Biography
Shary Boyle (b. Toronto, Canada 1972) works across diverse media, including sculpture, painting, installation and drawing. She is known for her bold, fantastical explorations of the figure. Highly crafted and deeply imaginative, her practice is activated through collaboration and mentorship. Boyle’s work considers the social history of ceramic figurines, animist mythologies and folk art forms to create aa symbolic, feminist and politically charged language uniquely her own.
Shary Boyle has exhibited and is collected internationally. She has performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, NY (2008), The Hammer Museum, LA (2006) and the Olympia Theatre, Paris (2005), and her work has been included in the National Gallery of Canada’s previous three Canadian Biennales. In 2016 she exhibited in Ceramix : Ceramics and art from Rodin to Schutte, organized by the Bonnefantenmuseum in the Netherlands and travelling to La Maison Rouge in Paris, and Cite de la ceramique in Sevres, France. In 2017, Boyle co-curated and participated in the Esker Foundation-produced touring exhibition Earthlings, her sculptures were featured in South Korea’s Gyeonggi International Ceramic Biennale, and the Phaidon, UK publication Vitamin C: Clay and Ceramic in Contemporary Art. Shary Boyle is the recipient of the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award and the Gershon Iskowitz Prize. She represented Canada with her project Music for Silence at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013.
Shary Boyle’s public art commission Cracked Wheat was installed August 2018 on the front grounds of the Gardiner Museum in Toronto. Her work featured at the museum in a major solo exhibition January 2021.
