The Thunder Bay Art Gallery will host the debut exhibition of local photographer and filmmaker Laura-Lynn Petrick, Hometown Anthems, running until June 8. The show will focus on highlighting Petrick’s experiences growing up in the rural outskirts of Thunder Bay, and provide a behind-the-scenes look at her family traditions and country life, blending her Finnish roots with the unique aspects of life in Northwestern Ontario.

“It was a good opportunity to push my art practice in a new direction,” says textile artist Mary Jane MacDonald of her upcoming debut solo exhibition Slow Stitch: The Embroidered Landscape. “I wanted to experiment with embroidery and textiles and show other ways of doing it.”

In 1987, acclaimed contemporary artist Rebecca Belmore wore a sculpture-like dress in a public performance entitled Twelve Angry Crinolines, which satirized the celebrations going on at Fort William Historical Park to welcome the Duke and Duchess of York to Thunder Bay while calling attention to the effects of colonization on Indigenous women. “I went back to Belmore,” says David Karasiewicz, Definitely Superior Art Gallery’s executive and artistic director. “Which is really what kind of sparked that interest later on when we started doing Derelicte.”