UWAG exhibition openings, featuring the work of Brenda Mabel Reid and Andrew McPhail.

Brenda Mabel Reid Underlay

Brenda Mabel Reid Presentation: Thursday, September 18, 7-8:30 pm

Brenda Mabel Reid’s ongoing large-scale quilt project Underlay explores quilts, architecture, and gender-queerness. Reid’s work challenges binary gender norms and uses quilted-architectural forms to explore quilting as a method of making a queer space that brings people together. Composed of 62 hexagonal blocks made of waterproof construction-grade materials, the form uses a classic tumbling block pattern that references both quilting and architecture. Each block is unique, featuring spray-painted patterns related to architectural drawings and materials. The blocks are modular and can be reconfigured via grommeted corners bound together using reflective nylon rope. This iteration of the project suggests an A-frame shelter or a child’s blanket fort. Visitors are invited to remove their shoes, enter the space, and sit or lie down on the futons provided as a place for contemplation or a relaxing nap. In a society predicated on productivity and a 24-hour news and entertainment cycle routinely focusing on crisis and spectacle, Reid proposes the nap as a restorative political action that incites us to revive ourselves and take up space in a joyful manner. As an object that encourages social engagement, Underlay endeavors to provide a safe space for reflection, regeneration, and community-building. 

The artist acknowledges the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

Brenda Mabel Reid is an emerging trans non-binary visual artist with a social practice. Based in the Haldimand Tract in Kitchener, they are in the process of relocating to St. John’s, Newfoundland. Reid completed their Master of Architecture (2021) and their Bachelor of Architectural Studies (2019) at the University of Waterloo. Underlay has been shown in contemporary art festivals Third Shift in Saint John, NB; Hold Fast in St. John’s, NL; Long Dash in Cambridge, ON; and a presentation by CAFKA and Pat the Dog Theatre Creation in Kitchener, ON. Reid’s work appears in private and public collections across Canada. They have received grants from the Canadian Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund, and the City of Kitchener. (Artist Website)

Andrew McPhail TEXTiles, This is not an AIDS Quilt

In the last decade, Andrew McPhail has produced an ongoing body of textile-based work that draws from his experience as a queer man living with HIV for over 30 years. Developing out of his drawing practice, McPhail’s work has evolved into a hybrid straddling sculpture, installation, and performance. Utilizing readymade disposable materials, ranging from Band-Aids to Kleenex, his accumulative work pointedly examined failure, sexuality, and the frailty of the human body. Text has always played a critical role in his work, and over the last decade McPhail was increasingly drawn to the gaudy impermanence of brightly coloured sequins as a medium for his humorous, often caustic slogans: Sick & Tired. Fragile. Epic Fail. The End. Obsessively hand-stitching these sequined texts onto bed sheets, pillowcases, and quilts, the sum of McPhail’s ongoing project evokes a metaphoric bedroom, a place of comfort, security, compassion as well as passion, but also of sickness and death. TEXTiles knowingly honours the emotional and material impact of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, a monumental collective undertaking honouring the names of all those lost to the AIDS epidemic. McPhail’s iteration is a more modest, personal production; a self-deprecating portrait of an artist willing to make light of their own survival.

Andrew McPhail is a visual artist who received his MFA from York University in 1987. In his accumulative, craft-oriented practice he uses ephemeral, disposable materials such as Band Aids, Kleenex, and Post-its to create monumental yet ephemeral sculptures, installations, and performances. Over the last decade he has been hand-stitching sequins to spell out text on pillowcases, bed sheets, and quilts. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. He was the recipient of the Canada Council International Studio Residency in Paris in 2013 and the Nordic Artist Residency in 2023. He is the co-founder, with Stephen Altena, of the Hundred Dollar Gallery, and a founding member of The Assembly in Hamilton, Ontario. (Artist Website)