Spring Exhibitions at McIntosh Gallery

Opening Reception: Saturday, April 5, 2:00pm – 4:00pm
This event is free and open to the public. Complimentary weekend parking available in select campus lots.

Alize Zorlutuna, An Index of Inheritances, 2025, various materials.

Alize Zorlutuna: Above Borders, Beneath Words

Curated by Helen Gregory

April 5 – May 30, 2025

Above Borders, Beneath Words invites us to consider our relationship to land and water beyond geopolitical borders and national identities. Attending to the specificities of place, each work reflects an engagement with the complexities of belonging—particularly as applied to diasporic communities. The grief of displacement and the resulting loss of knowledge ways is amplified when combined with the grief of living on occupied Indigenous land. Residing on these lands as a settler necessitates a reckoning with the violent histories and ongoing legacies of colonialism, not only in so-called Canada but also globally. Through the juxtaposition of traditional Anatolian material technologies such as textiles and marbling with contemporary media and approaches, this exhibition forges new directions for considering diasporic relationships to place and belonging. This exhibition asks, how might we build embodied relationships with a place over time? How does this relationship-building impact our embodiment and way of moving in the world? How might we balance comfort or kinship found in a new land with the legacy of settler colonialism? Read more

This work appeared in the more extensive exhibition We Who Have Known Many Shores curated by Suzanne Carte at the Art Gallery of Burlington.

Related Programming:

Leaving the Table: çay service & guided conversation
Saturday, April 5, 1:00pm – 2:00pm

Gesturing towards ways of gathering and being with others that are underscored by a sense of mutual responsibility and care, Leaving the Table asks participants to collectively imagine a space other than the table around which we might gather: a space that exists within the boundaries and in relationship to the violent histories of this place; a space that acknowledges the challenge of reconciling the ongoing legacies of these histories with the reality that this place has also been a refuge for many. Leaving the Table asks us to contend with how we came to be here on this land, and what our responsibilities are in being here together.

Join the artist for çay (tea), baklava and a respectful, guided conversation on Saturday, April 5, 1:00 – 2:00pm. Registration is required as space is limited. To register, please email mcintoshgallery@uwo.ca with “Leaving the Table çay service” in the subject line and provide your name and contact details.

About the Artist

Alize Zorlutuna is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and educator whose work explores relationships to land, culture and the more-than-human, while thinking through history, ancestral wisdom and healing. Moving between Tkarón:to and Anatolia (present-day Turkey) both physically and culturally throughout their life has informed Zorlutuna’s practice—making them attentive to spaces of encounter. Zorlutuna enlists poetics and a sensitivity to materials in works that combine traditional Anatolian material practices like textiles, marbling and ceramics, alongside video, printed matter, performance and sculpture. Conjuring earth, air, water, and spirit, Zorlutuna collages mediums, methods, and geographies. The body and its sensorial capacities are central to their work.

Angela Grauerholz, Museé Carnavalet #26, 2018, inkjet print on Arches paper, edition of 5. Gift of the artist, 2020. Collection of McIntosh Gallery, Western University.

Holding Patterns: the short view
Recent Acquisitions from the McIntosh Gallery Collection

Angela Grauerholz, Meryl McMaster, and Soheila Esfahani
Curated by Rachel Deiterding

April 5 – July 11, 2025

Holding Patterns is an exhibition series that explores the McIntosh Gallery collection. It begins with the short view, a selection of artworks collected since 2020. This reflection on recent acquisitions emphasizes some of the conversations that have been entangled with the collection over the past several years and poses critical questions about what it means to collect.

Soheila Esfahani, Meryl McMaster, and Angela Grauerholz are all concerned with collecting, whether this is through the personal ephemera that we use to document and define our sense of self; efforts to objectively order, categorize, and control the natural world; or institutional commitments to preserve cultural memory that begrudgingly remains susceptible to the passing of time. As McIntosh Gallery undertakes a detailed assessment of the collection, the recent past provides critical tools to inform the future. Each artwork has much to teach us about inclinations to collect across contexts and frames the conversation as we consider how we might approach collecting moving forward.

Related Programming:

Around the Reference Table: Study Along
Wednesday, April 9, 10:00am – 12:30pm
Wednesday, April 16, 1:00pm – 3:30pm
Wednesday, April 23, 1:00pm – 3:30pm
Free | Open to the public

Are you a student looking for a quiet place to study on campus? Around the Reference Table invites students to join gallery staff for a facilitated study session. Join us and stay accountable to your study schedule. After all, concentration is contagious!

Let’s Talk Collections: What’s Up with the McIntosh Gallery Collection?
Date and time to be announced
Free | Open to the public

A lot has changed over McIntosh Gallery’s 83-year history as a collecting institution. Join Rachel Deiterding, Curator of Collections & Special Projects, for a look inside ongoing work to review the McIntosh Gallery collection and the many questions and challenges that accompany this project.

Beginning with a presentation, the conversation will transition to a public discussion about collecting and its future.

Presented as part of the ADAC Canadian Art Hop: May 1–4, 2025

The Connecting to Collections project is generously supported by Catherine Elliot Shaw.

McIntosh Gallery
1151 Richmond Street
London, ON N6A 3K7
mcintoshgallery.ca
mcintoshgallery@uwo.ca
(519) 661-3181

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Our Hours
Monday to Friday: 10am – 5pm
Saturday: 12 – 4pm
Sundays and Holidays: Closed
McIntosh Gallery offers free admission to all exhibitions and events

Accessibility:
We regret that McIntosh Gallery is not wheelchair accessible.