Engulfed

A mixed media exhibit of 19 artists | Curated by Richard Brophy and MJ Leblanc

Craft Council Gallery | St. John’s | April 15 – May 16, 2025

Reviewed by Rhea Rollman

 

First and foremost, Engulfed is visually striking.

It’s striking in the same way Newfoundland and Labrador is striking. Your plane hurtling through the clouds, all-enveloping wispy gray fog surrounding you; and then suddenly you’re through – the jagged coastline beneath you delineating land in mesmerizing gradations of ferocious dark colour: granite cliffs, broiling waters, deep reflective seas. Or perhaps you approach by boat, sedimentary towers rising higher the closer you get, glaring down at you with an aloof gaze that is both heartless and welcoming at once.

Engulfed blends the futuristic with historical craft tradition. Nineteen artists from across Canada collaborated to produce an array of clothing and jewelry inspired by Newfoundland and Labrador – by the land, the flow of earth and water, rock and bog; the harsh and jagged symmetries which define our natural geography. In repudiation of the industrial obsession which even today lays waste to NL’s natural beauty, the artists turned to traditional crafting techniques and natural components to explore what a truly sustainable fashion  might look like.

One of the most striking aspects of the exhibit is also the simplest: each title card presents not only the name of the piece and artist (along with the variety of materials and techniques used in its production), but also the number of hours it took to produce each item. The information is revealing; not only a testimony to the painstaking degree of effort artists invest into their work, but also a reminder of just how much time and labour is required to produce truly sustainable clothing. The futuristic tilt of the entire exhibit reminds us this is no mere quaint reminder of how much effort our ancestors had to put into survival in the pre-fast-fashion past; it’s putting us on notice that if we wish to survive on this planet this is what we need to prepare for in the future.

The techniques used run the gamut: a single item of clothing might incorporate hand stitching, rug hooking, needle felting, knitting, embroidery, hand dying, fish skin tanning and more. Natural dyes include marigold, iron, onion skin, blueberry, charcoal, seaweed, St. John’s Wort, ferns, and more.

Rug-hooking as clothing? These pieces struck me with a particularly innovative power. Stand-outs include Kate Thornhill’s “Ripples in the Sand” – an embroidered, hand-stitched, rug-hooked tunic (117 hours); Winnie Glavine’s “All Hands on Deck” (a rug-hooked mini-dress displaying a typical harbour scene – 450 hours); Kate Thornhill and Richard Brophy’s “Spirit of the Sea” (a rug-hooked, embroidered poncho – 100 hours). Why aren’t we wearing rug-hooked apparel? I’d never realized how warm and inviting it looks as clothing.

“Cape of Cod” is another striking piece, a collaborative effort between Frances Ennis, Maxine Ennis and Beatrice Halliday Squires (165 hours), upcycling a crocheted tablecloth into a fantastical wool cape whose surface emulates a sea floor inhabited by cod drifting effortlessly through a forest of seaweed. 

The eye is easily absorbed by the clothing, but the jewelry is not to be skipped. These pieces are not subtle; they share all the drama of the larger costumes. Tania Scott’s work in particular is striking and bold; “Reigns of the Kelpie Necklace” appears from the distance like a wrapping of seaweed; in fact it is, sealed with resin and metalwork. It’s gorgeous. “Armour of the Selkie” – a larger, armour-like breast/back-piece, echoes the technique (30 hours), as does the “sea punk”-inspired “From the Depths of the Sea” (25 hours). Tonya Dickinson’s ammonite necklace “Fossilized Symphony,” which incorporates coral, shells and onyx (175 hours) is also breathtaking.

And yet. There is a sad irony to the lack of Indigenous artists on the exhibit lineup. Indigenous artists have been working on these shores for millennia longer than settler artists, honing the sustainable techniques on which subsequent crafting traditions have drawn. Their omission in a show of this nature is a glaring and bewildering gap. Where do Indigenous traditions, Land Back and sovereignty lie in this speculative, sustainable future?

Still, resistance bubbles over in other ways: Kelly Jane Bruton’s stunningly repurposed wedding dress (1000 hours) – its enormous train embellished with hand painted fish – is bitingly titled “Married to Methyl Mercury.”

There’s also an oddly binary dynamic to the clothing of the future and its presentation. Surely fashion will have moved beyond the fantasy of a gender binary in this brave new world the exhibit evokes? Can we not also imagine how clothing will embrace new understandings of gender and social organization in a truly sustainable and equitable future?

Engulfed offers a revealing vision of futuristic hope, one in which the survivors of climate change don’t merely dress in the Mad Max-styled rags of a former era, but take pride in their upcycled netting and rugs, weaving and embellishing them with natural dyes and techniques into proud symbols of humanity’s irrepressible creativity.