Parameters of Spooning | Heather Rattray
Exhibiting Oct 6 to 20, 2026
"Parameters of Spooning expands on work produced during my MFA degree, situating the spoon as a symbolic and speculative form. For me, spoons represent queer life, transformation, and the possibility of queer futurity. I repeatedly ask the question: if a genderqueer spoon existed, what would it look like? Through a variety of materials with a focus on ceramics, I continually push the form of the spoon, extending further and further into ‘uselessness.’ These objects explore what it means to queer an object and how learning new skills, embracing failure, and working through material resistance can become pathways to self-discovery.
Each spoon is a site of experimentation and becoming. By exaggerating curves, disrupting function, and allowing forms to dance, bend, and fail, I challenge traditional ideas of utility and success. Failure becomes a queer possibility and an opening for transformation, growth, and joy. Bright colours and playful forms, especially in my ceramic work, celebrate queer and trans joy through a ubiquitous, everyday object.
Parameters of Spooning imagines objects that retreat from their expected roles and, in doing so, point toward new directions. Through repair, reimagining, and refusal of function, I seek to gesture toward a trans and non-binary future grounded in hope, freedom, and embodied joy."
About the Artist
Heather Rattray (they/them) is a queer interdisciplinary artist and educator based in Toronto. They blend object, image, and text to create multidimensional pieces involving identity, self-exploration, and connection to the natural world. Their MFA thesis (2024) was funded by a Canada Graduate Scholarship from SSHRC. They hold a BFA in Photography from Toronto Metropolitan University (2019) where they won the First Edition Photobook Award and an Honourable Mention for the Burtynsky Photobook Grant. Rattray has exhibited their work at the Art Gallery of Guelph, the Image Centre, Gallery 44, PAL, and Special Projects Gallery, and they have been featured in publications across across Canada, the US, and abroad. They currently work as the Multimedia Production Technician at the University of Guelph.
View Heather's Website: https://www.heatherrattray.com
Details for individual works available upon request.
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