Opening Reception: Thursday, April 9, 2015. 8-11PM

HUNTCLUB is proud to present The Weight Of Moons, the second solo exhibition by Toronto-based artist and illustrator, Lauren Pirie. Like the moon itself, Pirie’s exhibition is loyal to both the natural and the supernatural. Alongside installation pieces and a projected animation, her drawings float in worlds that exist outside of defined space or time, but decidedly in the realm of women.

The moon, throughout history, has been worshipped, as a goddess, and has a long association with witchcraft and occult power. It has had a gravitational pull on the tides and our feelings. While the goddess has been credited with protecting women, the forces of the moon have been charged with making bitches cray.

The characters that appear throughout the enchanted environments in the series are not crazed; they are often disenchanted. Their hair and bodies, and the scales and tentacles of creatures, are rendered in detailed linework, while abstracted orbs and spheres contain the potential power of the otherwise exhausted protagonists; women melting with the weight of proving their worth in the real world.

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Lauren Pirie is a freelance illustrator and multi-disciplinary artist who draws and paints in an attic, beside some train tracks, in Toronto. She is best known for; her intricate ink drawings, which defy the boundaries of reality; her illustration work for publishing, film, and fashion; and sustainability projects, as Creative Director of the About Face Collective. Recently, Lauren illustrated her first children’s book, Ella And The Balloons In the Sky for Tundra Books/ Random House.

In her personal work, Lauren is constantly pulling subject matter from her own abstracted memory, and from collective experience, applying a fantastical tint to the lens of retrospect. Her last series, Fish Songs Of The Shining Waters, drew influence from pivotal experiences in her childhood and explored the ways in which they shaped her personal ideologies and thinking around concepts from gender expectations, to relationships with the natural world.