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Harms Reach Project Space: Supporting Ground Exhibition Opening
DATE :
DEADLINE: June 12, 2026 - 5:30 pm
Harm's Reach: Supporting Ground
Opening Reception: Friday, June 12, 2026 from 5:30 to 8:00 pm
Gallery hours by appointment after opening reception
Location: 4910 21a St SW, Calgary, AB T2T 5C1
For more information: www.harmsreach.ca
Supporting Ground
Supporting Ground is the inaugural exhibition at Harm’s Reach, featuring works by Natalie Gerber, April Matisz, Francesco Pedraglio, and Shelby Charlesworth.
In considering this grouping of artists, it was important that the work and conceptual framework of the exhibition reflected the ideas that informed the creation of Harm’s Reach as a project space. The name itself emerged from years spent swimming with my children and repeatedly encountering the familiar warning advising caregivers to keep children within “arm’s reach.” I was always tempted to place an “H” in front of “arm’s” as a joke. Years later, however, the phrase began to take on a different meaning.
As we age, we might think we become more secure in our lives, or attempt to gain greater control over our circumstances, we often find ways to shelter ourselves from the troubles and unpredictability of the world. We might travel differently, taking an Uber instead of public transit, staying in resorts rather than hostels. At home, we might become more selective about who we associate with. As caregivers, we often attempt to protect those in our care by keeping them distant from situations, people, or experiences we perceive as strange, risky, or unfamiliar.
The theorist Viktor Shklovsky famously argued that art makes the familiar strange so that it can be perceived anew. By presenting its material in unexpected or unconventional ways, art interrupts habitual perception and allows us to encounter the world differently. "Harm" may be an intentionally exaggerated term, but there is value in remaining within reach of the unfamiliar, the uncomfortable, and even the potentially harmful. As our lives become increasingly isolated and curated, maintaining proximity to difference becomes ever more important. Harm’s Reach seeks to create an accessible community space where encounters with the unfamiliar can foster dialogue, curiosity, and meaningful engagement with others.
Supporting Ground brings together a group of artists whose works, in different ways, engage notions of support. Shelby Charlesworth uses medical and bodily support devices as references for ceramic structures that in turn support bronze-cast worms. Francesco Pedraglio produces drawings of picture frames that support imagined, non-existent works of art. Natalie Gerber examines the impact of memory, perception, and performativity on embodied female experience. While "support" may be a more indirect reading of her work, her delicate suspended forms can be understood as remnants or traces of the psychological and performative structures that sustain identity. Finally, April Matisz’s work on motherhood speaks directly to the complex, demanding, and often invisible forms of support embedded within caregiving.
It should also be noted that Supporting Ground refers not only to the various forms of support explored by the artists, but also to the ground that makes relationship and community possible. Care is the often-unseen foundation of our lives, creating the conditions for connection. This understanding of support is central to Harm’s Reach: not simply as a physical structure or aid, but as a relational practice that makes community possible.
By creating a space that is not only human in scale but also accessible to the surrounding community, Harm’s Reach aims to foster a particular intimacy, one that allows for a reciprocal relationship between the artworks, the space itself, and the people who gather within it.