The First Floor Gallery, created to profile the incredible artwork of local artists, opened in January 2015. This exhibition space is located at City Hall, between the Service Barrie and Legislative Services counters, and is curated by Cultural Development staff with the assistance of local visual artists. The space is open to the public from 8:30am to 4:30pm, Monday through Friday.
Are you an artist interested in exhibiting your work? Please refer to The First Floor Gallery guiding principles and application process.
Current Exhibit, November & December 2024
Filling Space
Matthew Shaun Ferguson (based in Barrie) and Derek Berry (based in Orangeville) are artists with distinct practices which come together in this exhibition of colourful and detailed works. Both bodies of work delve into the artists’ relationships with themselves, particularly their struggles with physical and mental illnesses. Ferguson’s works, which are intricately water-coloured, break down the human body into mechanical parts to connect personal with universal physical struggles. Berry’s works, mixing painting and printmaking, are abstract and textural explorations of the artists’ fears and uncertainty. The works of Ferguson and Berry, through sensitive and meticulous techniques, reveal deep and sincere vulnerabilities.
Right: A Calm Unrest, 2022, Acrylic and Screenprint on Board, 12 x 18, by Derek Berry
About the Artists
Matthew Shaun Ferguson’s work focuses on materiality and the relationship between form and function; at the core of his artistic practice, he breaks down the human body to its basic functions and parallel its organic structures with human-made materials in order to reimagine its form. Because life cannot exist without some form of a vessel, his use and exploration of the body is an attempt at utilizing subject matter with an almost universal quality; similarly, by rendering mechanical/synthetic versions of these corporeal structures, he seeks to express the fact that all people are made of the same basic components and require the same fundamental needs.
Derek Berry is a multidisciplinary artist whose current body of work is a self-analysis relating to his everyday interactions with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), which have since elevated in tandem with the COVID-19 pandemic. His work teeters the line of abstraction and representation, utilizing the uncertain imagery to speak upon the conflicting, repetitive thoughts that compromises his psyche. Derek’s artistic practice is a confrontation with these ingrained disorderly behaviours whilst simultaneously accepting these traits of avoidance that permeate his being, creating a state of ‘tug of war’ that is ripe with tension that he intends to lay bare.
Find Matthew and Derek on Instagram @f3rg3f3rg and @berrypatch.art.