This polyphonic project brings together Ella Dawn McGeough, naakita f.k., Beau Gomez, Mélanie O’Bomsawin, Camille Richard, and Florencia Sosa Rey around things that vibrate, are beyond words, and can only be felt with the body.

Driven by a desire to value modes of being apart from the imposed reasoning of productivity, linearity, and rationality, the artists in the group take a vulnerable stance, opening their bodies and perceptions to energies in their environment. Through their practices, they cultivate reciprocal relationships with natural ecosystems, in which knowledge circulates through affect and experience, outside of hierarchical frameworks. In the exhibition space, their embodied and collective research transforms into gestures of memory and narrative. By emphasizing the power of sensory perceptions, the artists remind us that the intimate can also be political and structural. A sovereign space is established, one that interweaves other forms of support and solidarity with marginalized knowledge, worlds, and lives.

« Ella Dawn McGeough compose des univers où se tissent des liens de soutien subtils — voire imperceptibles — entre les corps, la nature et le cosmos. Dans 𝑁𝑦𝑚𝑝ℎ𝑒́𝑎, iel donne vie à un monde peuplé d’êtres hybrides, sculptés dans de la cire d’abeille mêlée à des matières organiques et à des objets trouvés. Avec 𝑀𝑖𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑙𝑒, une série de trois sculptures de grand format, le regard singulier de l’artiste envers les correspondances entre les éléments de son environnement s’accentue. La force d’attraction entre les matières s’intensifie et fait émerger des configurations intuitives — entre hallucinations et expériences magiques. Ces formes nous invitent à prolonger ce réseau d’interrelations insaisissables qui nous marquent et que nous influençons en retour. » - extrait du feuillet d’exposition par la commissaire Camille Richard

“Ella Dawn McGeough composes worlds in which subtle — even imperceptible — bonds of support are woven between bodies, nature, and the cosmos. In Nymphéa, they bring to life a world populated by hybrid beings sculpted from beeswax mixed with organic matter and found objects. […] With Miracle, a series of three large-scale sculptures, the artist’s distinctive gaze toward the correspondences among elements of their environment becomes more pronounced. The magnetic pull between materials intensifies, giving rise to intuitive configurations — somewhere between hallucination and magical experience. These forms invite us to extend this network of elusive interrelations that shape us and that we, in turn, influence.” — Excerpt from the exhibition leaflet by curator Camille Richard

Amanda Boulos, Ella Dawn McGeough, and Erica Stocking unfold an installation and co-creational event series that asks: “What forms (in their many variations) do beds allow us to imagine? What grows from their fertile soil? What weird wanderings does a drowsy mind follow? What dreams come when we lie on grounds that hold our memories? What conventions unravel when we lie prone, released from the vertical 'I'—the upright standing I, the individual I, the restless I, the I who scans the horizon in search of somewhere else? When we are in a hammock, a burrow, a mat in the corner, some warm patch of grass, or soft sand, we cannot be blown down by the storms of history because we are already hugging the earth, settled by gravity's pull, dreaming the world into existence. What then? What thoughts? What emotions? What sensations and perceptions? What narrative possibilities? What strange affinities nestle into and around us?”

PDF Poster

Audio Recording of Olivia Lopez Stocking reading the script for Holes Holding Whole; Four Watches of the Night— BedTime:


*special thanks to Sunny Kerr, Martha Steele, Claudia Rick, and Jess Price-Eisner

𝔽𝕠𝕦𝕣 𝕨𝕒𝕥𝕔𝕙𝕖𝕤 𝕠𝕗 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕟𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥; 𝔹𝕖𝕥𝕨𝕖𝕖𝕟 𝟙𝟚 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝟚𝟜 – 𝔹𝕖𝕕𝕋𝕚𝕞𝕖
the plumb, Toronto, Spring 2024

Organized by Erica Stocking, Ella Dawn McGeough, and Amanda Boulos, the exhibition unfolded over the space of both exhibition and event series to ask:
What forms (in their many forms) do beds make it possible to imagine? What grows from their fertile soil? What weird wanderings does a drowsy mind follow? What conventions undo themselves when lying prone, released from the vertical “I”—the upright standing I, the individual I, the restless I, the I who scans the horizon in search of somewhere else; when we are in a hammock, a burrow, a mat in the corner, some warm patch of grass, or soft sand, where we cannot be blown down by the storms of history because we are already hugging the earth, settled by gravity’s pull, dreaming the world into existence. What then? What thoughts? What emotions? What sensations and perceptions? What possibilities? What strange affinities nestle into and around us?

This exhibition goes hand-on-hand with my doctoral project, “We Change Everything We Touch and Everything We Touch Changes,” which assembles interconnected texts, quotations, graphic content, and sculptural works to ask: what forms (in their many forms) do beds make it possible to imagine? What grows from their fertile soil? What weird wanderings does a drowsy mind follow? What does a tired and/or sick body deem important or irrelevant? What conventions undo themselves when lying prone, released from the vertical “I”—the upright standing I, the individual I, the restless I, the I who scans the horizon in search of somewhere else; when we are in a hammock, a burrow, a mat in the corner, some warm patch of grass, or soft sand, where we cannot be blown down by the storms of history because we are already hugging the earth, settled by gravity’s pull, dreaming the world into existence. What then? What thoughts? What emotions? What sensations and perceptions? What possibilities? What strange affinities nestle into and around us?

*pdf: “I’m on Fire”

The Witch_1942, 2019-2022
installation views from goodtime, The Plumb, Toronto (Fall 2022) and Tools ‘n’ Shit (Round 1, 2, 3) (2019-2022), Goodwater Gallery, Toronto

~14,600 pieces of grapevine charcoal made over the course of two-years in Goodwater’s fireplace, drawing material for a lifetime. The work includes several tools necessary for production, installation, storage and a special edition Goodwater Mailer for the exhibition, goodtime.

I wrote a featured essat about goodwater/goodtime for Momus: It’s All About Good Timing: Goodwater at the Plumb

production assistance: Melissa Bleecker and John Goodwin
grape vine: Sandra Rechico, Callum Schuster, Amanda White
photo documentation: Alison Postma, Colin Miner, John Goodwin