Lake Superior, Thunder Bay #1, 2006 © Robert Burley / courtesy Stephen Bulger Gallery

The Great Lakes
Michael Belmore, Robert Burley, Bonnie Devine, and Shelley Niro

July 9 – August 29, 2026
Opening Reception: Thursday, July 9, 5 – 8pm | Remarks at 6:30pm
Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto

Stephen Bulger Gallery is pleased to present The Great Lakes, a group exhibition of work by artists Michael Belmore, Robert Burley, Bonnie Devine, and Shelley Niro, curated by Penelope Smart, Curator, Thunder Bay Art Gallery.

Five Belts for the Great Lakes, 2025 © Bonnie Devine

In sculpture, images, installation, and film, these artists express their connection–deep and enduring–to water. The Biinaagami map of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence watershed, a collaboration between Canadian Geographic and Swim Drink Fish, invites us to do the same. Visible from outer space, the Great Lakes form a network of lakes and rivers that speak to, and contain, the depths of our collective story. Without water, there is no story.

Gathering in the Cool Night Air, 2026 © Michael Belmore

The Anishinabek called the largest of the five Great Lakes Gichigami (Lake Superior), which translates as “the big lake,” or “the great shining waters.” In Indigenous languages across the watershed, the names for these lakes are often prefaced by variations of the word gichi, or great. These bodies of water have always been part of something bigger, immense, and staggering.

Songs of Survival, 2026 © Shelley Niro/ courtesy Stephen Bulger Gallery

In the gallery, five belts hang from a birch frame. Woven by Devine, these works signal her good tidings as a traveller along this vital and interconnected waterway. For Belmore, four granite stones, laboriously transformed by hand-carving and hammered copper, are touchstones to home, the north shore of Lake Superior. Hazy and eerily calm, a series of photographs by Burley places the viewer on shorelines of sand, rock, and concrete barriers. In a new film by Niro a birdbath becomes an allegory of conflict. Her films read as cycles of grief and renewal for loved ones, including the Great Lakes.

Following this exhibition, The Great Lakes will travel throughout Northern Ontario during 2026–2027, with scheduled stops at Thunder Bay Art Gallery; Art Gallery of Algoma, Sault Ste Marie, Art Gallery of Sudbury; and The MUSE | Douglas Family Arts Centre, Kenora.

Stephen Bulger Gallery
1356 Dundas Street West
Toronto, ON M6J 1Y2
416-504-0575
info@bulgergallery.com

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Accessibility: The gallery is partially accessible, with a level entrance, an accessible washroom, wide and unobstructed pathways, and automatic doors at the entrance.