The Or Gallery is pleased to present Things’ Matter, a group exhibition featuring works by Kika Thorne, Heather Passmore, Michael Drebert and Jen Weih.

Things’ Matter is an exhibition of contemporary art that draws on the concept of objecthood and thingness. Each artwork is invested in exploring the affecting nature of its material makeup and challenges the viewer to consider how inanimate things might be thought of as imbued with a vitality or life force.

In a series of prints utilizing ink made of plant matter and illustrating theoretical grids of light bending, Kika Thorne explores how plant matter responds to the manipulation of being used as ink to describe its own photosynthetic processes. Heather Passmore makes paintings from raw milk paint, hand made by the artist. Passmore’s interest is in the medicinal and nutritional properties of raw milk and the politics surrounding its designation as an illegal substance in Canada. Jen Weih and Michael Drebert are less oriented toward the material and instead explore the thing’s capacity to seduce and the effective potential that the human desire for things has on human behaviour. In a gestural work, Drebert uses his own body to transport a fisherman’s glass floater from Haida Gwaii back to its place of origin in Kamakura, Japan. While objects aren’t normally thought of as having desires and needs, Drebert assumes the ball’s yearning to return home and uses himself as a carrier and witness in this service. For Thing’s Matter, Jen Weih has made an animation using fragmented things pulled from the internet. Weih’s is an experiment in animating and anthropomorphizing these otherwise inanimate things that are the detritus of cultural production, human desire and need.

Things’ Matter is curated by Klara Manhal, a candidate to the Masters Degree in Critical and Curatorial Studies at The University of British Columbia.

This exhibition is made possible through support from the Killy Foundation and the Audain Endowment for Curatorial Studies through the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory in collaboration with the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at The University of British Columbia.