Co-curated by Jennifer Matotek and Laura Ritchie

Sarah Maloney, RCA is a contemporary sculptor and textile artist nationally recognized for her compelling representations of botanicals and the human body. Working across media ranging from embroidery to bronze, Maloney challenges assumptions about craft, artistic labour, and “women’s work,” drawing attention to the value systems that shape what is celebrated, collected, and preserved.

Pleasure Ground showcases artworks created between 1993 and 2021, tracing Maloney’s artistic development while highlighting her ongoing explorations of sexuality, reproductivity, economics, and colonial systems of representation. Meticulous, witty, and grounded in historical research, Maloney interprets mythology and symbolism using labour-intensive techniques from welding to stitching. Through a feminist lens, her work reflects on Western history and culture, and reconsiders icons of Western colonialism such as museum collections, domestic gardens, and landscape art. The results are joyful and striking depictions of plants, bones, and organs that speak to gender, pleasure, desire, and power while also hinting at the structured nature of our biological, social, and economic systems.

Organized by Art Windsor-Essex. Toured with support from the Canadian Heritage Museums Assistance Program through Access to Heritage.

Sarah Maloney, Pleasure Grounds, 2029.
Bronze, 15 pieces; dimensions variable.
Purchased with funds provided by the Charles Anthony Law and Jane Shaw Law Charitable Trust, 2021, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.
Photo: Steve Farmer.

Sarah Maloney, Collect-Arrange #1, 2021.
Embroidered cotton on cotton velvet, plaster with imitation gold leaf, walnut, birch plywood; 119 × 96 × 4.3 cm.
Photo: Steve Farmer.