variable
Samara Forms, 2021; maple leaf keys, lake clay; sizes variable
Soundscape, 2024; written, performed and recorded by the artist (with special nod to Friedrich Burgmüller)
The Long Story, 2024; reclaimed fishing rope, pine needles, driftwood; 304.8 x 58.4 x 58.4 cm
We Are the Seeds, 2021–22; watercolour, graphite, chalk pastel, coloured pencil on paper; 43.2 x 35.6 cm and 208.3 x 149.9 cm
Welcome Wall, 2024; organic matter; 304.8 x 662.9 cm
About the Artist
Siobhán Humston began her creative studies with classical piano, violin and voice while attending music and theatre school in her younger years. She then pursued visual arts at Bealart in London, Ontario and Crawford College of Art & Design in Cork, Ireland, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in printmaking and mixed media painting.
Leaving Southwestern Ontario in 1996, she moved west to British Columbia, living in the Okanagan Valley and Vancouver. After several artist residencies, she decided to return to university to expand her mainly two-dimensional art practice. She moved to England to pursue a Master of Fine Arts (specializing in Art & Environment) at Falmouth University, Cornwall in 2014 and in 2016 graduated with distinction.
Throughout her artistic career, Humston’s work has focused on elements of our natural environment, from landscapes, ley lines and megalithic tombs in Ireland to waterways, islands, wooded areas and the teeming life of gardens. Reading, writing, playing music, collecting nature’s ephemera and creating from these interests remain the heart of her life, weaving gently with continued interests in spirituality and consciousness.
Humston’s artwork has been featured in over seventy exhibitions internationally and is held in various private and corporate collections. She has been awarded numerous artist residencies in diverse parts of the world, including Canada (Ranger Station Art Gallery, Haida Gwaii Museum, Parks Canada), the United States (Byrdcliffe Art Center, Sitka Center for Art and Ecology), New Zealand (Earthskin Trust), the Netherlands (Cultureland), and England (Marlborough College). She is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship, a City of London (Ontario) Arts Bursary, and grants from the Ontario Arts Council and British Columbia Arts Council. Additionally, she has been featured in the Vancouver Sun and on City TV (Vancouver and Calgary) as well as on CBC Radio’s The Arts Report
Cover: After Life, 2024
Gatefold (left): We Are the Seeds, 2021–22; Garden Queens, 2023 (installation detail)
Judith & Norman Alix Art Gallery
The Judith & Norman Alix Art Gallery is a department of the Corporation of the County of Lambton.
Siobhán Humston
