The Great Lakes

The Great Lakes is a touring exhibition of new works by Michael Belmore, Robert Burley, Bonnie Devine and Shelley Niro. As water shifts from moment to moment, the exhibition will evolve from venue to venue as it moves across the province. In Thunder Bay, the Gallery has invited Red Lake artist Cheryl Wilson-Smith to present new work alongside these artists.

In sculpture, images, installation and film, these artists express their connection-deep and enduring-to water. A giant floor map of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence watershed, a collaboration between Biinaagami, Canadian Geographic and Swim Drink Fish, invites us to do the same. Visible from outer space, the Great Lakes form a network of lakes and rivers that speak to, and contain, the depths of our collective story. Without water, there is no story.

The Great Lakes, Public Reception and Artist Panel

Friday 23, October

6:30 – 8:30 pm

Thunder Bay Art Gallery

How do we greet the great water? What do we bring down to the shore? Join us for the public reception and artist panel for The Great Lakes, a touring exhibition organized by the Gallery, stopping along the shoreline of Lake Superior in Thunder Bay. This event features a critical conversation about our enduring connection to the Great Lakes, water security and bodies of water as sites of memory, love, loss, and hope with presenting artists Robert Burley (Toronto), Bonnie Devine (Toronto, ON), Shelley Niro (Brantford, ON), Michael Bemore (Stouffville, ON), and Chery Wilson Smith (Red Lake, ON). The artist panel is moderated Betty Carpick (Thunder Bay).

Bonnie Devine is a visual artist, writer, curator, and educator. She has lived her whole life near the Great Lakes. As a child, on the North Channel of Lake Huron and as an adult, on the north shore of Lake Ontario. Born in Toronto and raised as an off-reserve member of the Anishinabek of Serpent River First Nation, Devine’s work emerges from the storytelling and object-making traditions that are the root of Anishinaabe culture. Her most enduring learning came from her grandparents, who were trappers in Northern Ontario. The recipient of numerous awards, grants, and institutional recognition, Devine’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada, the Smithsonian Institute’s National Gallery of the American Indian, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the 2026 Venice Biennale.

Cheryl Wilson-Smith grew up near the shores of Lake of the Woods, and later at the intersection of Lake Superior and Lake Huron, spending her summers on a spring fed, crystal clear lake in northern Ontario. She currently lives on the shores of Red Lake where the highway ends. Her practice is rooted in kiln formed powdered glass, where layering, compression, and erosion become both process and metaphor. Wilson-Smith is the recipient of the RBC Award and a Chalmers Fellowship for Glass and has been featured in the Corning Museum of Glass’s New Glass Review. She has exhibited across Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, with work held in public collections including the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery and Thunder Bay Art Gallery. She has participated in residencies in Norway, Scotland, and Washington state, as well as at Sheridan College and the Corning Museum of Glass.

Robert Burley is a photographer. He grew up in Prince Edward County, encircled by the waters of Lake Ontario, the Bay of Quinte, the North Channel, and Adolphus Reach. As an adult, he has lived along the urban shores of Lake Ontario in Toronto and Lake Michigan in Chicago. In his practice, Burley has sought to visualize, describe, and interpret the built environment in which he lives. Burley’s photographs have been extensively published and exhibited and are found in numerous public collections, including the National Gallery of Canada, Musée de l’Elysée, George Eastman Museum, Canadian Centre for Architecture, and Musée Niépce

Michael Belmore is a member of Lac Seul First Nation in Northern Ontario. He resides within the Oak Ridges Moraine, a region comprised of natural, cold-water streams, wetlands, and Kettle Lakes, whose water eventually finds its way to Lake Ontario via the Rouge River.  As an artist and sculptor, he employs a variety of materials that speak clearly and powerfully about the environment, land, water, and what it is to be Anishinaabe. Belmore is a nationally and internationally recognized artist and is represented in the permanent collections of various institutions, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Thunder Bay Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Museum of the American Indian – Smithsonian Institute, and the Canadian Chancery in Paris

Shelley Niro is a Bay of Quinte Mohawk and a member of the Six Nations of the Grand River, Turtle clan. She lives near the Grand River, which flows into Lake Erie, which flows into Lake Ontario, which flows into the St. Lawrence River, which flows into the Atlantic Ocean. As an innovator of film and photography, Niro’s work is known for its intimate, fearless, and humane qualities. Exhibiting globally, she is the recipient of numerous national awards, grants, and institutional recognition, receiving honorary doctorates from the Ontario College of Arts and Design University (2019), Western University (2023), and Wilfred Laurier University (2024). Niro’s nationally touring retrospective, 500 Year Itch, was curated through the National Museum of the American Indian, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, the National Gallery of Canada, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Remai Museum of Art.