Affinities is organized by artist Scott Rogers. Unfolding from mediated encounters with nature, the exhibition includes works by artists who share conceptual and material connections with Rogers’ own practice. Ranging across painting, installation, wall reliefs, prints, video, and sound, each of the artworks utilise varying layers of representation to reveal, disrupt, and augment human perceptions of non-human life.

Richard Frater’s Common Birds (2018) presents a slide show of photographs produced by three collaborators in different geographic locations. Over the course of one weekend Frater shot images of the Eurasian Goshawk in Berlin, Scott Rogers the Rufous Hornero in Buenos Aires and wildlife photographer Georgina Steytler the Galah in Melbourne/Naarm. Following an editing exchange, Frater received all the files and compiled them—reflecting engagements with what constitutes everyday encounters across hemispheres and continents. Frater’s work is partitioned off by a site-specific bird hide created by Scott Rogers inspired by infrastructures in Tifft Nature Preserve (Buffalo, NY). 

Exploring histories of textiles as sites of cultural exchange, appropriation and transformation, Sukaina Kubba draws attention to the formal elements of their design. Using a 3D filament pen, the artist reproduces characters from Persain rugs. Here anthropomorphized pomegranates, larger than life peonies and awkwardly contorted birds are taken out of woven patterns and placed on the gallery walls. These motifs are reappropriated from Scottish carpet manufactures, Stoddard-Templeton (1871–2006) who sent their designers to copy Persian rugs. 

Titled Birds find freedom in the Arctic, they are elated when they arrive. These King Eider ducks are elated (1998) Kananginak Pootoogook’s pencil and ink drawing depicts a pair of birds animated by their arrival in the North. Celebrated for his depiction of arctic wildlife, especially birds, this poetic title introduces an emotional resonance to representations of avian wildlife in contrast to pure documentation. 

Echoing throughout the exhibition, Scott Rogers’ most recent sound work Nightjars (2025) is composed from the calls of 64 of the world’s nocturnal nightjar species. This work connects to his larger series of soundworks which offer auditory portraits of birds that are typically unseen. In contrast to many daytime species, nightjars have rhythmic calls that are sometimes evocative of electronic music. Their unusual vocalizations have long resonated with bird enthusiasts. In Unwatch (03) (2025) a nocturnal bird appears. This work connects to a series of paintings that copy owl logos used by surveillance organizations. Situated on a dark background, Rogers reinscribes the images back into a nighttime environment. 

Expanding her practice of beadwork from three to two dimensions, Olivia Whetung’s digital beading prints, Unplanned Offerings, describe experiences of mutual benefit between species. Here a chipmunk, goldfinch and bumblebee are depicted alongside aster, goldenrod, echinacea, chives and potatoes cultivated by the artist in her garden. These works connect to Whetung’s broader concerns of interdependency and food sovereignty across human and non-human worlds. 

Richard Frater (b. 1984,Wellington, Aotearoa, NZ) lives and works in Berlin. He received an MFA from Glasgow School of Art, UK, in 2012. In 2016, Frater participated in the Berlin Program for Artists and has continued as a guest mentor. In 2020-21, Frater was awarded the prestigious Parehuia McCahon House Residency. In 2023, the exhibition Off season at the Kunstverein München was his debut solo exhibition in Europe, subsequent solo exhibitions include 蘇Wake (Boxes Art Museum, CN, 2025) and Nicky’s Conversion (Michael Lett Gallery, NZ, 2025). Other solo exhibitions include What remains of a Naturalist (Klosterruine, DE, 2024) and Common Birds (The Oracle, Berlin, 2018). Select group exhibitions include Image Ecology (C/O Berlin, 2023), Im Volksgarten (Kunsthaus Glarus, 2020), Compound (KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, 2017), Resisting Images as part of Farewell Photography: Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie (Mannheim, 2017). 

