Current Exhibitions
Video Frames and Video Games
Theo Jean Cuthand, IAiR
Exhibition: April 24 – May 15, 2025
Reception: Thursday, May 8 from 5-7PM
artLAB Gallery
Video Frames and Video Games by Theo Jean Cuthand put a personal lens on issues of colonization, repatriation, reconciliation, fertility, Queer, Indigiqueer, and 2 Spirit Identity, and transgender narratives. Through humour starkly contrasted with a dose of jarring reality, Cuthand's work invites us to question previously held assumptions about lived experiences as Indigenous people in so-called Canada. 13 Eggs tells the story of Cuthand's experience with egg freezing and IVF, while Dreams of Sunlight Through Trees documents the first year and nine months of a medical transition against a growing tide of anti-trans legislation. Video game Carmilla the Lonely looks at the ethics of being a lesbian vampire who needs to feed, fall in love, and get back to her crypt before sunrise. Repatriate Me follows the spirit of a nêhiyaw man whose remains are being held in the basement of a museum, he must fight his way to the top floor where the director's office is to demand to be repatriated. (This video game is a work in progress and only has the basement level). Sight is a short documentary about mental illness and disability. 2 Spirit Introductory Special $19.99 is a mock advertisement for a support service for 2 Spirit people. Medicine Bundle tells the story of a medicine bundle that was used in Cuthand's family to save each other from Small Pox, a near fatal wound during the battle of Cutknife Hill, and Spanish Flu.
Noodling Around
Eliza Gallaiford
Reception: Thursday, May 8 from 5-7PM
Cohen Commons
Eliza Gallaiford’s latest body of work began with a simple, cheeky question: Can macaroni art be high art? In this collection, she explores the versatility of spaghetti noodles—a material more often found in kids’ crafts than in galleries—to create abstract wall-based compositions that are colourful, textured, and unexpectedly moving. Some pieces lie fairly flat on the canvas while others bulge and curl, shaped by the behaviour of the pasta itself. Cooked or raw, spaghetti always moves unpredictably as it dries, warping with paint and glue, cracking and shifting to form surfaces that are both spontaneous and carefully composed.
Gallaiford loves the moment when viewers realise what they’re looking at. Her work invites a sense of wonder, walking the line between silly and serious, beauty and absurdity. In a world that often demands we take everything seriously, her spaghetti art is a gentle invitation: make room for play. Let in the unexpected. Life is strange—why shouldn’t art be too?
A second-year BFA student at Western, she is inspired by artists like Marcel Duchamp and Yayoi Kusama, continuing the legacy of those who challenge what art can be through material, process, and joyful experimentation.
