The Creek Collective

FLOW exhibition
Inter Arts Matrix (May 29 - June 29, 2024)

FLOW exhibition - featuring works by Deborah Carruthers and Sydney Lancaster.  The exhibition includes painting, video installation, a graphic score on paper and a hand-made book work.

Taking place in the summer of 2023, the “A Hole in the Ground” residency produced many individual and collaborative artistic responses. Deborah Carruthers and Sydney Lancaster used their time at Sandhills Park to connect with the land and local creatives. With writer Geoff Martin, Deborah and Sydney learned about the geology, hydrology, and urban planning history of Kitchener, and formed a group called The Creek Collective.

Since that time, a series of artist-led, community-driven initiatives have taken place in response to the re-naturalization of Schneider Creek, and several local artists joined The Creek Collective.


Sydney Lancaster

A multi-disciplinary settler artist and writer, Sydney Lancaster works through installation, print, audio, and video to consider the intersections of place, memory, history, and identity – particularly as they pertain to issues of relationship and responsibility to the environment and both human and more-than-human beings.  

They received a BA Special (with Distinction) in English from the University of Alberta, and an MFA from Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador; her MFA research-creation was awarded scholarship funding from both Memorial University and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).  

Her work has been shown across Canada, and in the US and UK in artist-run centres, and both public and commercial galleries. Their most recent publications were “Saying Yes: Family, Permission, and Communities of Care,” (2023) the feature article in SNAPline Family Edition, vol. 3, and a chapbook of poetry co-authored with Jannie Edwards, entitled Learning Their Names: Letters from the Home Place, published by Collusion Books in Kjipuktuk/Halifax, Nove Scotia. She is deeply grateful to call Esoqwatik/Mtapan/Wolfville, Nova Scotia home since 2021. 

Artist Website


Deborah Carruthers 

A Montréal native and resident, Deborah Carruthers is an inter-arts artist-composer who frequently collaborates with scientists, activists, and other artists to explore environmental issues, particularly solastalgia: the distress caused by the lived experience of environmental change. 

Her multimedia work often includes the composition of graphic scores and their performance; these works are often presented alongside her research materials, including video, notebooks, paintings, photographs, drawings, assemblages, and field recordings. 

These scores are usually performed by musicians, even symphony orchestras, although Carruthers is a non-musician and uses no traditional musical notation. She sees these scores as a synthesis of her obsessive research, recording the essences of an environment and marking its transformation. 

Her work has been supported by Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ), and private foundations, and is in private/public collections in Canada (notably, the Canadian Woman Composers Archive), the USA, and Europe. 

Artist’s Website


Exhibition Photos