By Pepper Parr
September 7th, 2016
BURLINGTON, ON
MoonGlade, that No Vacancy event that will take place Friday September 16th at the Art Gallery of Burlington, has attracted artists from across the country.
Denis Longchamps, Artistic Director & Chief Curator at the AGB explains that the event was curated by his office. Curating is a process whereby artists were selected and invited to submit a project. Longchamps adds that is why “you are noticing the focus on social responsibility”
Kelly Bruton – one of 17 installation artists participating in the MoonGlade event at the Art Gallery of Burlington on September 16th – 7 to midnight.
Kelly Bruton will be doing an installation she calls The Mending Factory. “It is a participatory performance work designed to engage in dialogue with the public about our over-consumption of clothing and its impact on our environment.
“Through the generosity of people’s individual labour they will to be part of a simple assembly line process that deconstructs t-shirts by cutting, and then reconstructing the strips into a hand woven rug. The actions are a metaphor for examining and taking apart systems (deconstructing) to fixing and changing supply chains (reconstructing).
“I am using this performance based work to communicate and share my concern about environmental disasters with others while sharing useful textile knowledge and skills.
“I see these factories like social structures, spaces for direct “hands on” experiences, dialogue and learning. The mending factory is suitable for all ages.”
Kelly makes her home in St. John’s Newfoundland, an island rich with natural spaces for inspiration and artistic challenge. Living in this cultural community has resulted in the blending of disciplines within an individual practice. Kelly’s interdisciplinary practice ranges from Set Design for Film and Television, Costume Design for the stage to exhibiting her Fine Art Textiles internationally.
The textile piece, Gondawana, by Kelly Bruton was part of the Craft Council of Newfoundland and Labrador gallery presentation Migrations. Photos by Eric Walsh
She studied Fine Art at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, where she graduated with degrees in Fine Art and Art Education. Her Art and life is enriched by the travel that she has done over the past twenty years. She has trekked into mountain ranges Rockies (Canada), Simien (Ethiopia), Himalayas, (India and Nepal), has reached the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro, traveled by water into the Okavango Delta (Botswana), Lake Malawi and Lake Tana (Ethiopia).
Kelly also uses her skills as an Artist for social change in her local community and abroad. She served on the Board of Directors for Oxfam Canada for nine years and a three-year term as a Board Trustee for Oxfam International. This voluntary work in International Development is inspired by her own experience living and working in Botswana in southern Africa in the mid 1990s and her travels. She is a founder and Executive Board member of the Social Justice Cooperative of Newfoundland and Labrador.
