BIO

Jamie Ashforth is a Canadian multidisciplinary artist exploring new forms of connection through socially and environmentally engaged art making. She works experimentally across printmaking and installation, where found objects and foraged debris are prominent aspects of the work. As a process-led artist, photography and text are integral ways Jamie indexes fleeting encounters and liminal spaces. Participatory, event-based practice is an emergent part of how she unpacks the relationship between what is temporal and tactile, and ways of generating kinship across distance.

Jamie holds a Fine Art MA in Art and Process from MTU Crawford College of Art and Design (Cork City, Ireland) and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Concordia University (Montréal, Canada). In 2023, she was an academic panelist at the MTU’s Post-Graduate research symposium. Jamie has exhibited in several exhibitions including Hard Twist 10 – Memory, Gladstone Hotel (Toronto, Canada), Thaw, Gallery Asna (Clonakilty, Ireland), and Drawing Connections, The Lord Mayor’s Pavilion (Cork, Ireland). In 2021 and 2022, Jamie initiated Groundswell and Groundswell Again, public events synchronising global participation. From 2011 to 2019, she worked as a Scenic Artist in Toronto’s film and television industry, informing her use of installation and material appropriation. Her experiences as artist in residence include Struts Gallery (Sackville, Canada), Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre (Skibbereen, Ireland), and KH Messen (Ålvik, Norway). Jamie has participated in several experimental project spaces including Inhouse 2, The Guesthouse Project (Cork, Ireland) and Re:Group’s Fragments in Constellation (Skibbereen, Ireland). In 2024 she received funding from the Canada Council for the Arts and was shortlisted for the RDS Visual Art Award in 2022. Jamie is a current member of Artspace (Peterborough, Canada) and Visual Arts Ireland.

Departure/Juncture (Day 11 – Reconfiguring), Durational and Participatory Mixed Media Installation,
Fragments in Constellation Group Project Space, Skibbereen, Ireland, 2022, Image by Tomasz Madajczak

ARTIST STATEMENT

Fueled by nomadic tendencies, I am currently researching how we build and adapt a sense of place and belonging within shifting landscapes. My practice is largely process-led and material-responsive, and quite intentionally and somewhat resistantly, I often encounter the unexpected. Motivated to reconcile my relationship with what is uncontrollable and uncertain, I build durational installations involving changeable circumstances. Elements such as wind, gravity, moisture, light, sound, and fire are aspects of this process and reflect how necessary it is for me to work in direct response to my environment. Through adaptation, I find that a performativity of materials emerges. In moving away from a solitary studio practice toward public-engagement, the ‘invitation’ itself is a cornerstone of the work. Given widespread encounters with ecological, social, and individual change, I’m interested in creating an in between space – a grey zone – that makes room for shared vulnerability. By inviting others into the work, we reorient within flux together.

Departure/Juncture (Day 16 – Collision), Durational and Participatory Mixed Media Installation,
Fragments in Constellation Group Project Space, Skibbereen, Ireland, 2022, Image by Tomasz Madajczak