As the Earth rotates on its axis, the sun delivers periods of lightness and darkness to the planet, fueling numerous cycles that unfold within daily life and across deep geological time. Drawing on the transition from day to night as a poetic frame, Nightfall is an invitation to reflect on the relationship between these terrestrial cycles and the material, emotional, and social conditions of our lives. It’s also an expression of trust in the role of rest alongside action and of hope when we embrace the unknown.
As night falls and our vision recedes, other senses awaken. This exhibition is motivated by the question: what opportunities are available to us at the threshold into night? How can we sense the world differently, turn inward, seek shelter with one another, and dream? Visually, the works are attuned to the surface of the earth through representations of streams and waterfalls, rocks and roads, leaf litter, and bodies at rest. Exploring veils and covers, the artists notice quiet sensations of settling and unsettling that might emerge at the end of a day or accompany moments of closure, distance, or connection. Evoking feelings of comfort, relief, sadness, strangeness, possibility, and deep recognition in their work, the artists meditate on the passage of time, interdependence, and the tangible and intangible residues of existence.
Nightfall has been developed alongside Daybreak, an exhibition curated by Erin Szikora at the Doris McCarthy Gallery, which opened in January 2026.
Megan Arnold is a multidisciplinary artist based in Guelph, ON. She obtained a BFA from the University of Western Ontario and an MFA from the University of Guelph. Recently, she has presented work at LIVE Biennale (Vancouver, BC), the Guelph Comedy Festival (Guelph, ON), PINCH Cabaret (Waterloo, ON), and Eastern Edge (St. John’s, NF). Her favourite activity used to be karaoke, but now it might be lying down.
Shannon Garden-Smith is an artist based in Tkaronto/Toronto, Canada of Scottish and Irish settler heritage. Garden-Smith is currently pursuing a PhD in Visual Art at York University, having previously earned an MFA at the University of Guelph and Honours BA at the University of Toronto. Primarily working across sculpture and installation, Garden-Smith engages with the mutability and poetics of the lithic environment. She seeks to unsettle naturalized relationships to its extraction, drawing on sand and stone’s ability to hold complex possibilities for time, memory, and different futures. She has exhibited nationally and internationally with projects at SatisFACTORY (San José, Costa Rica), Musée d’art de Joliette (Joliette, QC), MKG127 (Tkaronto/Toronto, ON), OCAD University’s Onsite Gallery (Tkaronto/Toronto, ON), Nuit Blanche (Tkaronto/Toronto, ON), The Goldfarb Gallery at York University (Tkaronto/Toronto, ON), Centre Clark (Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal, QC), Patel Brown (Tkaronto/Toronto, ON), The Bows (Mohkínstsis/Calgary, AB), Oxygen Art Centre (Nelson, BC), Franz Kaka (Tkaronto/Toronto, ON), Gallery TPW (Tkaronto/Toronto, ON), Pumice Raft (Tkaronto/Toronto, ON), TIER: The Institute for Endotic Research (Berlin) among others. Her practice has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, and Ontario Graduate Scholarship. She was a 2025 finalist for the Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts Artist Prize.
Ness Lee (they/she)draws upon history and personal narratives to create tender and surreal illustrations, paintings, sculptures and installations. Exploring states of mind during intimate stages of vulnerability, Lee’s work takes form as an effort in seeking comfort, forgiveness and desire for an end of a self-perpetuated state. Based in Toronto, their work has been featured at the AGO, the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, the Gardiner Museum, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, as well as galleries in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Taiwan, Miami, Montreal and Toronto. Lee has also participated in mural festivals in Canada and Internationally in Hyderabad, India and Cozumel, Mexico. They have a BDes in Illustration from OCADU.
Brenda Mabel Reid is an emerging non-binary visual artist with a social practice. They grew up in rural Ontario and are currently based in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. They have a background in architecture and their work explores friction between place, care and social expectation, often through means they find humorous. They often work through collage as a way of making and understanding, collecting snippets, reinterpreting pieces, and assembling spaces and places to exist in. Their practice includes textile, print-making, sculpture, installation and audio. Brenda’s work has been exhibited at contemporary art festivals and in solo and group exhibitions in Canada. They’ve completed residencies in Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador. They are the recipient of grants from the Canadian Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and Quadrangle NL.
