Statement and Biographical Notes:
Jocelyn Purdie is a Canadian artist and curator working in Kingston, Ontario. Her practice includes sculpture, photography, and installation and reflects her interest in exploring the relationship between the human and the natural worlds and how this can be imagined within that context.
She is inspired by the ecological connections that exist within nature, particularly the fragility of our ecosystems and the modes of communication; auditory, visual, chemical, and tactile that are used to enhance survival and diversity in an ever-challenging time. She uses a range of materials including concrete, wool, thread, pins, plastic resin, found and prefabricated objects, often in combination with each other.
She completed an undergraduate degree in Biology at Queen’s University in the 80s and in 2008 after spending many years working in the visual arts field and developing her own practice, returned to complete an MA, focusing on contemporary art in public spaces. She has exhibited in solo and group shows locally and extra-regionally since the mid-1980s. Recent exhibitions include the Modern Fuel Artist Run Centre; the Agnes Jamieson Gallery in Minden, ON and the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston. She has received support through the Ontario Arts Council and her work is in several private collections.
She was the curator of the Swamp Ward Window Project, an alternative venue for contemporary art in the community from 2001 -2015, and was a member of xcurated, a curatorial collective in 2011. She has been active on the Board of Directors of the Modern Fuel Artist Run Centre, the Arts Advisory Committee and the Public Art Working Group of the City of Kingston and was the Director of the Union Gallery at Queen’s University from 1995-2020..