Boat without a Boat
Curated by Arin Fay
Nelson Museum, Archives and Gallery, November 15, 2025 – February 21, 2026
Nelson, BC
The body of work Boat without a Boat with its drawing based assemblages and stop motion animation videos was created over the past 5 years and represents two new directions in my art practice A selection of works from the first few years was exhibited at the Grand Forks Art Gallery in the summer of 2024. This past fall into winter at the Nelson Museum, Archives and Gallery, I exhibited 9 new assemblages along side a few of the older ones and the two stop motion works from the first exhibition at GFAG.
My art practice is centered on the act of drawing as a way to explore emotion and presence. Images emerge and evolve through visual contemplation and an intuitive process that I refer to as a ‘felt sense’. These along with play, chance and free association are common modalities towards the development of a new work. My interests in material and spiritual transformation comes into my work and is fed by a broad range of reading and research which includes; art history, philosophy, psychoanalysis, mysticism and such. Certain poignant life experiences also inform my work entering largely from an unconscious association or symbol. In reflecting on my work over the past three decades, my interest in the relationship between spirit and matter has dominated my explorations both consciously and unconsciously. In one sentence I would suggest that my work seeks to elevate and empower Matter as a force of unsurpassed agency. It is through embracing this embodied force that I express moment of transformation through figurative-based narratives.
I was fortunate in having an exhibition cataloge produced and published by the Nelson Museum, Archives and Gallery with two essays, one by NMAG Curator, Arin Fay and the other by Greta Hamilton, now curator at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, ON.
Thompson’s previous work is akin to the feminist fury of artists such as Joan
Mitchell or Betty Goodwin. The sentiments remain in Boat Without a Boat but
the approach has shifted to an eerie calm, and the articulation of haunting
faces, cut lines, and monochromatic precision. And here again, the absence
of certain elements draws attention to their importance; the relatively
restrained use of colour and constraint, illuminating the opposite.
Arin Fay, from curatorial statement
These bright and grotesque works by artist enrapture me in a world of freaky transformation.The works in Boat without a boat (2025) depict figures in a dance of change…For Thompson, drawing is a mediator between the conscious and
unconscious realms, The importance of these faces, I believe, is not their eyes alone, but
how their expressions relate to their odd bodies, and how one must confront these
anguished beings with their own body, in order to witness the work.
Greta Hamilton, from catalog essay
If you are interested in a digital or paper catalog please contact me.
Links to the Stop Motion Animation Videos, Night Ritual and Midden are available upon request.
We acknowledge the Support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the British Columbia Arts Council.
Boat without a Boat
Curated by Tim Van Wijk
Grand Forks Art Gallery, Grand Forks, BC
May – August, 2024
Grand Forks Art Gallery, Summer of 2024
Grand Fork
Photos by Kenton Doupe
Links to the Stop Motion Animation Videos, Night Ritual and Midden are available upon request.
You can only be touched if you have not perished
(written by Poet, Eimear Laffan in response to this body of work and recorded as part of the soundtrack for the video Midden)
How well the cave initiates.
Even allegory has a genealogy.
Answer though you were not called.
Each breach dictates a subterfuge.
Humble then your hands into the dirt.
There is more than one way to pray.
Punctuate clay with raw desire.
Its hard press will find you in time.
Unearth lunacy from the cavern floor.
What can be held can be altered.
String the nadis with fairylight.
The body has a history of absorption.
Borrow paper from a birch bark.
Remember how to start a fire.
Animal the wolf moon with a howl.
Every after carries a resound.
Video created by the Grand Forks Art Gallery
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZaSsbykznQ
