Colleen Heslin

The Robert McLaughlin Gallery: Piecework

Using the materiality of quilt making as a metaphor for how the fabric of the world holds together, this exhibition brings together a group of contemporary artists who use textiles and assemblage as world-building tools. Pulling together the seemingly discarded, quilts are a composition of scraps, held together with the intention of offering warmth and comfort. This process of building something new from what was left behind, offers an orientation for engagement and opens possibilities for what can become. Quilts also occupy a set of social relations, where the making and sharing is often intergenerational and collective. They are meant to be passed down and cherished, appreciating in value through use.

Colleen Heslin in “Holding a line in your hand” at Kamloops Art Gallery

Holding a line in your hand presents the work of five Canadian women painters from different cultural backgrounds, at different stages in their careers, and based at opposite ends of the country. Their work contains divergent methodologies, but also strong affinities. The exhibition includes artwork abundant in colour, line, and texture, embedded with and unencumbered …

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Colleen Heslin in “An Inheritance” at Victoria Arts Council

One way or another, it comes to us. Through death, and it’s precarious opposite, our time becomes full and fuller, still; resplendent and it’s abundant opposite. An inheritance is never easy, and the artists whose work is gathered here in conversation attest to how legacies are manifest through their visual practices. From experimental films, unclassifiable …

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Vancouver Special: Ambivalent Pleasured including works by Colleen Heslin reviewed in the Georgia Straight

There’s such an exuberance of colour, texture, and form in Vancouver Special that the overall impression is one of delight. Yes, there may be sombre subthemes swimming beneath the surface of the Vancouver Art Gallery’s ambitious new survey exhibition. And flickering shadows may be cast behind the paintings and sculptures, the installations and assemblages, the …

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Colleen Heslin in Vancouver Special: Ambivalent Pleasures at the Vancouver Art Gallery

The Vancouver Art Gallery has announced the 40 participating artists in its new triennial Vancouver Special. The exhibition intends to offer a comprehensive survey of the city’s contemporary art scene and its shifts since the 2010 Winter Olympics. The inaugural edition, “Ambivalent Pleasures,” is co-curated by Daina Augaitis, Vancouver Art Gallery’s chief curator/associate director, and …

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