MKG127 is pleased to present The Garden and the Bay, an exhibition of new work by Micah Adams

Opening Saturday, February 15th, 2:00 – 5:00 PM

The exhibition The Garden and the Bay divides the gallery in two. The work featured in the front space examines the design history of Canada’s one-dollar coin. Created as a response to the original design (c. 1935) and its homage to Canada’s fur-trading heritage, details from the silver dollar have been updated and reinserted onto current loonies. The final work illustrates a criticality of Canada’s fur-trading history. Notions of inflation, value and economics are constants in Adams’ work and all the more so in this series. In the larger gallery Adams borrows elements from an English garden, using artworks as stand-ins for the ‘natural’ world. Built to appear idyllic, an English garden is a constructed landscape. Composed as imaginary rubbings, coins with flowers have been recreated as large works on paper. Floral elements have been cut from coins and arranged into tiny wearable bouquets. Fabricating a tranquil setting are large drawings of trees sourced from coins, placing the floral works in a pastoral landscape. Coin columns are grouped as architectural follies while also framing an ongoing accumulative work of crowns removed from world coins. Cut out of various coins and displayed as a small pile, these symbols of wealth and authority, no longer hold value or worth. They are redefined in this context as a satirical appropriation of wealth.

Micah Adams is a collector of objects as much as he is a maker. He collects, alters and reassembles found objects. Adams works in deliberate contrast to high tech modes, preferring the intimacy of developing his own repertoire of manual techniques. Originally from Nova Scotia, he studied at CÉGEP John Abbott College in Montréal and has a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax (2008). Adams has been an Artist in Residence at Harbourfront Centre’s Metal/Jewellery studio (2008-2011). He has also participated in visiting artist programs at Open Studio (Toronto, ON), the Museum of Glass (Tacoma, WA), the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture (Dawson City, YT), and Gros Morne National Park (Woody Point, NL). Adams’ work is in private and corporate collections including Fidelity Investments and TD Bank. He currently lives and works in Toronto.