Amy-Claire Huestis: MOTHLIKE / silvery-blue

BC’s Lower Mainland has a history of creatives living and working at its shoreline. Writer Malcolm Lowry, musician Al Neil and visual artist Tom Burrows had shacks on or near the Dollarton mud flats at various points during the last half of the 20th century. Today, creative settlement favours the Fraser River, where artists Graham Landin and Michael Drebert have produced sculpture and text-based works. Another of these shoreline artists is Amy-Claire Huestis.

Located in the marshlands of the Fraser River estuary at Canoe Pass (near Hwlhits’um on unceded Coast Salish land), Huestis is attentive to the ebb and flow of marine life and the landscapes over which Nature’s marks are made. Her website says of the artist: “In her soulful practice she suspends a state of wonder in relation to nature and its mysteries. Thinking through how we might co-habitate better with more-than-human kin, she makes work through ritual and deep attention to landscape over time. Her works cross boundaries between drawing, painting, walking and creative writing.”

Huestis’ MOTHLIKE / silvery-blue is the culmination of a multi-year research project devoted to the artist’s impressions of place and the inevitable impressions entered into the landscape through the communal act of looking. Central to the exhibition is a 2022 site-specific procession led by Huestis and a group of collaborators in the Key Biodiversity Area of Hwuli’tth’um (Brunswick Point in Ladner). Documentation of this performance, along with new work, forms the basis of this exhibition.

richmondartgallery.org