Left at Etruria traces material into narrative; from the physical, mutable medium of dyes and pigments, natural and chemical, into a medium that transcends its material to become a means of storytelling. From the physical world into the world of the mind.
Held in my Eyes
Left at Etruria traces material into narrative; from the physical, mutable medium of dyes and pigments, natural and chemical, into a medium that transcends its material to become a means of storytelling. From the physical world into the world of the mind. Etruria is an ancient region of Italy, home to the Etruscans. But, in the eighteenth century, Josiah Wedgwood, the famous English potter, gave the name to his pottery factory and to the village he built around it. It was the height of the neoclassical movement, and though many of the Etruscan vases he admired and referenced turned out in fact to be Greek, Wedgwood's Etruria became its own utopian ideal of fair wages and communal living, perhaps as much a mythology as the images on the vases themselves. Goodchild's work examines this space of venturing: how pigment and colour, the most base of materials, used in the earliest forms of art-making, pass through the artist's hand and labour to become work that lets us see beyond the material and into the narratives of human interaction — and into our own individual searches for Etruria, a place where we might find our ideals made manifest. Or, in the mythologies of the Etruscans and the utopian visions of Wedgwood, she poses a question: how do material, labour, and industrialization intersect with myth, touch, and creation? The alchemy of Heather Goodchild's practice is defined not by singularity of medium but by multiplicities of exploration: her own labour of creation. From material and dyes derived from plants into the manufactured world of synthetics and constructed landscapes. She makes a space where the natural world can meet us where we are, and pull us back toward a renaissance of something lost — reminding us not to forget what nature does. Her work holds us again, urging us towards awareness. The transmutation of material takes time. In looking, and in experiencing, we are slowly entwined back into the physical, woven into the fabric of the material world. We live in a moment when to be in our bodies can feel at odds with being in our minds — yet Goodchild pulls us gently, work by work, stitch by stitch, back into our senses, and into our relation to the world around us.
Heather Goodchild (b. 1977) is a Canadian multidisciplinary artist working within painting, textiles, ceramics and installation. For over two decades, her practice has explored how meaning is constructed through material culture and systems of belief. Drawing on historical traditions, collective narratives and direct observation, Goodchild considers how acts of making carry knowledge, symbolism and cultural memory. Working with multiple mediums allows Goodchild to examine how ideas shift between materials, scales and durations of labour, while expanding the possibilities of craft within contemporary art. Her recent work brings painting and textile practices into dialogue through observational oil painting, rug hooking and dyeing, exploring how colour, surface and composition change between fast and slow forms of production. Natural dyes, often collected onsite while painting, further connect material, landscape and process.
Goodchild’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently at the Virginia McClure Ceramic Biennial, Montreal (2024); AYE Gallery, Beijing (2023); LL Contemporary, Richmond Hill (2023); and IA&A at Hillyer, Washington, DC (2022). She was awarded a Chalmers Arts Fellowship in 2019 and has participated in numerous artist residencies, including at the Art Gallery of Ontario and internationally in Morocco, California, Greece, Paris and China.
Left at Etruria is Goodchild’s first solo exhibition with CRG, following two-person exhibitions with Margaux Smith in 2023 and 2025.
Goodchild acknowledges the support of the Toronto Arts Council and the Ontario Arts Council for the creation and presentation of this exhibition.
