Daniel Faria Gallery is pleased to present Thank-you Notes, June Clark’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. This is the first exhibition of new work by Clark at the gallery, and follows her major survey exhibitions Unrequited Love and Witness which were on view at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Power Plant in 2024, and the Contemporary Calgary in 2025.
In Clark’s work, she often invokes those who have come before her: family members, ancestors, writers, artists, musicians, and neighbours. In the presence of these works you are invited to sit and contemplate the lives of those she has channeled; history is interwoven with personal memory. In Perseverance Suite (2023-ongoing) farm tools and domestic objects are merged in sculptures which come out of her “realization that I exist because of those who have come before me; those who persisted and persevered.” Keepers (2004-2023) brought together repurposed washboards that were upholstered and adorned with photographs and objects commemorating the lives of her close friends and family members who have passed away. Her Homage series (2011-ongoing) pays tribute to the artists who gave her “permission to be the artist I am today,” and in Family Secrets (1992) 18 cigar boxes display objects that in some way evoke the memory of an individual from Clark’s past.
In Thank-you Notes, unstretched canvas hangs from heavy metal dowels, like unravelling scrolls. A scrawled message adorns each one, and painted sweeps of colour create a watery horizon. Clark uses materials such as wine, tea, blueberry juice, red brick dust, and rusted metal, many of which are recurring in her practice. Clark began using wine and tea in her work when she was living and working in Paris in the early 2000s, restricted to what was readily on hand. Used for protection in HooDoo and VooDoo communities, red brick dust is often scattered in front of the home’s entrance for protection and luck. Some of the canvases have been pulled to reveal bare vertical threads, a meditative, repetitive act that Clark often returns to in the studio, such as in Moral Disengagement (2014-17), an American flag that Clark unravelled over three years. Other works are wrinkled and then ironed out again, like well-handled pieces of paper.
This body of work was made in response to growing revisionism, particularly in the United States, where museums, educational institutions, academics, and others who play a role in the telling of, and safekeeping of, history are being heavily threatened. In these works, Clark seeks to not only keep alive the names and histories of those she is worried might be forgotten – Billie Holiday, James Baldwin, Mamie Till, among others — but also to express her personal gratitude for their impact on our lives. “Thank you, Rosa Parks, for being tired and reinforcing our senses of self,” she writes.
June Clark (b. 1941, Harlem) holds a BFA and MFA from York University. Clark has had solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Calgary (2025); Power Plant, Toronto (2024); the Art Gallery of Ontario (2024; 2018); the Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota (2022); the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (1997); the Koffler Gallery, Toronto (1994); and Mercer Union, Toronto (1990), and was shortlisted for the 2024 Sobey Art Awards. Her work will be included in group exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, all opening Fall 2025, as well as the Driskell Museum, Maryland, and the Fairfield Museum, Connecticut, in 2026.
Clark’s work has been included in exhibitions at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; MOCA, Toronto; Saatchi Gallery, London; Dalhousie Art Gallery, Halifax; Peabody Essex Museum, Salem; the Polygon Gallery, Vancouver; the University of Toronto Art Museum, Toronto; the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; the Textile Museum, Toronto; Agnès b., Paris; and Linda Kirkland Gallery, New York. She has completed residencies at the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Ontario College of Art and Design. Her work can be found in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, Washington; the National Museum of African-American History & Culture, Washington; the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; the Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal; the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University; the Wedge Collection, Toronto; the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, New York; the James Van Der Zee Institute, New York; and La galerie du jour agnès b., Paris; among others.
