PUBLIC PROGRAMMING

Opening Reception

Saturday, January 16, 2027

2:00 - 4:00 PM

Community Drawing

January 12 - 17, 2027

Daily, 7:00am - midnight

Drop by the Fine Arts Atrium to contribute to a collaborative community drawing during the week of the exhibition install! Bring your own drawing tools.

Studio Visits with visiting curator Wayne Baerwaldt

Thursday, January 14 and Friday January 15, 2027

A limited number of studio visits will be available with visiting curator Wayne Baerwaldt. Join our newsletter and watch for details about how to register.

More programming dates to be announced soon!

Art Thou The Accuser Of Thy Brethren Or Art Thou The Inspiration of Their Heart

Richard Boulet

January 16 – March 27, 2027

Curated by Wayne Baerwaldt for 21C Curators, Inc.

Art Thou The Accuser Of Thy Brethren Or Art Thou The Inspiration of Their Heart casts a spotlight on the extraordinary studio practice of Edmonton-based artist Richard Boulet. His visually arresting fine-craft textile works feature a characteristic mix of figurative and abstract elements, including found objects, text in various forms from traditional cross-stitching to assemblage techniques, and filaments of colour embedded in quilting.

Boulet’s artworks are also a testament to his ability to acknowledge his lived experience with mental health challenges. On the path to mental wellness he has built a base of knowledge that remains open to addressing issues ranging from social justice to the omnipresence of poetic inspiration and the need for psychic and physical space to accommodate an emerging queer identity. The characteristic markers of his studio investigation are complex, autobiographical, and reflect the formal consequences of his ever-evolving definition and process of artmaking.

Today, there is unprecedented public acceptance and openness about mental health challenges, including sharing stories that detail paths to wellness. Boulet’s timely exhibition and the accompanying publication offer new perspectives on the intersectional aesthetics of mental health.  

Richard Boulet’s timely exhibition and accompanying publication offer new perspectives on intersectional mental illness/health aesthetics. Boulet introduces fine craft textile art as part of an inclusive mental wellness program for community building while extending the discourse around fine craft materiality via his exploration of more diverse elements including medical terminology, design strategies, performative sound and concrete poetry. By providing an artworld context for schizophrenia and its display of dysfunction in the public mind, Boulet suggests there is as much consideration to be paid to recovery and text-and-materially-based art as to stories of pre-diagnosis hardships.

Boulet’s visit to Corner Brook is a unique opportunity to bring public attention to alternative approaches to fine craft making, blending narratives of lived experience with mental challenges with various craft techniques (from applique to cross-stitch). During the opening reception on January 16th, Boulet will be in conversation with exhibition curator Wayne Baerwaldt in the gallery. They will discuss the inspiration for key works in the show with a particular emphasis on the active exchange of fine craft and design techniques as they relate to concrete poetry, drawing, sculpture and installation.  A Q&A with the audience will follow the conversation.

Publication - If I May Digress: Richard Boulet and Collaborators 

Signed copies of the hardcover publication, If I May Digress: Richard Boulet and Collaborators will be available for purchase along with a limited number of Boulet’s original drawings.

The book offers perspectives on intersectional mental illness/health aesthetics and the growing influence of fine crafts in contemporary and modern art history. Remarkable outcomes and stylistic shifts in Boulet’s works are examined by contributors to the publication including Dick Averns, Wayne Baerwaldt, Noam Gonick and Eric Wood, Dr. Michelle Hardy and Dr. Steven Harris. Their contributions provide an opportunity to acknowledge and contextualize Boulet’s work within the ever-growing presence of neuro-diverse practices and otherwise hidden histories developing just outside mainstream contemporary art history. Although Boulet’s practice may be centred around a discourse linking creativity and mental challenges, it is much more than that. It is simultaneously a call for barrier-free inclusivity in the mainstream artworld.

Richard Boulet has two undergraduate degrees completed back-to-back from the University of Manitoba. The first is a Bachelor of Environmental Studies in Architecture followed by a BFA. Richard later received his MFA in Drawing and Intermedia at the University of Alberta and for a limited period of time he found a home for participatory programming, volunteering and gainful employment at the CMHA–Edmonton.

Wayne Baerwaldt is an independent visual arts curator and producer based in western Canada. His best-known curatorial projects trace performative elements in artmaking with an emphasis on unstable, disputed identities and the language of their construction and presentation in public and private spaces. Recent projects and publications include If I May Digress: Richard Boulet and Collaborators and Meeting for Teas: On the Road to Decolonization. He is the guest editor for Issue #62 of PUBLIC, The Gender-Diverse Lens, and conducts ongoing research in social justice issues and questions of representation as a Michele Sereda Artist in Residence for Socially Engaged Practice at the University of Regina. He is a board member of the Hnatyshyn Foundation, Ottawa and on the Advisory Committee of participant, inc., in New York City.

Acknowledgments

The artist and curator greatly appreciate the support of the Grenfell Art Gallery, Joe Friday, Dallas Loken, Paula Dozois, Natasha Pashak, Barr Gilmore, Alberta Views magazine, and the Emily Harvey Foundation, Eduardo Aquino, the Canada Council for the Arts, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Flanagan Foundation, the University of Regina Michele Serada Artist in Residence for Socially Engaged Practice, dc3 Gallery and David Candler (Edmonton), Type A Print (Toronto), and Shurniak Art Gallery, Assiniboia for their support of the various stages of the project.

Grenfell Art Gallery acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which makes this exhibition and affiliated programming possible.