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Ground Floor Gallery
112 Wyndham St. N

Show Runs April 1st - 26th
Artist Reception: April 10th, 6-8pm

Wednesday – Saturday: 11am – 6pm
Sunday: 11am – 4pm

By day a labourer (welder), by night a labourer (artist).

ANNA GOLDING is an alumni of the undergraduate Studio Art program from the University of Guelph. She maintains a studio in The Ward and is currently in the midst of completing a Welding Apprenticeship with union, UA Local 67 in Hamilton. ANNA’s work usually makes an annual appearance at Guelph-centric art hubs like Necessary Arts (i fuck noisy bath fans, 2025), Stadium project space (Bust, 2024/25) and van down by the river (FOUR EYES, 2024).

ANNA GOLDING romanticizes her own labour. She finds increasingly meticulous and difficult processes of making, searching for the edge of what is possible. ANNA constructs forms in 2D and 3D, usually combining the two spatial realms; using one to get to the other. In either dimension she meddles with scale and repetition to create an infinite catalog of iterations in form. Her work is always skewered with wit and humour and if you can’t find it, it usually means you’re the butt of the joke. Having recently moved to working in the skilled trades, ANNA’s focus has shifted to objects and processes in industry and manufacturing.

Handkerchief. Hanky. Hank.

Originally born out of material exploration, Hank was meant to be a showcase of processes common to the metal trades translated through an artist’s hands. Through working with the materials in the studio and on the tools in her trade, ANNA discovered a commonality, possibly a conspiracy, relating to two opposed communities: The working class, blue collar and the queers.

★ The process of laying out cut lines is a common enough endeavor, and within the metal industry it involves scribing into chemically optimized (DYKEM) layout fluid that has been coated on metals. The technique is akin to lino-cut printing; creation by removal. In a way that only ANNA can do, she found a way to constrict the process, making it a painstakingly redundant trial of labour. All six Hanks were made through scribing iconic and intricately patterned bandanas into layout fluid with a scribe and a trammel on aluminum sheet metal.

★ Hanks have infinite significance as objects of representation. If you know, you know and those who know, know the Hanky Code. The Hanky Code is a piece of queer history. It involved wearing variously coloured and patterned handkerchiefs and bandanas to wordlessly express sexual preferences in a time where it was dangerous and illegal to outwardly be anything but heteronormative.

The Hanks evolved into a dual nod to queer folk through the hanky code and the working class through the materials and tools used. Who better to be the star and poster boy of this dual nod than the American singer/songwriter who was adopted as the voice for both? Yes, Bruce Springsteen, a singer of hardships and stubborn resilience through the trials of life became the people’s champ of the working class, speaking to the human condition. The undertones of quiet daily struggles and loud breakthrough moments in his lyrics grabbed hold of queer folk and songs like Dancing in the Dark were adopted as queer anthems. Springsteen’s Born in the USA (1984) album cover was the destined icon to bridge these two rival communities. Take a look, the cap in the back pocket is not a far stretch from a hanky worn with hanky code intentions. Perhaps Bruce is a ‘Fist Fuckee’ as listed under the RIGHT CODE for a Red Hank. Or perhaps

“No retreat baby, no surrender”