Installation view of Wanderer at Zalucky Contemporary, with six from Hudspith’s wall-based series Seers (2024-25), and the floor-based sculpture ahead, and behind, and to either side (2025).
Images by Em Moor, and courtesty of Zalucky Contemporary.
Wanderer
Solo exhibition, Zalucky Contemporary
Toronto, Canada
June 5 - July 26, 2025
The act of walking can be practised as a form of healing. Walking through dark thickets where forest sound is held close to earthen and vegetal bodies, and to ours; spaces where soils are soft and rich with layers of growth and life-giving rot, where we too may slough off our skin and all thought; places that teem beyond our ability to see or to know, so dense and full that a person might feel inconsequential yet potent with potential in equal measure. Such spaces are ideal for reattuning to self–and world–via an internal churning as paced by footfall. Whether following a path that others have tread, or carving our own meanders, walking opens us up for encounter, for wandering on in-.
- Laura Hudspith
Through years of practicing walking meditation–a ritualized wandering that has become central to the artist’s life and process–Hudspith’s latest body of work marks a turn toward magical thinking, drawing on her personal archive of photographs taken during her walks as source material. Looking at the trails left by insects in the wood of fallen trees, patterns that reflect intuitive knowledge begin to emerge. Their trails appear as an arcane language or unknowable script that articulates a wisdom all its own.
Guided by her experience living with chronic illness, Hudspith has come to see molecules, cells, viral and inorganic matter as autonomies possessing distinct knowledges. Intangible forces too can reshape the physical body at the molecular level, effects which can seem almost ‘magical’ in nature. Through her work, Hudspith harnesses these forces for healing and growth, creating meditative installations for inward-looking and deep feeling.
When light and shade overcome each other (2025), Seer series. Stained glass, solder, copper, patina.
Diptych: 9.25 x 6.75 x 1.25 inches, and 9.25 x 6.5 x 1.5 inches.
ahead, and behind, and to either side (2025). Copper, solder. 90 x 40 x 26.75 inches.
a door left open (2025), Seer series. Stained glass, solder, copper, patina. 40 x 10 x 2 inches.
Seer six (2024). Stained glass, solder, copper. 16 x 18.75 x 1.5 inches.
Seer five (2024). Stained glass, solder, copper. 11.75 x 16.5 x 1.25 inches.
Seer four (2024). Stained glass, solder, copper. 20 x 24.25 x 1.75 inches.
Seer one (2024). Stained glass, solder, copper. 2 x 16.5 x 1.25 inches.
Other works included in Wanderer not pictured here include Hudspith’s Seer three (2024), and Wild woman’s eye (2024).