Closing reception: Friday, November 1, 5 - 8pm
Reading circle with the CARBON Collective: Saturday, November 2, 10:30 am - 12 noon

Sarah Kernohan’s photographs of flint found on the eastern shores of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia (Unama’ki), are the starting point for a new series of collages that explore this stone’s potential to convey information about where it has come from and where it is now found. 

Splitting Distance features a series of photographic collages that transmit icy surfaces, tumultuous waters, rocky shores, and portals. This flint originated from the shores of France or the United Kingdom and is now found in Glace Bay, whose namesake was coined by French settlers, who named the location “Baie de Glace” (Bay of Ice). The chalky surface of the flint gives way to semi-translucent surfaces with reflective flecks and shards, similar to the textures and patterns found in ice and light bouncing off of water. 

Fragments of flint nodules have been found at the sites of old homesteads near these former colonial harbours, where people used them as materials in tools and as fire starters. Archaeologists have reassembled these discrete parts to reconstitute whole rocks. Similarly, these collages are assembled with fragments that connect different surfaces. They line up coherently in some parts and give way to aberrations in others, collapsing scale and drawing the rocks closer to the other landscape elements. The collages allude to the watery surfaces the flint travelled across centuries ago. 

This body of work builds on the artist’s formal interest in rocks and the narrative potential of geology, the description of landscapes, their formation, and their capacity to provide an understanding of their duration, scale, and geographic span. Here, these geological narratives give way to a story of settlement, trade and the other means by which these rocks travel—large deposits of ballast are found in ports frequented by colonists across the Eastern shores of North America—splitting these narratives apart and offering a way for the artist to explore her connection to this location, where she has seasonally relocated as a teaching artist for nearly a decade, and a disconnected relationship with the European continent where her family migrated from. 

This is Kernohan’s second exhibition with the Red Head Gallery. Its production was partly supported by funding from Pat the Dog and the City of Waterloo. 

Sarah Kernohan (she/her) builds work focusing on landscapes, large-scale natural physical events, and memory. She completed her MFA at the University of Waterloo (2015) and her BFA in Drawing and Painting at OCAD University (2008). Recent exhibitions include Snow-blind at Gallery Stratford (Stratford, ON), Node at Galerie plan.d (Düsseldorf, Germany), and Again and again and again at The Assembly (Hamilton, ON). She has completed residencies at the Pouch Cove Foundation (Pouch Cove, NFLD), The Banff Centre (Banff, AB), and The Bothy Project (Aviemore, UK). She received a General Arts Award from the Arts Awards Waterloo Region (2022) and grants from the Ontario Arts Council and Region of Waterloo Arts Fund. She lives and works on the Haldimand Tract in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.

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Reading circle with the CARBON Collective

The Red Head Gallery and CARBON Collective invites you to attend an informal reading and conversation about ethical ecological art practices, either virtually or in-person. This is the first public-facing event offered by CARBON Collective. We hope to share in a rich and nutritious exchange of thoughts, energy, and passion about interspecies relationships and “material matters.” 

Register to attend the reading virtually here: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/reading-circle-with-the-carbon-collective-tickets-1038194306117?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=cp&aff=ebdsshcopyurl

CARBON collective is a group of artists, curators, and researchers dedicated to ecological collaboration and interspecies regeneration in urban landscapes. Our collective practices focus on considering ethical impacts for future generations, integrating holistic systems and health in art, responsibly and sustainably using materials, telling stories through re-skilling and interactive workshops, and building interdisciplinary collaboration and vibrant communities through art. This collective functions as a full member co-creation, which means the organization and leadership is shared.

CARBON collective on Instagram: @carbon.artist.collective

Artist Bio:

Sarah Kernohan (she/her) builds work focusing on landscapes, large-scale natural physical events, and memory. She completed her MFA at the University of Waterloo (2015) and her BFA in Drawing and Painting at OCAD University (2008). Recent exhibitions include Snow-blind at Gallery Stratford (Stratford, ON), Node at Galerie plan.d (Düsseldorf, Germany), and Again and again and again at The Assembly (Hamilton, ON). She has completed residencies at the Pouch Cove Foundation (Pouch Cove, NFLD), The Banff Centre (Banff, AB), and The Bothy Project (Aviemore, UK). She received a General Arts Award from the Arts Awards Waterloo Region (2022) and grants from the Ontario Arts Council and Region of Waterloo Arts Fund. She lives and works on the Haldimand Tract in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.

view Kernohan’s past work here