Time and Again: Susan Barton-Tait, Natalie Hunter, Corine van Hoeve
Time and Again
Susan Barton-Tait, Natalie Hunter, Corine van Hoeve
Storehouse Gallery, The Cotton Factory
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
August - November 2026
Time and Again brings together the work of Susan Barton-Tait, Natalie Hunter, and Corine van Hoeve in an exhibition of painting, sculpture, and photography that contemplates the passage of time, the liminal spaces in our built environments, and the psychology of stillness from three generational perspectives. From observational painting, paper casts, and photo-based glass and wood sculptures, Time and Again captures poetic encounters with the fluidity of time, materiality, and a failure to capture physical spaces in which we dwell and the experiences that surround them as they are remembered within the mind.
Susan Barton-Tait traces elements of domestic objects through the delicate process of paper casting. Layer by layer, paper pulp is added to architectural elements to form three-dimensional copies of their surfaces. When the pulp dries into paper, it is peeled off of the form to create a three dimensional form that mirrors the object. Maintaining volume, but lacking weight and mass, these impressions of miniature chairs are suspended in space, while maintaining the subtle nuances and details of the original object. Floating ethereally in space, Susan Barton-Tait’s surreal chairs are impactful in their own right; becoming haunting encounters that remind us of the psychological attachments we have with domestic objects and the spaces they rest in.
Natalie Hunter’s, glass and wood sculptures draw on her interest in photography and the material aspects of making. They recall sensory memories of light and the shifting experiences of colour across a sunlit dawn. Made from hand shaped wood and glass, Hunter exploits the properties of her process and materials by bending and shaping them in ways that speak to slow looking and the passage of time. Glass and wood are rigid materials, but wood can bend before it breaks. Glass plays a major role in the shaping of time and light in photography to produce images. It is malleable in its liquid form, yet brittle as a solid while remaining highly reflective and integral to the optics of photography. Combined together Hunter uses these materials and their unique properties to speak about the nature of time through the bending and shaping of images and materials in space. Hovering between stillness and motion, a viewer’s engagement with Hunter’s work requires active movement by the viewer to experience her sculptures. Her sculptures appear different when standing at different points in the room. Activated by light, they produce latent images and reflections on the walls they occupy. Referencing the many hues of the sky as it changes through dawn, Hunter challenges the idea of sculpture and the image as static frozen moments. Instead she considers wood and glass as fluid and malleable materials that become poetic encounters and reflections on a mutable changing sky.
Corine van Hoeve’s observational oil paintings of an ambiguous room, a chair, and a mirror highlight the meditative qualities in the private spaces we create for ourselves. Blocking in the image while painting the room from life, Corine uses scale and impressionist realism to celebrate the humble qualities of quiet spaces. Light bouncing from the mirror speaks to the moving latent images in Natalie Hunter’s glass and wood sculptures. Streaming in from the window this light seems to halt time and encourage a sense of awareness and slow looking. Psychologically charged, the mid-century wallpaper and ornately patterned mirror become the protagonists that transcend time in these staged interior scenes. Their emptiness fills a visual and physical void. Conversing with the surreal nature of Susan-Barton Tait’s paper chairs, Corine van Hoeve’s chairs in her paintings invite the viewer to visually sit and dwell.
Time and Again, makes space for three women artists at different stages of their careers, creating spaces for themselves through their own respective material research. Together, Susan Barton-Tait, Natalie Hunter, and Corine van Hoeve embody processes of slow making and slow looking through their unique approaches to materials, form, and understanding of space. Their works interact with each other in compelling ways that encourage us to pause, linger, and be.
Written by Natalie Hunter