Boring Earth: spontaneous gift
Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery
July 18 – November 15, 2026
Installation view, Boring Earth: spontaneous gift, 18 July to 15 November 2026. Photo courtesy of Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, by LF Documentation.
By Liza Eurich
In spontaneous gift, artists Patrick Cruz and Laila Fox, who collaborate as Boring Earth, reimagine the exhibition space through unconventional earthen works and infrastructural interventions. Curated by Darryn Doull, the show runs over the course of four months at Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery.
On entering the exhibition space, viewers are presented with two earthen mounds that form the foundation of the installation garden of priapus. Traditionally, offerings to the god Priapus were made to encourage animal and vegetable fertility.[1] The first of these piles is heaped into a corner at the room’s entrance. In documentation of the exhibition on the gallery’s website,[2] seedlings are pictured emerging from this soil. In these images, the gallery seems less a space for display than a nascent ecosystem. During my visit towards the close of the exhibition, these seedlings were almost imperceptible, wilted and decaying. I would have overlooked them, if not intentionally searching, which led me to wonder what else might have changed, or was shifting imperceptibly.
Across this pile are numerous objects, both synthetic and natural. Here the earth becomes a plinth of sorts, or perhaps it might be more aptly described as an environment. These carefully placed, or planted, items also seem to have shifted from their original documented position. Now they appear to be scattered across or embedded within the soil’s matrix. Of the extensive material list, most evident in this first mound are a variety of shells, milk caramel candies in transparent wrappers, and white waxy candles. In the documentation,[3] these candles appear lit, allowing dripping wax to slowly trace a path down the soil’s side. Their varying heights mark the passage of indeterminate amounts of time. The presence of these candles also evokes a sense of ritual, such that the mound as environment gives way to the mound as altar. A kind of invocation, or perhaps offerings to Priapus, alluding to the existence of something unseen or unknowable.
boring earth, spontaneous gift (front detail), 2026. Earth, chicken wire, polyurethane, plaster, wood, glue, house paint, clay, faux fur, orange, sea shells, grommets, metal wire, monopoly money, crystal, plastic beads, swag hook, bamboo leaf, clips, cardboard, acrylic paint, couch cover samples, bird spikes, cork, beeswax, glass bead, acorn, dragees, faux leaf, canvas, plastic bucket, cogon, river rocks, paper, muselet, nickel, fairy lights, cyanotype, twine, paraffin wax, gerber daisy, osmanthus, baby’s breath, chrysanthemum, bells. Photo by LF Documentation.
The second mound travels along part of the gallery wall, at the far end of the same room. The soil’s different shades of earthen brown suggest sections where the earth appears wet, as if the mounds have been continually watered.[4] Where the soil presses up against the wall, this damp is slowly creeping upwards, impinging on the uniformity of its white plane. Often, gallery and museum spaces are wary of hosting certain materials, particularly those that invite mould or other unwelcome guests. But here, the non-human is courted. Tiny flies are dancing in one corner.
The motif of shells and candles carries forward to the second pile in garden of priapus, where several small plastic dinosaurs are also present. With the latter, there is a sense of playfulness; the prehistoric toy figurines don pistachio or acorn ‘hats.’ They are oriented around a ‘central pit’ and amongst a scene of colourfully painted rocks. This arrangement oscillates between the whimsical and uncanny. Thoughts of what might emerge from the primordial ooze within this pit shift to thinking about the bleakness of extinction and the vastness of deep geological time. Ironically, the synthetic nature of these dinosaurs means they will long outlast many of the other materials within this work.
boring earth, spontaneous gift (reverse detail), 2026. Earth, chicken wire, polyurethane, plaster, wood, glue, house paint, clay, faux fur, orange, sea shells, grommets, metal wire, monopoly money, crystal, plastic beads, swag hook, bamboo leaf, clips, cardboard, acrylic paint, couch cover samples, bird spikes, cork, beeswax, glass bead, acorn, dragees, faux leaf, canvas, plastic bucket, cogon, river rocks, paper, muselet, nickel, fairy lights, cyanotype, twine, paraffin wax, gerber daisy, osmanthus, baby’s breath, chrysanthemum, bells. Photo by LF Documentation.
