Inspired by nature, found objects, sciences and religious relics, Laurie Kilgour-Walsh’s work seeks to make manifest those primordial connections between spirit and environment that were once prevalent in all activities of daily life but have now been discarded in the rush of postmodern existence.  Exotic fabrics and objects are often combined with weathered and decaying materials, remnants of machinery and dried natural objects to create a complex and intuitive story.  Titled "Lost and Found”, her current body of work explores, through mixed media and assemblage, the sacred qualities inherent in every day objects and images – talismans of her own making.  These ordinary discarded items are raised to the level of fine art through altar-piece or shrine-like constructions, questioning and repositioning the idea of sacred or cherished items.  Her work is a creation born out of an urge to collect items and images of various origins and to use these bits of ephemera to bring forth her ideas.

Kilgour-Walsh received her Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art from McMaster University in 1998 and has exhibited extensively throughout Southern Ontario, including regular exhibitions at transit gallery in Hamilton .  She maintains a prolific approach to art making, often involved in a sort of ‘serial creation’, finishing six or eight pieces at once.  Her studio is littered with scraps of old books, bits of rusted metal and dried flowers, glass bottles – all gathered with care for some future use.  In addition to her passion for art making, Kilgour-Walsh is also actively involved promoting public arts awareness and appreciation, working as Educator at the Art Gallery of Hamilton. 

"Kilgour’s assemblages are physically and intellectually layered… Most of her recent works emphasize the sacred nature of their subject matter by echoing the form of traditional religious objects such as shrines or reliquaries, which enclose and present fragments of venerated objects, and suggest that the Earth, like Christian saints, is undergoing a process of martyrdom. For Kilgour using the human intellect to understand the sacred nature of the Earth is necessary to preserve our planet.

June 2001
Rhona Wenger, director of the Grimsby Public Art Gallery (taken from "Heaven & Earth" catalogue)

"… Laurie Kilgour’s "Reliquary" is a transmutation in abstract form. In a group of totem like structures and two wall works that resemble molten lava, she sets up a metaphorical relationship of the body as a container. The parameters of the corporeal body are explored – life, loss and transformation through an alchemical process of transmuting materials. Natural materials such as dried flowers, leaves as well as industrial materials such as glass are used in these works".

September 2000
Shirley Madill, senior curator of the Art Gallery of Hamilton (taken from "Exile on James St. catalogue"