Sheila Butler: Other Circumstances

Sheila Butler was born near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, and educated at Carnegie-Mellon University. She emigrated to Canada in 1962. Sheila Butler worked with her former husband, Jack Butler, and numerous Inuit artists in Baker Lake, Nunavut to found the Sanavik Arctic Cooperative in the 1960s. Butler lived and worked in Winnipeg for many years, teaching studio courses at the University of Manitoba and art history at the University of Winnipeg. With her colleague Diane Whitehouse, Butler was instrumental in the founding of MAWA, a mentoring organization for women in the field of visual arts. In 1989 she began a teaching position at Western University in London, ON, where she was an important influence on the development of the Department, including its graduate programs. After living in Toronto for many years, she has since returned to Winnipeg. Sheila Butler’s work has been exhibited across Canada and abroad. Her painting are in many public collections including those of the National Gallery of Canada and the Winnipeg Art Gallery as well as in private and corporate collections.

Pamela Edmonds is a curator of contemporary art and the current Director and Curator of the Dalhousie Art Gallery in Halifax. She holds a BFA in Studio Art and Art History and an MA in Art History from Concordia University in Montreal. Edmonds’ research interests focus on Canadian art and the politics of representation, and her work has developed by looking at curating as a form of social practice linked to different relationships between people and objects as well as to wider social structures and contexts. Many of her projects explore the impact of Black diasporic cultures on the evolving geography of global contemporary art. She began her curatorial career in Halifax beginning in the late 1990’s, holding programming roles at the Anna Leonowens Gallery (Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University), Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery and the Centre for Arts Tapes to name a few. She has also held curatorial positions in Ontario including at A Space Gallery, the Art Gallery of Peterborough, Thames Art Gallery and the McMaster Museum of Art. Besides authoring numerous exhibition publications, her writing has appeared in Canadian Art, Prefix Photo, Arts Atlantic, MICE, and RACAR (revue d'art canadienne/Canadian Art Review), and has served on the advisory boards of C Magazine, Canadian Art Magazine, the Art Museum at the University of Toronto and Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario (CPAMO). More information on her projects can be found at www.pe-curates.space

Patrick Mahon is an artist, writer, curator, and Professor Emeritus in Visual Arts, Western University, London, ON. Born in Winnipeg, Mahon received his BFA at the University of Manitoba’s School of Art in 1979. He has exhibited nationally and internationally,  including in the recent solo exhibition, Messagers’ Forum  (Thames Art Gallery, Chatham, ON, 2020-21), and group exhibitions, Written on the Earth, curated by Helen Gregory (McInstosh Art Gallery, 2021) and GardenShip and State, co-curated by Patrick Mahon and Jeff Thomas (Museum London, London, ON, 2021). An ambitious three-year project, GardenShip and State was one of two finalists for Galleries Ontario’s 2022 Exhibition of the Year, and will be presented at Thames Art Gallery in late 2024.  Mahon’s work is included in numerous private, corporate, and museum collections.