These 25 ceramic pieces arranged in a grid have the power to provoke, unsettle, even move you. Inside two unmissable Toronto art shows

Postminimalist art invites its audience to find meaning in what is left out, encouraging physical movement and engagement. Think of a string sculpture by Eva Hesse: as we get close to it, then step back, we become acutely aware of our relationship to the space around us.
This tension is central to two new shows at Cooper Cole, one of Toronto’s most invigorating galleries since 2011, known for spotlighting both emerging and established voices. Kate Newby and Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill’s exhibitions use sculpture and installation to heighten our awareness of how we move through space. Rather than passively observing, viewers are encouraged to physically engage with the work. While the shows may seem simple at first, it is the gaps, silences and pauses between objects that allow us entry. For Newby and Hill, absence is as integral to these works as the objects themselves. Meaning comes from what is left out, like a negative image.
Kate Newby’s show, “WHO IS THIS SONG?”, brings together new work by the renowned New Zealand artist. Newby uses a wide swath of materials in her practice. She is a collector of everyday objects — the bricks, coins, shards of glass, and rocks we step over as we walk through the city. By placing these mundane materials in a gallery setting, Newby asks us to reconsider their significance.
As you enter the gallery, Newby has arranged 25 ceramic pieces in a grid. The ceramics gradually increase in size and shape, going from flat discs to raised, rocklike forms. Their colours range from bright orange to the charred black of an asteroid. Newby accomplished this by using different glazes and repeatedly firing these works in the kiln, some up to 10 times, resulting in variations in texture and colour. Some pieces are left unglazed, and the kiln’s “off gas” effect creates soft ombré effects.
Newby carefully considers how her work interacts with its surroundings. Here, she spaces out the rows of ceramics to allow viewers to walk through them. Much of the gallery’s grey industrial floor is exposed, and the contrast between the vibrant ceramics and the dull floor creates tension between what is revealed and what is concealed.
Scale is one of Newby’s main concerns. The blanched, flattened form of “Not everyone feels this way” (all works created between 2017 and 2024) might first resemble unleavened bread, but it also hints at the surface of a distant planet or an aerial view of some alien landscape. It is also the first piece in the grid, and the inattentive viewer might very well step on it, a reminder of its fragility.
“All Over the World” is dome-shaped and ridged like a limpet shell. But after I bent down closer and started into it I began to see a water-lined crater on a geographic scale. Newby’s sculptures contain both the minute and the monumental. She shows us the interconnectedness of our world, making a case for the importance of objects, big or small, we might otherwise overlook.
Another of Newby’s pieces, titled “WHO IS THIS SONG?”, is installed in the small downstairs gallery. The artist applied glazes and oxides that melted into pools of mossy greens and light blues during the kiln process. The resulting tiles form a mosaic, with shapes and lines that flow across the panels, while others remain contained within the individual tiles. It makes the piece oscillate between wild movement and rigid containment. While the mosaic provides order, it also allows moments of organic chaos to break through.
The shapes resemble something seen under a microscope, spillages of spiked bacteria, but also photographs of the moon pockmarked by craters. Newby’s work holds enough room for both the microscopic and the telescopic.
At Cooper Cole’s next-door gallery, Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill’s mixed-media show “The Spider Plays” blends conceptual ideas with physical movement, encouraging viewers to get up close to the work.
Hill, born in British Columbia and part-Cree, has shown at MoMA and the 59th Venice Biennale. She often incorporates found materials into her practice, drawing connections between identity and environment. In “M*****”, her show at Mercer Union last summer she used an array of materials like hair andphotocopied magazines to depict the visceral realities of pregnancy, birth, and motherhood.
The “plays” in the title allude to a series of delicate, gorgeous works on paper Hill has made. They combine text (stage directions, dialogue) with collage and illustrations, all rendered in blackberry ink, oil pigments, and crisco. “Spider Play” (2024) consists of seven of these works, arranged in two uneven rows — four on the top and three on the bottom, with one curiously missing. They are a form of concrete poetry, where graphic patterning conveys meaning. Their text forms sinewy, curved shapes reminiscent of spider legs, weaving together word and image and blurring the boundary between language and visual art.
The work is installed close to the ceiling, with a staircase allowing viewers to ascend toward it. From this elevated vantage point, I wondered if I was the spider, weaving meaning alongside the artist, or the prey, caught in a web of interpretation. Only three small pieces are displayed on this wall, yet it’s the act of navigating the space between them that ensnares the viewer, like the invisible strands of a web.
In “The Spider Plays”, Hill continues to explore how sculptural works made of non-traditional materials can evoke precise, tactile emotions. A wire hanger, slightly bent and suspended from a hook, supports “Shawl,” a delicate grid of fine mesh netting folded in layers, trapping dandelions and blackberry seeds between its strands like prey caught in a web. The organic materials clash with the industrial netting and visually expresses fragility and entrapment.
Hill asks us to walk, climb, and descend through her show, encouraging us to reflect on the actions of everyday life. By juxtaposing organic materials like dandelions and seeds with industrial elements such as wire and netting, she highlights our entanglement with both the natural and industrial. As we move through the space, we are made aware of the constraint and freedom of navigating the world. The spider stands-in stands for this balance: caught between weaving its own path and being trapped by it.
Hill’s show and Newby’s both ask the viewer to be an active participant, whether it is navigating conceptual webs or walking among rows of sculptures. By using non-traditional materials, they both emphasize the space between things, revealing unseen connections in the world. We’re made to consider what we overlook when we go about our days — the constraints we take as facts, and the freedoms we take for granted.
This story has been updated with the correct number of ceramic pieces by Kate Newby. An earlier version said that it was 35.