Sukaina Kubba is an Iraqi-born Toronto-based multi-disciplinary artist whose work is rooted in material and cultural research, material experimentation, storytelling and drawing connections. In 2025, Kubba has exhibited at Western Exhibitions (Chicago) and Patel Brown, (Montreal). Her work has been shown in Toronto Greater Toronto Art Triennial at MOCA (2024), Mercer Union SPACE Billboard Commission (2023-24), the plumb (2023), The Next Contemporary (2023), Art Gallery of Ontario (2019), and Aga Khan Museum (2017); and in Scotland at Dundee Contemporary Arts (2024), Centre for Contemporary Art (Glasgow, 2016), Glasgow International (2016 and 2014) and Kendall Koppe (Glasgow, 2013). Upcoming exhibitions include Carleton University Art Gallery (Ottawa, 2026) and The Robert McLaughlin Gallery (Oshawa, 2026), her first institutional solo presentation in Canada. Kubba has recently completed residencies at the International Studio and Curatorial Program, New York and La Wayaka Current, Chile. She is a sessional lecturer in Visual Studies at the University of Toronto, and was previously a curator and lecturer at The Glasgow School of Art (2013–2018).

Kananginak Pootoogook (b.1935, Kinngait, d.2010, Ottawa) A prominent community leader, Kananginak was instrumental in the formation of the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative graphic arts program at Kinngait, and served for many years as President of its Board of Directors. Kananginak was highly skilled at representing Arctic wildlife in his work, especially the many species of birds that frequent the North. In later years, he focused on the material culture of the Inuit, producing realistic, narrative drawings of camp and hunting scenes. In 1997 Romeo Leblanc, the Governor General of Canada commissioned Kananginak to construct an Inukshuk as part of a tribute to Native people in Canada. The Inukshuk, which was built in Kinngait, was disassembled and shipped to Ottawa where Kananginak and his son Johnny re- assembled it on the grounds of Rideau Hall. In 2010, Kananginak was given the National Aboriginal Achievement Award for his work in the Visual Arts. Select exhibitions include the Arsenale at the Venice Biennale (2017), National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, 2009), and McMichael Canadian Art Collection (Kleinberg, 2009). 

Scott Rogers (b. 1981, Mohkinstsis/Calgary) lives in Tkaronto, Canada. His practice negotiates the complex relationships between humans, other living beings, and land. Notable recent projects include Ormston House (Limerick, IR, 2025), ATLAS Arts (Skye, UK, 2023-2025), Pink Snow (Berlin, DE, 2024), Nuit Blanche (Toronto, 2023), Koraï Project Space (Nicosia, CY, 2022), Kunstverein München (DE, 2021), Ivory Tars (Glasgow, UK, 2021), the Kamias Triennial (Manila, PH, 2020), and Franz Kaka (Toronto, 2017). In 2017 Rogers co-edited "Recognition", the 14th issue of the journal FR DAVID, in collaboration with Will Holder and published by KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin, DE). Scott’s sound installation Songs to the Sun was recently acquired for the Circulating Public Art Collection of Markham (CA). In 2025 he developed Between Leaf & Light, a new multichannel audio work for the Cancer Program at Barrie Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre. He will produce a new outdoor public artwork for the Robert McLaughlin Gallery (Oshawa, 2025) this autumn.

Olivia Whetung (b.1991) is a visual artist working with beads, printmaking, digital media, and natural materials. Her current work focuses on ecology, biodiversity, food justice, and native presence. Solo exhibitions of her work have been presented at the Art Gallery of Mississauga (2024), OPTICA Gallery (Montreal, 2022), Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver, 2019), and Gallery 44 (Toronto, 2018). She has contributed to two-person and group exhibitions across Canada and in the United States. She has been awarded the Ontario Arts Council Indigenous Emerging Artist Award (2020), The Joseph S. Stauffer Prize (2019), the John Hartman Award (2018), and the William and Meredith Saunderson Prize for Emerging Artists (2016). She earned her MFA from the University of British Columbia in 2016.