Karen Henry

Variations on the Picturesque was an exhibition Guest Curated by founding and current Doryphore member Karen Henry and Karen Love for the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, Ontario, Canada. On view December 5, 2005 – March 29, 2006, the exhibition and accompanying catalogue explored the questions: “What are the remnants of the picturesque in the 21st century? What is the combination of landscape, domestication, urban and rural associations and nature that exists today?”

In their catalogue essay, “In Relation to the Picturesque,” Henry and Love note:

The exhibition explores the notion of a contemporary picturesque (and its associations with the dystopic as well as the sublime) through the critical and perceptive eyes and imaginations of artists. The artworks include painting and sculptural works, installation, photography, film and digital media and can be conceptually grouped into several thematic though not mutually exclusive associations.”

Allyson Clay: Imaginary Standard Distance was an exhibition curated by founding and current Doryphore member, Karen Henry for the Walter Phillips Gallery at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Banff, Alberta, Canada in 2002. From that year until 2005, the exhibition toured to Mt. St. Vincent University Gallery, Halifax; Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina; Art Gallery of Greater Victoria; and the Kamloops Art Gallery. It was accompanied by a catalogue with essays by Karen Henry and poet Lisa Robertson, and published by the Walter Phillips Gallery.

Writing on the artist’s work in her essay, “Spatial Relations: Architectural Fragments,” Karen Henry notes:

Clay’s sensual colours, range of mediums, elusive stories, and small moving images intend to draw the viewer into a relationship. If the perspectives are ‘improper,’ they invite the viewer to collude in their transgressions. With transgression comes excitement and vulnerability, an agitated edge that threatens stability. These are the material affects of language, of architecture, of intimacy.”