Stewart Hall Art Gallery is pleased to present the exhibition Three States of Fibre. Julie Bénédicte Lambert, Mylène Boisvert, Nathalie Levasseur, curated by Pascale Beaudet. It explores aspects of fragility in both humans and the natural world through materials that are rarely encountered in contemporary art: braided rye straw, wicker, and linen paper thread. Here, the technical skills required to manipulate these materials are applied to new creative purposes.
Mylène Boisvert weaves her hand-made linen paper into delicate works that embody the passage of time. Working with fragments of floral wallpaper from her family home, she recontextualizes them as evanescent objects. The botanical world also provided inspiration for a new type of woven herbarium of native plants, such as spotted lady’s thumb and bloodroot.
Julie Bénédicte Lambert developed an interest in working with braided rye straw while on an artist residency in Guimarães, Portugal, in 2022. For this exhibition, the traditional utility bag has been transformed into a container for emotions. Lambert studied the poses of devotional statues and newspaper images of people in mourning, borrowing gestures to shape her materials and using her own body as a mold. The resulting works evoke fleeting yet persistent emotions that relate as much to prayer as they do to mourning.
Nathalie Levasseur has a dual objective: to create works using braiding techniques and to raise environmental awareness. She works with natural materials to provoke feelings of wonder and to highlight natural processes. Her installation, made of willow branches she grows herself, is an ode to serenity and a reflection on our changing world.
Vernissage: Sunday, September 7, 2 p.m.
