DESTINATION MOON

Adam David Brown, Steve Driscoll, Jason McLean, Shelley Niro, Winnie Truong, Jim Verburg

September 28 — November 17, 2024

Guest curated by Bill Clarke

Adam David Brown, Moon Light (2015), Steel, plastic, photographs, LEDs. Courtesy of Patrick and Melanie Burke

Exhibition Description

For centuries, humans have looked skyward and pondered the moon. Cultures around the world considered it the embodiment of a powerful deity that held sway over the creation of life and bountiful harvests. It has been a source of fantasy; we've written adventure stories and made sci-fi movies about visiting it, and eventually earthlings did set foot on the lunar surface. We've long believed that the moon is an arbiter of our emotions and behaviours. And now, we're trying to determine how our closest celestial neighbour might play a part in our post-Earth future. The moon may wax and wane, but it seems our fascination with it hasn't. 


The moon has also long been represented in visual art. Artists as varied as Vincent Van Gogh, J. M. W. Turner, Rene Magritte, and Paula Rego have used the image of the moon to create atmospheres and evoke psychological states. This exhibition, Destination Moon, brings together works in a range of media by seven Ontario-based artists who use lunar imagery to examine cultural, historical, material, spiritual, and conceptual interests. From Shelley Niro's photographs that frame the moon's phases through an Indigenous lens to Adam David Brown's sculpture that brings moonlight into the gallery space to Winnie Truong's video and collage works that link feminism with the realms of the natural and supernatural, this exhibition flies visitors to the moon, their imaginations transported, without their feet leaving the ground.

Exhibition Brochure

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About the Artists

  • Adam David Brown

    Adam David Brown is a multidisciplinary artist living in Toronto. His work is guided by the principle of “less is more”, and is frequently generated by his interest in science, language and ephemerality. He has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including shows at the Anna Leonowens Gallery NSCAD, Halifax, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA, and the University of Westminster, London, UK. Works are included in the collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario, BMO, TD Bank, RBC, Scotiabank, Fidelity Investments, Cadillac Fairview, Humber College and many others. He is represented by MKG127 in Toronto. 

  • Steve Driscoll

    Steve Driscoll was born in Oakville, Ontario and is currently based in Toronto. He received his BFA from OCAD University in 2002. Notable museum exhibitions include I closed my eyes but the light was still there, at the Tom Thomson Art Gallery (2020) and Size Matters at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection (2017). His work is included in numerous museum, corporate and bank collections in Canada. Driscoll has  also produced several corporate and public commissions, including CIBC SQUARE and Manulife’s headquarters in Toronto. He is represented by Nicholas Metivier Gallery in Toronto. 

  • Jason McLean

    Jason McLean is a London, Ontario-born artist who currently resides in Brooklyn, NY. After attending H.B. Beal Secondary School, McLean graduated from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Vancouver, in 1997. McLean’s drawings, paintings and sculptures are idiosyncratic visual records of his experiences, observations and perceptions. His work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally, including at The National Gallery of Canada, The Vancouver Art Gallery, Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa (Venice), Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, and Loyal Gallery (Malmo, Sweden). Works by McLean are held by the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Vancouver Art Gallery, the Bank of Montreal Collection, and the Royal Bank of Canada. He is represented by Michael Gibson Gallery in London, Ontario, Monica Reyes Gallery, Vancouver and Van Der Plas Gallery, New York.

  • Shelley Niro

    Shelley Niro (b. Niagara Falls, New York, USA) is a member of the Turtle Clan of the Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk) Nation, from the Six Nations of the Grand River territory. Niro's work is currently the subject of an internationally circulating solo retrospective, 500 Year Itch, organized by the Art Gallery of Hamilton in collaboration with the National Museum of the American Indian, New York, and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the retrospective is presently on view at the Vancouver Art Gallery (until February 17, 2025) and will then appear at Remai Modern, Saskatoon. Niro was the inaugural recipient of the Aboriginal Arts Award presented through the Ontario Arts Council in 2012. In 2017, she received the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts and she holds honorary degrees from the Ontario College of Art and Design and the University of Western Ontario. Her work appears courtesy of Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto.

  • Winnie Truong

    Winnie Truong is a Toronto-based artist working with drawing and animation to explore ideas of identity, feminism and fantasy, finding its connections and transgressions in the natural world. A survey exhibition of her work was organized by the SAW Gallery in Ottawa in 2019; other recent exhibitions include a solo at the Owens Art Gallery, Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB, in 2022 and in the group exhibition Field Notes at the Varley Art Gallery, Markham, in 2023. She has been an artist-in-residence at the Brucebo Scholarship in Gotland, Sweden and a past resident at Doris McCarthy Fool’s Paradise in Scarborough. She is represented by Patel-Brown Gallery, Toronto and VivianeArt, Calgary.

  • Jim Verburg

    Jim Verburg is a Dutch/Canadian artist  based in Toronto. With a practice stemming from photography, Verburg’s work is inspired by the subtle and fleeting affects of light. Verburg has been included in group exhibitions at The Power Plant (Toronto), Luciana Caravello (Rio de Janeiro), Access Gallery (Vancouver), Inman Gallery (Houston), Paul Kuhn Gallery (Calgary), and Cydonia Gallery (Dallas). He has also choreographed work for the Toronto Dance Theatre, and is a recipient of the Dazibao Prize. His work is held in many private and corporate collections across Canada, the U.S. and Europe. He is represented by Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto and Galerie Nicolas Robert, Montreal.