The University of Victoria (UVic), in partnership with the Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park (JRSP), is pleased to announce that Canadian artist Siobhan Humston has been selected as the inaugural recipient of the University of Victoria and Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park Artist-Scholar Residency for 2025-2026.
During her time at the Rubinoff Sculpture Park on Hornby Island, she will develop new work combining themes involving music, synesthesia and humanity鈥檚 entanglement with the natural world.
鈥淚 hope to tie together the circles of music and visual art, drawing what I refer to in my relationship to the beauty and mystery of nature as 鈥榩oetics of place鈥�,鈥� says Humston, who has an international practice. 鈥淭his residency will also allow me to reconnect to this area of Canada, putting fuel to fire for my deep love for the Canadian west coast.鈥�
Following an international call in late 2024, 57 people applied for the six-week residency to be held annually at the Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park on Hornby Island, followed by a week at UVic. After her residency, Humston will present an exhibit of the work and offer a public talk in October 2025 at UVic (date to be announced).
鈥淛effrey Rubinoff held that art was an existential necessity 鈥� an expression of mature conscience, evoking our innate sense of the sacred and the sublime. Far from diminishing individual conscience, such art elevates and inspires it,鈥� says Karun Koernig, Curator of the Rubinoff Sculpture Park. 鈥淗umston's work exemplifies this vision, quietly co-mingling distinct form-worlds 鈥� the natural and the human. In her hands, everyday materials sourced from the land sublimate into visual poetry. Particularly compelling for us was Humston鈥檚 ambition to integrate a soundscape into her residency, resonating deeply with Rubinoff鈥檚 profound connection to music.鈥�
Humston鈥檚 art has been exhibited in over 70 solo and group exhibitions in commercial, artist-run and public galleries, and is held in private and corporate collections in England, Europe, Australia and North America. She is the recipient of a Pollock Krasner Foundation Fellowship, a City of London arts bursary, Ontario Arts Council grants, a BC Arts Council education grant and, most recently, an Ontario Arts Council exhibition assistance grant for a 2024 solo exhibit. She has been featured on City TV Vancouver and Calgary, the Vancouver Sun and CBC Radio鈥檚 Arts Report.
Originally from London, Ontario, she graduated with a BFA in printmaking and painting from Crawford College of Art and Design in Cork, Ireland, followed by an MFA with a distinction in Art & Environment from Falmouth University in Cornwall, England. She then held a series of international artist residencies, including two years at Marlborough College in Wiltshire, England and a month at Hugo Burge Foundation at Marchmont Estate, Scotland. She returned to Canada to set up a studio on the shores of Lake Huron, where her ongoing research about the connection between environmental art, nature, spirituality and science culminated with a solo exhibit, In the Garden of Exquisite Unknown, at the Judith & Norman Alix Art Gallery in Sarnia, Ontario.
See her work at siobhanhumstonart.com or on Instagram @siobhanhumstonart or @siobhan.humston.artist.
Keep an eye out for updates on the residency and event dates at jrsp.uvic.ca, @uvic_rubinoff and finearts.uvic.ca/research/ and @uvicarts.
