You might as well try and hold the sun
Natalie Hunter
You might as well try and hold the sun
Cambridge Galleries
Queen's Square
Cambridge, Ontario, Canada.
August 29th 2025 - August 29th 2026
Cambridge Art Galleries is excited to present a new site-specific installation in the Queen’s Square lobby by Hamilton-based artist Natalie Hunter. Working across photography, installation, sculpture, and the moving image, Hunter is mainly known for her multilayered and experiential photo-based installations on transparent film. Her intricately layered installations study the complexities of time, space, memory, and the senses in our digitally saturated culture through an interplay between image, material, and form.
Natalie Hunter’s You might as well try and hold the sun captures the banks of the Grand River and Cambridge Pollinator Preserve in a meditation on the cyclical synergies of nature and elemental forces of light and time that govern much of our daily lives and the principles of photography. Activating the Queen’s Square South-facing windows, along with a collection of vitrines and windows scattered throughout The Queen’s Square building, Hunter evokes sensations of memory and the passage of time. Unfolding slowly according to the rhythms of the sun, You might as well try and hold the sun, which becomes a kind of slow-moving cinema, casting latent images and soft, colourful light on the surrounding architecture. The Grand River flowing through Cambridge behaves like a mirror for the sky, and the foliage canopy that runs along its banks acts like a filter, sheltering pollinating plants from harsh rays while illuminating the cells in leaves. Both mirrors and filters are elements of photography and tools Hunter uses both sculpturally and pictorially to study memory, landscape, and how the cultivation of gardens and our relationship with both the volatile and nourishing qualities of light enriches our lives.
The artist would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.
Curated by Karly Boileau