Laurel Rennie’s work affirms that she’s both here and elsewhere, all the time. Rennie works intuitively, a practice born from a curiosity of what this approach can bring to the surface. Drawing and writing are a way of making mental processes physical — while hands are occupied, unconscious thoughts can emerge and be recorded through shape, words, or symbols.
Rennie’s work is imbued with folklore; she sees recurring symbols and stories as integral to understanding human history and sustaining the spirit. Increasingly her practice fixates on spiritual survival. Even if our bodies survive each passing year, how do our spirits remain intact? As the world becomes increasingly inhospitable to many forms of life, largely because of human impact, she creates work that gathers stories from vegetation and other non-humans, dreams, mysteries, and the textural world as a way of processing our knotted relationships and histories.
Both chance and control are important to her work—working with dyes and plants can be unruly, while quilting and piece-work is more slow and structured. Rennie makes systems for organizing the mysterious and unknowable, as a way of getting closer to what she knows she’ll never understand.
Laurel Rennie is an artist working with textiles, drawing, sculpture, and writing. She creates textural pieces that focus on the tangled relationships and stories between humans and the rest of the living world. She holds a Master’s in Fibres and Material Practices from Concordia University, and a BFA in Interdisciplinary Studies from NSCAD University. She was born in Windsor, Ontario, and currently situates her practice between Montreal and the East Coast. Recent exhibitions include “Also a Good Place to Sulk” at Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto (2024), “Ignition 17” at the Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery, Montreal (2022), “Tether + Tinker” at the Point St. Charles Art Gallery, Montreal (2022), and “Object Histories” at the Eyelevel Gallery, Halifax (2020).