In addition to these objects, there is a plethora of materials amongst the soil that are not immediately apparent, but for the material list: rice, birdseed, rosebud, gerbera daisy, chrysanthemum. Alongside the wet earth they are folded into, these materials elicit a feeling of anticipation. That a seed might bloom, a bird might arrive, materials might decay. That something is slowly unfolding just beneath the surface, transformations marked by emergence, and others that begin and end imperceptibly. This installation asks us to consider cyclical processes of growth, periods of dormancy, microcosms of decay.
The central earthen mound, entitled spontaneous gift, is by far the tallest pile, heaped up as if it might topple over at any moment. As you carefully creep past, the reverse side unexpectedly reveals an alcove. Rather than a solid mound, a cave-like chamber becomes a hollowed-out home. Inside this miniature, multi-level domestic interior are tiny makeshift constructions that resemble tables, chairs, paintings, a bed, a broom. Alongside these, the scale of a conch shell and dried orange slices remains intact. The symbolic resonance of this disjunction in size feels intentional, but somewhat ambiguous in the numerous interpretations it might point to. While the soil in garden of priapus was evidently home to a process of germination and decay and may yet produce something else—spontaneous gift physically maps home directly within the soil, with all its creaturely comforts. Though no figure appears present, fairy lights illuminate this space with the pretense that someone will soon return to it.
Moving into the third room, viewers are met with a series of small installations that make up squint. Consisting of nine different interventions, each exists within the gallery wall, drawing our attention to a kind of non-space, the thickness of two-by-fours. In squint 02, a copper pipe is embedded within the wall, producing a small cylindrical opening that one bends to peer into. Inside this alcove, a video on loop depicts a grainy scene that is difficult to discern. The same video reads like a large planet or the moon, spinning on its axis, and then in another viewing, it reads as if you are riding in a car with the landscape whizzing by, and then in a third, it reads as waves lapping against a shallow shoreline. Each time, the ambiguity of the film manifests new imagined scenes, refusing the resolution of comprehension.
boring earth, astral slip 2026. Resin, paraffin wax, Tamagotchi, electrical socket, plastics, orange, pistachio, acorn, wasp nest, palo santo, rose petal, seashells, honey bees, jelly beans, porcupine quill, wire fence fragment, bells, battery, elastic band, penny, buttons, screw, rattan, willow, cat fur, paper, quartz, bottle cap, pasta, beeswax, pewter, plastic beads, anchovies, sweetgrass, marbles, image transfer, cardboard, seedpod. Photo by LF Documentation.
Infiltrating conventional elements of the building’s architecture, astral slip is installed at the threshold between gallery proper and facilities corridor. The gallery’s drop ceiling is the type you might expect in many institutional and corporate settings. A grid of removable square panels that were at one time painted black. One of these panels has been replaced with a transparent resin sheet, on which numerous materials are spread across: an electrical socket, seashells, jellybeans, plastic beads, buttons, bells. Further to this is the positioning of the resin sheet, which sits intentionally askew. Looking up, we can see past this elevated arrangement and into the interstitial space of the institution, where pipes and other conduits are traversing through it. The invisible infrastructure that sustains this space, in the most banal sense of it, comes into view.
boring earth, water writing, 2026. Steel grate, seashells. Photo by LF Documentation.
Boring Earth’s exhibition, spontaneous gift, reimagines the gallery as a porous environment. Within this environment, seashells recur frequently. Their associations are manifold, but at their simplest they might represent a home. One that can be cast off, until such a time that the vacant shell becomes newly inhabited. This process feels oddly aligned with that of the gallery—as an infrastructure that continues to be reanimated with each exhibition cycle. The works in this exhibition do not rest on the surface of the gallery wall, but rather they are embedded within the walls, infiltrating the ceiling, or slowly saturating surfaces through damp contact points. As the exhibition nears its end, the often-invisible labour of the gallery’s restoration comes into focus.
As one moves through this exhibition, they become more attuned to different ways of looking. After all, we cannot account for everything that has happened, or will happen, over the course of this show. But perhaps more central to this accounting is a perceptual shift, a receptivity to what might be overlooked. To those things that are difficult to reconcile, or are in a state of flux, such that they continue to engender strange, unexpected encounters.
[1] Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Priapus,” accessed November 1, 2026, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Priapus.
[2] Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, “spontaneous gift,” curated by Darryn Doull, July 18–November 15, 2026, accessed November 1, 2026, https://kwag.ca/exhibitions/boring-earth-spontaneous-gift.
[3] Ibid.
[4] In conversation with Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery staff.