Maggie Groat

S LOWER F: ACTIVITY BOOK

A grid of 36 colorful square images arranged on a bright yellow background. Each square contains various abstract shapes, lines, and patterns in diverse colors and textures, including geometric forms, stylized natural elements, and graphic motifs. The arrangement is organized into six rows and six columns.

Maggie Groat, Concentration, Found Paper, 2025.

Courtesy the artist

Over the past two years, Maggie Groat’s material research has explored the possibilities of slowness, play, sleep, and healing as acts of resistance and refusal. S LOWER F: ACTIVITY BOOK is the fourth chapter of this ongoing project. Using her characteristic methods of analog collage and assemblage, Groat harnesses the Gibson’s open concept galleries to experiment with familiar forms of visual games, including spot-the-difference, concentration, fill-in-the-blanks, dot-to-dot, the colouring sheet, and hidden images. The exhibition proposes open-ended rules of play, and invites imaginative interaction by visitors of all ages.

Groat’s proposed visual engagement with these images-as-games mirrors the methods of their creation, as collage involves an inherently slow yet playful process, and demands a rigorous kind of deep looking. The found images collected for S LOWER F: ACTIVITY BOOK highlights the artist’s persistent interest in locating matches, doubles, twins, mirrors, and imperfect symmetries as a kind of “glitch,” by sourcing and transforming a particular kind of twentieth century pre-internet era print media.

Groat’s interest in games springs from their world-building possibilities—as a strategic coping strategy for life in difficult times but also, and perhaps more powerfully, as a philosophical exploration of other realities. For Groat, game playing should not exist solely in the domain of childhood. S LOWER F: ACTIVITY BOOK encourages its visitors to remember the deep, slow focus of competitive concentration, and the role of immersive imagination as a means for living together through intersecting emergencies.

S LOWER F: ACTIVITY BOOK also exemplifies the ethics that ground Groat’s artistic practice. Through it she considers and enacts the possibilities of low-impact exhibition making, including utilizing second-hand and sustainable materials, small-scale shipping, no-travel, designed from the outset in collaboration and conversation with the Gibson team. Through these material choices, Groat engages with considerations of how to address the environmental impacts of our time, and what it means to be a maker during the destructive sensibility of late-stage capitalism, including the climate crisis, international conflict, and continued systemic colonial oppression.

Curated by Kimberly Phillips

The artist thanks the Ontario Arts Council for their generous support of this project.

Support Material

Exhibition Guide - S LOWER F: ACTIVITY BOOK

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Maggie Groat

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Kimberly Phillips

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Generously supported by Arlene James

Images (11)

A modern art gallery with a large wooden table and orange stools. The table is set with various art tools. To the right, there are four framed artworks on the wall, while a small red decorative piece is mounted on the wall. A large window lets in natural light, revealing trees outside. The floor is light-colored wood.

A modern art gallery interior features a wooden floor and a high ceiling with exposed beams. On the left, a large informational poster titled "Maggie Groat SLOWER F. ACTIVITY BOOK" hangs on the wall. To its right, there are two framed artworks and a wall shelf of small objects. A long, wooden table with red legs is positioned centrally, surrounded by matching stools. The table displays various small art objects and tools. A large window on the right reveals a view of trees outside.

A spacious gallery interior features three framed artworks on a white wall, arranged horizontally. To the left, a large window shows a view of a rainy outdoor scene with trees. In the foreground, a low display platform holds a wooden block and a a pile of papers. The wooden floor enhances the minimalist aesthetic of the space.

A wooden table is centered in the image, displaying several colored pencils standing upright in two horizontal holders. A small dish and an orange block are also placed on the table. In the background, the wall features an ornate red shelf holding small booklets, and a framed poster filled with various colorful shapes and patterns. The setting has a minimalistic, contemporary aesthetic with a light-colored backdrop.

