Shary Boyle’s major exhibition of new work (on now at Vancouver Art Gallery) expresses the Candian visual artist and performer’s ever-mounting anxieties about climate change and social crisis worldwide. The work was inspired by the lyrics in a 2016 song by UK poet Kate Tempest (see video and link to lyrics below)

Shary Boyle, Centering, 2021, coin operated pottery wheel, electronics, wood, textiles, foot pedal, collaborative textile design with Grant Heaps. Photo: John Jones

Outside the Palace of Me  is a multisensory installation. Boyle uses costume, character, set design and stage effect to explore how we see each other and how we see ourselves. 

Outside the Palace of Me, 2022  exhibition view at Gardiner Museum, Toronto (photo by Toni Hafkenscheid)

This is a popular show. Shary Boyle: Outside the Palace of Me runs at the Vancouver Art Gallery through June 4 . The exhibition was organized by Sequoia Miller, chief curator the Gardiner Museum in Toronto, where it ran from Feb. 24, 2022, to May, 15 2022. It also showed at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Sept. 1, 2022, to Jan. 15, 2023,

Boyle’s work is based on this piece, Europe is Lost, by Kate Tempest. (The video is so stark and powerful.) Lyrics here.


Shary Boyle is national treasure. Go see her website, here.


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