A view of Shary Boyle’s “Cracked Wheat” (2018) in front of the Gardiner Museum in Toronto (all images by the author for Hyperallergic)
Canadian artist Shary Boyle is known for her incredible ability to transform clay and ceramic into feats of delicate wonder, using the human body and the history of the material to delve into the undercurrents and meanings often overlooked by contemporary viewers.
In the second in a four-part podcast series produced by Hyperallergic in conjuncture with the Gardiner Museum, she reminds us: “Let us not let the art world homogenize us when we all individually as young people might have chosen to become artists.”
She continues, “I chose to become an artist to try to pursue a life of true questioning and subversion and an alternative position to what I saw as a common drive towards capitalist values of growth and progression and I want to just to continually have access to watching and observing and questioning that.”
Various views of Boyle’s “Cracked Wheat” (2018) on Queen’s Park in Toronto
In this episode, I speak to the artist about her relationship to a material that has been having a renaissance in contemporary art, and she shares her insight into a material that appears in almost every culture in history.
A special thanks to Brooklyn-based musician SunSon for providing the music to this episode, and you can check out his website sunson.band. You can also follow him on Facebook or Instagram.
This and more in our current episode of our weekly Art Movements podcast.
Subscribe to Hyperallergic’s podcast, Art Movements, on iTunes or anywhere else you listen to podcasts.
