Image: Roger Oulton, 2010, 127 x 101.6 cm, archival pigment print

The men around here huddle still and sudden as mountains. Their hands dangle like wrenches. Thumbs of sandpaper. Use me, they say. I’m ready. Hours gather, hard in stomachs. Overalls stiff,  scarred as the skin of elephants. There where the sparks landed, a hole, there where he dropped the blowtorch, a swath soft as the inside of birch bark. A way of walking that favours the right hip, a slight limp in the left heel, shoulders that have not been loose since they slipped through the birth canal. A relationship with sweat. Welding cap as yarmulke. Veins black in pleats.

-Sina Queyras

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Evan Rensch: Enterprise

7 September to 14 October

An exhibition of a twenty-two black and white photographic portraits of ironworkers at the Fawcett-Enterprise Foundry in Sackville, New Brunswick, taken over the past three years by photographer Evan Rensch. Accompanied by a publication with essays by Robert Tombs and William Parenteau. Owens Art Gallery