A minimalistic art gallery interior featuring a wooden table with red legs displaying various objects, including colored pencils and a small decorative piece. On the wall, there are two framed artworks—one gray and intricate, the other red and patterned. Beside them, a wooden shelf displays a series of small objects in various colors and shapes, set against a plain white wall. The floor is light wood.

A closeup view of a wooden box sits alongside a pair of scissors in a wooden holder. Below them is a game board featuring a grid of colorful abstract shapes with the word "CONCENTRATION" printed at the bottom. The scene is displayed on a white surface against a backdrop of light wooden flooring.

A wooden tabletop displays a game titled "CONCENTRATION." The game features colorful cards arranged in a grid, showcasing various abstract patterns. Beside the grid is a small yellow envelope containing additional cards, with a pair of scissors placed nearby.

A close-up view of red, blue, orange, green, and yellow coloured pencils arranged in wooden holders on a natural wood table. In the background, a person's hands are colouring in a booklet with a red coloured pencil.

A spacious interior featuring a long, wooden table with chairs. A large mural with vibrant floral and abstract designs decorates the blue wall behind the table. The room has wooden beams and large windows letting in natural light, creating a bright ambiance. The flooring is light-colored wood.

A spacious interior features two large, colorful wall murals depicting floral designs in a variety of shapes and colors against a light blue wall. Below, there is a long, light wooden table with matching chairs arranged neatly. The ceiling has exposed wooden beams and recessed lighting.

A spacious interior features two large wall murals depicting stylized floral arrangements in vases. The designs are composed of various colorful shapes and patterns, set against a light blue wall. Below the murals, a wooden table with multiple seats provides a communal area. The ceiling has exposed wooden beams and hanging fixtures.

Maggie Groat is an interdisciplinary artist based in the Niagara region of Ontario, Canada, the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee, Chonnonton, and Anishnaabeg. Working exclusively with found imagery and salvaged and sustainable materials, her work explores the utility of images and the transformative, ritual potential of reuse while living in times of climate emergency. Her recent and ongoing multi-chapter project S LOWER F, is a sprawling examination of attempts at slowness as a form of refusal and the transformative potentials of small, quiet acts.

Kimberly Phillips is a committed arts leader, educator and writer of Welsh-Irish settler ancestry, based on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓ əm, Skwxwú7mesh and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ/Selilwitulh peoples. For the past 20 years, in her roles as gallery director, curator and teacher, she has worked to amplify the voices of under-acknowledged artists and practitioners, to ethically vision and build organizational capacity, and to create meaningful and unexpected ways for contemporary artists and their publics to find one another.

Since 2020 she has held the position of Director at SFU Galleries (and now the Marianne and Edward Gibson Art Museum). Previous to this she was Curator at the Contemporary Art Gallery (CAG) in Vancouver, where she oversaw the gallery’s exhibitions, publications and artist residencies. She served as Director / Curator of Access Gallery (2013 – 2017), a Vancouver artist-run centre committed to emergent and experimental practices, and as Curator of Interpretation at the Vancouver Art Gallery (2009 – 2013). Phillips holds a PhD in art history from the University of British Columbia (2007), where she was an Izaak Walton Killam Doctoral Fellow.

Phillips’s curatorial practice maintains a particular interest in the spectral and the resistant, as well as the conditions under which artists work. She has curated over 60 exhibitions and public art projects and has edited numerous books and catalogues. She looks for unlikely collaborations that create platforms for investigating the conditions of our contemporary world; while at Access Gallery, Phillips developed the internationally recognized residency and exhibition programme Twenty-Three Days at Sea, which saw artists travel across the Pacific Ocean aboard working container vessels.

Phillips maintains an active teaching practice. She looks to steward opportunities for learners to inhabit the art museum as a place of open inquiry, develops curriculum and instructs courses at both graduate and undergraduate levels in visual culture and curatorial practice at Simon Fraser University and Emily Carr University of Art and Design, where she was awarded the Ian Wallace Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2015.