McBride Contemporain presents Between the Cracks in the Sidewalk, a group exhibition featuring the work of Laura Findlay, Laura Hudspith, and Laurel Rennie. The exhibition offers glimpses of the unseen forces that shape our world in ways we often overlook. These are the forces that move beneath our feet, course through our bodies, and emerge after nightfall. Their presence remains perceptible, but only if we attune ourselves to what seeps through the thin seams of our attention.
Laura Findlay’s oil paintings render moments from the nocturnal world captured through tools designed to extend the limits of human perception. Flash photography, trail cameras, and night-vision images serve as her source material—technologies that expose what is usually concealed by darkness. Working flat, these found images become paintings through acts of wiping and removing, as layers of solvent partially dissolve the pigments, allowing the subject to re-emerge, suspended in an unnatural moment of stillness. Findlay’s works grapple with the ambivalent feeling that photography can make something real by capturing it, while also disrupting the quiet autonomy of what was already unfolding unbeknownst to us.
Laura Hudspith’s sculptural installation unfurls within the gallery space, establishing a reciprocal dialogue with its environment. More than mere form, the materials emit energy: copper oxidizes upon contact, silk shimmers as it catches the light, and wax softens in response to heat. Copper, with its dual capacity to disrupt and to heal, takes many different shapes through Hudspith's hands. In her new wall-hanging work, she offers a sculpture that absorbs and refracts these energies back into the space. At its center is a stained-glass form that echoes the delicate burrows of insects in tree bark - marks revealed only through cycles of decay and renewal. Suspended beneath it, a concave copper vessel hangs in stillness, collecting resonance and casting it outward, proposing a dynamic equilibrium attuned to change.
Laurel Rennie’s sculptural and textile works are created through slow processes of layering, staining, stitching, and carving—gestures of accumulation that mirror the natural cycles she draws inspiration from. Through her work, she expresses moments of deep looking —when the boundary between observer and observed begins to blur to dissolve into a moment of reciprocal gazing. Her work is imbued with folklore in which materials carry histories: secondhand fabric, carved wood and botanical dyes are assembled into works that echo the forms of slug trails, scarred bark, or sedimentary layers. Rennie’s practice opens space for spiritual endurance—for staying attuned to what we inherit, what we alter, and what we might carry forward, thread by thread.
As children, we skipped over the lines in the pavement playfully, convincing ourselves that danger was nested in those slim gaps. As adults, we still unconsciously sidestep the fissures, yet what grows through them insists on being noticed. Between the Cracks in the Sidewalk lingers in those openings, encouraging us to pause where the surface gives way to feel the restless forces pressing through.
