Art of friendship

Along with managing St. Boniface Hospital’s permanent collection of art, curator hannah_g also organizes shows and exhibitions for Galerie Buhler Gallery, the contemporary art gallery at the hospital.

Her latest project, Kitchen Dance, is a site-specific work choreographed and performed by Winnipeg dance artist Alexandra Elliott with staff from St. Boniface Hospital Patient Services Kitchen.

Performances of the piece — designed to celebrate the skill of the often unseen employees who make much of the hospital’s food from scratch — take place on Tuesday and Wednesday; limited spots can be reserved at galeriebuhlergallery.ca.

A film of the dance made by Kayla Jeanson will play during regular gallery hours from Nov. 28 until Jan. 21, 2026.

Name of artist:

Hannah Crosson

Name/year/medium of work:

Untitled/2012/Photo taken with a pinhole camera

Background of artist:

She is an artist who is currently working with clay, which she harvests in London, England. She works with clay and also paints with clay.

Where is the work displayed in your home?

It moves around, but at the moment, it’s on my mantelpiece so I can look at it from my sofa.

What drew you to it? Do you have a personal connection to it?

Hannah is a good friend of mine. We are both from Essex in the U.K., although she now lives in London. I met her in Bristol, in an art centre we were both volunteering at. She visited me in Winnipeg for a few months and she was exploring and she found her way to St. Boniface Museum, where they have these three bell clappers. They are pretty old; they were made by a bell foundry in London and they found their way to Winnipeg.

She cast these clappers — first she covered each of them to protect them and then used plaster to make a mould and then she cast them in plaster. She then set up a pinhole camera to take a picture of the process. It’s a record of her casting these clappers.

Why do you love it?

I love it because I love that Hannah made it, and it was at a really cool point in her artistic career where she was just doing interesting things. She came to visit me in Winnipeg; she was only meant to be here for two weeks but ended up living with me for six months. She really loved Winnipeg and totally understood why I had fallen in love with Winnipeg because it happened to her as well.

For years, Hannah worked just a few doors down from Whitechapel Bell Foundry in London and when she found out that these clappers in Winnipeg were made by the same foundry, she felt like that was an important connection for her, like a little bit of the universe popping up.

The image itself, you can keep looking at it. It’s not a simple image — there are layers, there’s repetition in the image. It’s marking the passage of time and it’s marking an artistic process as well.

I’ve since spent more time in St. Boniface Museum and I really love the work they do. I have partnered with them; they are lovely people and there’s another layer of having a relationship with the museum that Hannah had. It speaks to the opportunities and changes that you get in Winnipeg that feel really special as an artist.

What feeling does it give you?

I feel the love of my friendship with Hannah. I feel the love for Winnipeg as well, and also the mysteriousness of creating something. Something I deeply value is the mysteriousness of creating.

av.kitching@freepress.mb.ca