Recent Work – Visible Labour Art Exhibition
Location: Leslie Grove Gallery
Address: 1158 Queen St. E, Toronto ON
Exhibition Dates: April 29 – May 10, 2026
Opening: Sunday, May 3, 1-5pm
Artist Talk: Sunday, May 10, 2-3pm
Visible Labour presents the work of five women artists who have been meeting monthly for over 15 years to share and discuss their work. Their interests, visual knowledge of both art history and technique, individual leanings and preferences, and lived experiences have sustained an evocative, elevated dialogue about their own and others’ work. The isolation of individual art practice is continually counterbalanced by their association with one another. Working across mixed media, textile, printmaking, collage, digital image, drawing, and mark making, each artist brings a distinct sensibility that informs and enriches the group while remaining particular in her own vision. Each moves individually between representation and abstraction, between the internal and external, offering consistently thoughtful observation, detailed wonder and inquiry, and a determination to question the work in relation to art history, the social and cultural realm, and the spheres both larger and smaller.
Participating artists:
Tracey Bowen is a mixed media artist and researcher working with digitally photographed surfaces as an exercise in close looking. She responds to these digital impressions with handmade marks and gestures to explore emerging pattern systems.
J. Lynn Campbell is currently working with photography, printmaking, and collage, using layered surfaces as bridges linking internal states to external conditions.
Phyllis Gordon explores the natural world, attending to stillness and slow persistence. She works with drawing, printmaking, and collage, pairing her technique with the quieter rhythms of the earth and its botany.
Cathy Jones uses digital technologies to examine self-portraiture. Working with photography modified on a tablet using analogue drawing and painting sensibilities, she deconstructs and reassembles identity and agency.
Susan Gaby-Trotz is a contemporary textile artist whose practice is rooted in traditional rug hooking, expanded through a wide variety of textiles, materials, and techniques. Her work moves deliberately beyond the conventional boundaries of the form, engaging with ideas and issues that are conceptually ambitious and visually compelling. Textile making, with its history of domestic andcommunal labour, provides both the foundation and the counterpoint for work that is thoughtful, layered, and distinctly her own.
