STILL LIFE 2026
Juried Featured Artists
Juror/Curator: Ciar O’Mahony
Still life has a long history in Canadian art. Rooted in European traditions, the genre has evolved to reflect Canada’s diverse communities, landscapes, cultures, and everyday experiences.
By focusing on familiar objects and domestic spaces, still life can intimately explore larger ideas. Everyday objects can hold memories of family and migration; food can reflect culture, land, labour, and community; and flowers and natural materials can represent both beauty and impermanence. Through these subjects, still life invites us to consider identity, belonging, memory, mortality, and our relationship with the world around us.
This year’s Still Life catalogue continues to showcase a diverse group of Canadian contemporary artists. Featuring a Foreword by Arnie Guha and reflections from artist-curator Ciara O’Mahony, the catalogue includes subjects, studies of light and shadow, everyday observations, and experimental approaches to the genre.
This year’s featured artists include: Ioana Bertrand, Linda Briskin, Nancy R. Chalut, Yu-Sheng Chiu, Eva Christensen, Edward Donald, Matthew Ferguson, Monique Fouquet, Anne Fullerton, Katherine Hartel, Rhodri Kasperbauer, Nancy Kembry, Miklos Legrady, Sue Mackay, Dimitrije Martinovic, Claudia McKnight, Markus Moos, Deborah Percy, Jackie Rancourt, Leena Raudvee, Barbara Rehus, Dale M. Reid, Diane Royce, Irina Schestakowich, Lee Schnaiberg, Robert Charles Bruce Scott, Carolynn Smallwood, Andrew Stikuts, David Switzer, Kate Taylor, Corine van Hoeve, Kenneth Vincent, and Janna Robins Walters.
BIOGRAPHY
Ciar O’Mahony is a curator based in Tkaronto. They are a member of collectively run gallery the plumb, and co-direct SCaM Project Space. They received their BFA from the School of the art Institute of Chicago and MFA from Goldsmiths, University of London. Variously, they have exhibited work, developed public programs, and curated exhibitions for South London Gallery, UK, The Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, UK, Cubitt Artists’, UK, the plumb, The Aird Gallery, and Archer Beach Haus, US. Their work is carried by Art Metropole, and archived by Xpace. Their writing has been published by e-flux journal, Blackwood Gallery, The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, YYZ Artists’ Outlet, and Liminul Magazine.