Shelley Niro was born 1954, in Niagara Falls, NY. Currently she lives in Brantford, Ontario, where she is a member of the Six Nations Reserve, Bay of Quinte Mohawk, Turtle Clan. A multi-media artist whose work involves photography, painting, beadwork, and film, Niro is conscious of the impact post-colonial media have had on Indigenous people. Like many artists from different Native communities, she works relentlessly to present people in realistic and exploratory portrayals, in photo series such as Mohawks in Beehives, This Land is Mime Land, and M: Stories of Women. Niro’s films include Honey Moccasin, It Starts with a Whisper, The Shirt, Kissed by Lightning, and Robert’s Paintings. An Honours graduate of the Ontario College of Art, Niro received her MFA from the University of Western Ontario. In 2012, she was the inaugural recipient of the Aboriginal Arts Award, presented through the Ontario Arts Council. In 2017, she received a Governor General’s Award for Visual and Media Arts from the Canada Council; the Scotiabank Photography Award; and the Hnatyshyn Foundation REVEAL Award. Niro also received an Arts and Culture Award from the Dreamcatcher Charitable Foundation. Niro continues to produce work reflecting herself and her community.
Chiedza Pasipanodya (b.1987, Harare, Zimbabwe) is a sculptor and writer whose practice investigates material culture, diasporic memory, and the transformative potential of ritual and form. Pasipanodya works through a post-minimalist lens, drawing from Afro-diasporic and speculative frameworks to explore how objects become vessels for lived histories, perceptual shifts, and cultural transmission. Their early life, shaped by migration and alternative spiritual traditions, cultivated a deep interest in the metaphysical and the unseen, informing a material practice attentive to the ways that time, matter, and meaning interrelate.
Notable exhibitions include Have No Doubt of the Omnipotence of a Free People at Catinca Tabacaru Gallery, Bucharest (RO), Matter of Return, National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Bulawayo (ZW), Dura | a mechanism for recalling sensibilities of community care (from any and all satellite sites such as this) at BAND Gallery & Fort York Historic Site, Toronto (CA), Genealogies of Sustenance at The Gardiner Museum, Toronto (CA), Ndafunga Dande (Thoughts of Home) at Art Gallery of Burlington, Burlington (CA), 10 at Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto (CA), and New Forms: that which constitutes critical matter at Artspeak, Vancouver (CA).
Pasipanodya is a recipient of the Cranbrook Museum Purchase Award (US), Maxwell/ Hanrahan Foundation Materials Fund from Cranbrook Academy of Art (US) and received Honorable Mention for Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture from the International Sculpture Centre (US). They have participated in international residencies including Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts (US), Dzimbanhete Arts and Cultural Interactions (ZW), and the Global Experience Project: Maria Thereza Alves (IT). Pasipanodya holds an MFA in Sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art.
Noelle Wharton-Ayer is a multi-disciplinary artist currently living in Quebec City. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in visual arts from York University and a Master’s degree in visual arts from Laval University. Her work has been presented in group and solo exhibitions in Canada and Europe. Noelle worked as studio technician at the artist-run centre Engramme for several years and since 2019, she has worked as a freelance community arts practitioner in the Quebec City region. Her latest solo project, Bedfellows, funded by a Creation grant from CALQ, was presented at VU Photo in Québec City in spring of 2024 and in Winnipeg at Martha Street Studio in winter of 2025. Upcoming exhibitions include A Night Garden at the Society of Northern Alberta Print-Artists in the fall of 2026, and a collaborative project at the Museum of Rimouski with artist Audrée Demers-Roberge in 2027. Noelle’s practice is organized around collecting and archiving botanical imagery and creating collages through drawing, printmaking and photo-based processes. The act of archiving and reworking both found and personal images is for her a way of reimagining our relationships with the natural world in the face of ecological instability and of designating tenderness towards our natural environments. The collage space is used as a surface to elaborate upon interior worlds and possible futures, engaging both real and imaginary environments. Images, textures and patterns are juxtaposed through repetition, layering and transparency, encouraging long-looking and a state of heightened observation.
