YVONNE MULLOCK & LINDSAY MONTGOMERY

Soothsayers

EXHIBITION

Sept 3 – Oct 17 2026

OPENING RECEPTION

Thur Sept 3 | 4 – 7 pm
(performance 5:30 pm)

ARTIST TALK

Sat Sept 5 | 2 – 3 pm

SoothSayers is an experimental, collaborative project by Lindsay Montgomery and Yvonne Mullock that draws on a shared love of folkloric and pagan traditions, 17th & 19th century ceramic drinking vessels and our ancestral ties to Scotland and England.

Inspired by old farewell songs and ballads rooted in communal drinking customs, unfolds as a call-and-response that invites participants to gather and enter an improvised ritual drinking act using ceramics, performance, cake and costume. In this work, the soothsayer – an ancient intuitive figure of truth and futurity, is embodied into a twosome: Mother Shipton and Pulchinella who perform fragmented riot grrrl punk lyrics, cite tudor slang and holler alert calls to one another prior to serving a wiccan tea potion and lady-cake to the crowd.

Handmade cups of kittens, goblins, mushrooms and fingers, character toby jugs and a large punch bowl bearing abstract portraits of each other serve as symbolic intermediaries; they function as mouths that speak, faces that witness, and bodies that hold ritual. Activated through touch, exchange, and use, these objects blur the boundary between tool and performer, accumulating new meanings with each gathering.

SoothSayers attempts to re-centre these ritual practices through a feminist lens, transforming drinking from a site of excess or exclusion into one of agency, communion, and shared authorship. Through the act of gathering, Soothsaying becomes an embodied, social act rooted in loosened tongues, shared songs, and collective intuition.

The Exhibition

The Writing

Exhibition text by Maia Stark, Artist


How does a spell act on the world? 

First, we name the thing.

In the exhibition Soothsayers, Lindsay Montgomery and Yvonne Mullock take traditional parting rituals of the Atlantic Archipelago—Britain, Ireland, and Scotland—and adapt them into contemporary art performance and exhibition. The artists treat folk practice not as static historical fact, but as a living movement to be performed, shared, and reactivated.

Then, we transform the thing.

Montgomery becomes our ‘Mother Shipton’, the legendary 15th century Yorkshire seer who, through centuries of folk-retelling, has become an archetypal prophetess of the future.

Mullock becomes our ‘Pulcinella’, a Neapolitan theatrical character: absurdist, contradictory, and anarchic. Hungry and honest, they tell present truths, while Mother Shipton sees into the future.

Then, our transformed things cross thresholds.

Now, a happening! Mother Shipton and Pulcinella carry Toby jugs: body-shaped pitchers, exaggerated self-portraits. The spellcasters chant rhymes inspired by 16th-century Tudor slang for ‘vulgar’ women; defiant riot grrrl punk lyrics; and holler calls, rhythmic vocalizations traditionally used to call and herd livestock. A parting song follows, invoking clay, kiln, and bone in the creation of their art objects. Mother Shipton and Pulcinella finish by asking us to raise the cup: “…let the farewell be sung / For the roads keep turning, the tale’s not done.”

A stirrup cup is chosen: a type of cup made without handles or a flat base, so once filled it cannot be set down until emptied. ‘Witches  tea’ is served from a two-faced posset pot, a traditional celebratory ceramic vessel, and the drink is poured with a breast-shaped ladle. Throughout the exhibition, anthropomorphic portraits, animals, creatures, plants, and body parts invite participants into the world of Mother Shipton and Pulcinella.

A cake shaped in feminine human form is cut: a metaphorical sacrifice. Its devouring is not destruction, but celebration and communion: a taking in of the gift. The brew and cake become symbolic extensions of the artists’ bodies, generously given through ritual. With brew drunk, cups laid down, and cake consumed, one final threshold remains: the door. As participants and witnesses leave, the parting is complete.

Finally, we go out into the world.

Mother Shipton becomes, once more, our Montgomery, and Pulcinella, our Mullock. The artists have constructed this parting ritual of hospitality through brew and cake, a traditionally gendered form of care. They subvert such host-activities into spectacle: colourful, unruly, undeniably joyous. In activating this folk practice, Montgomery and Mullock remind us that knowledge and care are located within the body and within the community— in gesture, song,  a shared treat, a numinous object passed between hands. Though the gallery is now empty of performers, the art objects and depictions here continue to perform through references to folk tradition, bodily imagery, and their capacity to invoke the absent ritual. Many of the works displayed throughout the exhibition have been held by hands and touched by lips; in these ritual objects remain the ghosts of singing and laughing.

The Work

The Artists

LINDSAY MONTGOMERY

Lindsay Montgomery is a Canadian artist working across a variety of media including ceramics, painting and puppetry to create objects, and performances. Her work is focused on creating mythologies that confront and re-imagine classical narratives and aesthetics to address a wide range of issues including death and mysticism, feminism, and evolving modes of power. She earned a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and received her MFA from the University of Minnesota.

Her work has been exhibited widely in Canada and internationally with exhibitions at The Gardiner Museum for Ceramics, The Archie Bray Foundation, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, and multiple exhibitions through The National Conference on Education in the Ceramic Arts. She is the recipient of numerous awards including The Winifred Shantz Award for Ceramics, The Helen Copeland Memorial Award, The Joyce Carlyle Memorial Scholarship in the Crafts Endowment, and individual project grants from The Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and Toronto Arts Council. Her work is included in the permanent collections of The Gardiner Museum for Ceramics, The Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery, the Musée des Beaux Arts, and Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art. She lives and works in Toronto.

YVONNE MULLOCK

 Working across materials and processes including ceramics, textiles, video and printmaking, Yvonne Mullock creates multidisciplinary and socially-activated works that pushes at the traditions of making to reimagine a world where functionality is pliable, and materials are considered with renewed potential. Led by curiosity and discipline, she has worked alongside, and collaborated and engaged with a broad range of individuals and communities – western hat makers, horticulturists, mycology societies, architects, rug hooking guilds, and quilters, to create works that reflect upon the heritage, cultural customs and craft traditions through time-based performances, exhibitions and sculptural installations. 

 

Over a 24 year career, Mullock has participated in residencies including The Banff Centre (Alberta, Canada), Fogo Island Arts (Newfoundland, Canada), Medalta (Alberta, Canada), International Studio & Curatorial Program residency (NY, USA), CommonOpulence (Demmit, Alberta, Canada) and was visiting creative researcher at University of Alberta Printmaking department 2022/23. Recent exhibitions include, Why Don’t You… at The Nickle Gallery, University of Calgary (Alberta, Canada 2026), Wishcraft at The Art Gallery of Grand Prairie (Alberta, Canada 2025), PROOFREAD at Martha Street Studio, Winnipeg (Manitoba, Canada 2025) and University of Alberta Fab Gallery (Alberta, Canada 2024), Harmonia at The Esplanade Arts and Heritage Centre (Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada, 2021) and Gift-Love at Art Gallery of Alberta (Edmonton, Alberta 2019) and ExtraOrdinary Objects at Glenbow Museum (Calgary, Alberta, Canada 2019). Mullock has been awarded grants from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Canada Council for the Arts and Calgary Arts Development and her work is included in the permanent collections of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, The Esplanade Arts and Heritage Centre and the Glenbow Museum, Calgary. 

 

Mullock is a graduate of Glasgow School of Art and is currently based in Mohkinstsis/ Calgary, Alberta, Treaty 7 Territory

Art Inquiry