Sheila Butler: Other Circumstances

Curated by Pamela Edmonds and Patrick Mahon August 29 to October 26, 2024 Panel Discussion and Reception: Thursday, September 19, @ 6:00 PM Curated by Pamela Edmonds and Patrick Mahon, the exhibition brings together paintings and works on paper spanning 35 years of artistic production in Sheila Butler’s remarkable 50 year career. Sheila Butler: Other Circumstances is shaped by the central themes that have animated Butler’s longstanding practice. They include studies of figures in transition and conflict, mythological subjects reconsidered through a feminist lens, and portrayals of bodies suspended in water – a transitory medium. During her career, the subject of swimming has afforded Sheila Butler numerous possibilities; with bodies of water serving as sites of spacious metaphor in her exciting images. Numerous works delve into the experiences of women, exploring various interpretations of the vast and complex nature of the human condition from a gendered perspective. The artist combines images from a variety of sources, including literature, philosophy, and politics, as well as embracing associations with archetypal myths that influenced works such as Female Icarus (1996) and Ophelia (1996). Butler began working on Female Icarus in the 1990s, focusing on the Greek myth of Icarus, whose wax wings melted when he flew too close to the sun. The painting offers an allegory for the processes and cycles of life, depicting falling figures and a rising swimmer to evoke both safe spaces and transitional states between the realms of sky and earth. Co-curator Pamela Edmonds acknowledges the rich and complex ways that Sheila Butler conjures our lived realities, recognizing “a world where visual information is chaotic, coherent boundaries (are) destroyed, and demarcated boundaries effaced.” Paintings such as Black Walker (1978) and White Walker (1978) address the boundary-challenging that Edmonds speaks of in ways that were significant when they were produced forty years ago and remain so today. First presented at London, Ontario’s Satellite Project Space by Museum London and Arts & Humanities, Western University, this exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated 63-page catalogue published by Museum London in association with Arts & Humanities, Western University. The catalogue contains texts by co-curators Pamela Edmonds and Patrick Mahon, independent curator David Liss, and artists Ed Pien and Julie Voyce, as well as an interview with the artist by emerging curator Sarah Charette.