Chelsea Brant: (un)familiar / (up)rooted

Grimsby Public Art Gallery

Chelsea Brant, The Bigger Picture. Photo: Carey Shaw

Chelsea Brant: (un)familiar / (up)rooted

June 12 – August 30, 2026
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 13, 2 – 4pm
Grimsby Public Art Gallery

(un)familiar / (up)rooted, is a collective body of work established in 2022 and now making its Ontario debut at the Grimsby Public Art Gallery. Through the evocative metaphor of tropical houseplants, artist Chelsea Brant explores themes of change, grief, displacement, resilience, and belonging, tracing the emotional experience of adapting to unfamiliar environments while questioning what it means to feel rooted in place, in relationships, and in oneself. Emerging from a deeply transformative period in the artist’s life, the work reflects on loss, memory, healing, and growth through imagery that balances both beauty and uncertainty.

The exhibition revisits Brant’s original paintings alongside a new series of 2026 collages created from the same source imagery used to develop the paintings. These works reveal fragments of the artist’s process and uncover the layered foundations behind the original body of work. A newly developed companion piece to Sweet Dreams further expands themes of care, vulnerability, and emotional unease.

Drawing on Affect Theory, the exhibition considers how emotional experiences are often sensed and processed before they can be consciously articulated through language. Through layered mixed-media works incorporating sewn canvas, clay, collage, and painting, Brant creates immersive environments that blur the boundaries between memory and reality, comfort and discomfort, stillness and chaos. Rather than presenting fixed narratives, (un)familiar / (up)rooted invites viewers to reflect on experiences of home, loss, adaptation, and the ongoing human capacity for resilience and growth.

Special thanks to the Ontario Arts Council for their support.

About Chelsea Brant

As a Mohawk/German female artist living and working between rural and urban environments, Brant’s work often contemplates the present and a sense of belonging in these spaces. Through a multidisciplinary art practice, curation, and education in the arts, her work reflects on and engages with these lived experiences, vicarious recountings, intimate moments, and memory. Brant’s work uses extracted image fragments from personal and found photographs and plays with both reductive and collective collage approaches to compile narratives, presenting visual moments as a sort of “story-quilt.” Using the fragmentation and assemblage of place, time, and space within a single picture plane, these artworks simultaneously present the passing of time and themes of joy and trauma. Visuals are often drawn from old family photographs, plant life cycles, and imagery of idyllic travel destinations, meaning the subject matter is often diverse, but the throughlines between series are woven together by shared explorations of relationships and being.

Chelsea Brant (she/her) is a Mohawk/German multidisciplinary artist, curator, and arts educator at the post-secondary level. Brant received a BFA degree from the University of Guelph and an MFA from the University of Saskatchewan. She has worked for numerous arts organizations, including the Art Gallery of Guelph and Musagetes, served on several arts boards, including her most recent appointment with Nuit Blanche YXE, and has taught courses through Brock University, Sheridan College, DVSA and McMaster University. Brant’s artistic work has been exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally, with her most recent work featured in the Artist Project’s Installation Space. Brant is currently based in Norfolk County and has two upcoming solo exhibitions at the Grimsby Public Art Gallery and the Woodstock Art Gallery (Summer 2026).

About Grimsby Public Art Gallery

The Grimsby Public Art Gallery was founded in 1975 as a committee of the Grimsby Public Library Board, creating an active and accessible community art gallery in the lower level of the Grimsby Public Library. In 1999 the Gallery became a separate sub-department of the Town of Grimsby, although we still shared a building with the Library. In 2004 both Gallery and Library moved into a new purpose–built facility that has significantly enhanced our ability to fulfill all aspects of our mandate.

Forging and maintaining connections with our community is of primary importance, and we do this through our careful selection and presentation of exhibitions and programs. We preserve art by our responsible care of the permanent collection. We encourage visual art by maintaining an open, welcoming gallery for all visitors and offering a range of thought-provoking art and related programs.

Grimsby Public Art Gallery
18 Carnegie Lane
Grimsby, ON L3M 1Y1
905-945-3246
www.grimsby.ca/Art-Gallery

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Gallery Hours:
Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday: 10am – 5pm
Thursday: 10am – 9pm
Saturday: 12 – 5pm

For more information please contact:
Sylvia Beben
Art Gallery Manager/Curator
Grimsby Public Art Gallery
905-345-3246 x 2079
sbeben@grimsby.ca