“Today and Yesterday” features the artist’s latest work, 14 watercolours completed in the past year, alongside significant pieces from earlier in his career. The paintings mark an unexpected shift from the object-based practice that has comprised Favro’s oeuvre for over 5 decades.

Since the 1960s, Murray Favro’s sense of wonder and discovery has produced a legacy of important works. His machines and inventions explored everyday objects, mass-produced products, and the process of making, imbuing the ordinary with a sense of status. These watercolours, ranging from still life to snapshots of suburbia, carry the same exploratory quality of the works that came before them. Today’s paintings depict the banal with a charm that evokes the whimsy of yesterday’s objects.

“Today and Yesterday” presents Favro’s contemporary pieces while celebrating the previous work that shaped his illustrious career. In the South Gallery, the watercolour pieces are accompanied by Tracks, a 2001 sculpture employing trompe l’eoil and forced perspective to model receding train tracks. The Lathe (2010) occupies the North Gallery, surrounded by 9 Technical Objects, all handmade by Favro and fully functional.