Amy Ash is a queer interdisciplinary artist engaged with collective care through processes of shared meaning-making. Her practice flows from curatorial projects and writing to teaching, socially engaged action, and hands-on making. Blurring the lines between disciplines, they trace connectivity through the intersections and overlaps between memory, learning, and wonder, to incite curiosity, and kindle empathy. Often working collaboratively, their work gently disrupts the hegemonic systems that support hierarchy, while nurturing autonomy to explore common values, and setting the scene for unexpected connections to be made. In short, her work aims to carve out space for a polyphony of personal meaning to be created within the context of a shared experience.
Amy has exhibited and curated programmes internationally, with projects commissioned by the National Gallery London (UK), the NB International Sculpture Symposium, and the Beaverbrook Art Gallery. Their work has been awarded the support of groups including The Sheila Hugh Mackay Foundation, The Peter McKendrick Endowment Fund for Visual Artists, artsnb, Canada Council for the Arts, and Arts Council England.
A member of the International Association of Art Critics, Amy serves on the board of Sunbury Shores Arts & Nature Centre, as well as the editorial committee for Visual Arts News Magazine. She has acted on juries for Third Shift (2018), APEX Art (2019), the provincial acquisition program: Collection Art NB (2020), and artsnb (2020), among others. She is also an instructor with the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design.
Amy’s studio-based work is represented by Jones Gallery, in Saint John, where they have an upcoming solo show in August 2022. Recent exhibitions include Different Layers of the Same Water (solo, 2021) at The Saint John Arts Centre, Currents with Deanna Musgrave (2021) curated by Jennifer Stead for Andrew and Laura McCain Gallery, and Fait Main / Handmade (2022) a group show curated by Alisa Arsenault for Galerie D’Art de Louise et Reuben Cohen, at L’Université de Moncton.
Recent curatorial commissions include HOST (2021), a virtual contemporary art project, for Third Space Gallery (NB), it comes in waves (April 2022) for UNB Arts Centre (NB), and IN DEEP (June 2022) for PLATFORM centre for photographic + digital arts (MB).
Of settler ancestry, they live as a grateful, but uninvited, guest in Menahqesk/Menagoesg/Saint John, New Brunswick, which sits on the unceeded and unsurrendered territory of the Wolastoqiyik, Peskotomuhkati, and Mi’kmaq Peoples.