From Water to Water: A Land Acknowledgment — Book Launch

Bonnie Devine is an Anishinaabe visual artist, writer, and scholar from Serpent River First Nation whose work emerges from the storytelling traditions and cultural histories of the Great Lakes region. Working across drawing, installation, sculpture, and writing, her practice explores Indigenous knowledge, historical geography, and relationships to land and water. Devine’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, and the Venice Biennale. A recipient of the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts and numerous other honours, she is recognized as one of Canada’s leading Indigenous artists and thinkers. She is also the founding chair of the Indigenous Visual Culture Program at OCAD University.

Robert Burley is one of Canada’s most respected photographers, known for his long-term investigations of landscape, architecture, urban change, and the relationship between human activity and the natural environment. For more than four decades, his work has examined how places are shaped, remembered, and transformed over time. Burley’s photographs have been exhibited and collected internationally by institutions including the National Gallery of Canada, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Yale University Art Gallery, and the George Eastman Museum. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, he has published extensively on subjects ranging from Toronto’s ravine system and Great Lakes landscapes to industrial heritage and environmental change.

Sarah Milroy is the Frances and Tim Price Executive Director and Chief Curator of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario, Canada’s only museum devoted exclusively to Canadian and Indigenous art. Previously, Milroy served as editor / publisher of Canadian Art magazine and as lead art critic of the Globe and Mail. Her major touring exhibitions include From the Forest to the Sea: Emily Carr in British Columbia (2010), David Milne: Modern Painting (2018), Early Days: Indigenous Art from the McMichael (2020) and Uninvited: Canadian Women Artists in the Modern Moment (2021). In 2020, Milroy was made a Member of the Order of Canada.