ᐃᔨ – Eyes: Shirley Moorhouse
The Rooms | June 7 – September 21, 2025
Reviewed by Eva Crocker
ᐃᔨ – Eyes: Shirley Moorhouse, opened at The Rooms this spring, the exhibition features a collection of wall-hangings made over the course of thirty years. Moorhouse’s works use a unique combination of luscious fabrics, embroidery, and found objects to depict scenes inspired by her own experiences. Her distinctive style is poetic in its depiction of small moments that speak to the power of intergenerational connections and the broader political context of Labrador’s changing natural environment.
“A Goose Reflecting on its Reflection” (2010) is based on an impromptu midnight drive the artist took with her mother. The wall hanging depicts a moment when the pair accidentally startled a goose lost in its own reflection, sending it honking off towards the northern lights, and leaving the women laughing in its wake. The goose’s body is sculpted from cobalt fabric embellished with pink, green, and blue embroidery, and detailed with strips of smoke-tanned caribou hide. The shimmering northern lights are beaded swirls on the horizon.
Like most of Moorhouse’s wall hangings, “A Goose Reflecting on its Reflection” uses a large piece of black wool Stroud Cloth as a backdrop. She describes this fabric as reminiscent of “…the depth and splendor of Labrador’s clear northern skies….” The stretches of black fabric between the intricate figures in Moorhouse’s scenes create a feeling of movement in the work, allowing the eye to flow from one vibrant feature to the next.
Many of the people, creatures, and natural phenomena in Moorhouse’s wall-hangings have a textured effect created through the layering of different materials. They incorporate: embroidery in luminescent thread, glittering beading, rich fabrics like velvet and satin in magenta, fuchsia, indigo, and scarlet, creamy smoke-tanned caribou hide, tinsel, fly screen, seal skin, and found objects like tiny padlocks, beach glass, and in one case computer parts.
In an interview with CBC Moorhouse said, “When I first started making wall hangings and they realized I was an Inuit person, I was told I had to follow a formula for it to be an official type of wall hanging but after a while I realized, I don’t like following a formula. I like to express my own individuality and I found the variety of materials I use helps translate my emotions to the wall hangings.”
“To Honour the Fire Keepers,” (2020) features a painting of a polaroid photograph of the artist’s mother holding up her catch after a day of ice fishing. Below the photograph, turquoise fish cut from a translucent material swim across the black backdrop. Above the ghostly fish, a larger trout cut from the motherboard of a keyboard is suspended in a stream of metallic threads that evoke undulating currents. In the top left of the wall hanging, the iridescent side of a CD, inscribed with writing about the impact of methylmercury poisoning caused by the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric dam, hangs like a moon above the water. The writing accompanying this powerful piece explains that, the motherboard represents how fish down-stream from the dam are now tracked to monitor their methylmercury levels.
Many of the pieces in this exhibition are inspired by intimate moments that Moorhouse shared with her family in nature. These pieces speak to the importance of environmental stewardship and the violence of colonialist extractivism. The scale of Moorhouse’s work creates a feeling of breathy expansiveness that gives the viewer lots of space to sit with the beauty and complexity of her scenes.
Eva Crocker is the author of two novels, All I Ask and Back in the Land of the Living, and the short story collection Barrelling Forward. Her new short story collection Bargain Bargain Bargain will be published in 2026. She is a PhD Candidate in Concordia University’s Interdisciplinary Humanities Program where is researching visual art from Newfoundland and Labrador.