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Urban Shaman Gallery Presents...
The Named and Unnamed
August 18 - September 30, 2006
(Extended to October 4, 2006)
Urban Shaman Gallery is pleased to announce
the emotionally charged, provocative exhibition The Named
and Unnamed by Anishinabekwe-Vancouver artist Rebecca
Belmore, organized by the Morris and Helen Belkin Art
Gallery, University of British Columbia (curated by Scott
Watson and Charlotte Townsend Gault),
Belmore's powerful installations confront the viewer with
images of loss, struggle, and silence. In this exhibition,
Vigil, a performance-based video installation, is juxtaposed
with several sculptural works that move from the narrative
to the lyrical, from action to quiet reflection. Belmore's
practice is experiential; she constructs works over time
influenced by her indignation about acts of violence, local
and global, from the disappearance of women in the Downtown
Eastside of Vancouver, to women and children lying dead in
the snow at Wounded Knee. Her art dares to be about good and
evil, yet it is also filled with hope and trust. "Although
at its most effective, Belmore's aesthetic is taut,
reductive, and unsentimental", writes Charlotte Townsend-Gault,
"it becomes evident that for her there is no sharp divide
between aesthetics and ethics."
Rebecca Belmore's highly political work has long addressed
history, place, and identity through the media of sculpture,
installation, video and performance. Throughout her career
she has manifested a great sensitivity to her materials and
a corresponding feeling for the well made object. Her
installations and performances are marked by simplicity of
form and gesture and an understanding of the human need for
ritual.
aceartinc.
Architecture For A Colonial Landscape
August 18 - September 30, 2006
As part of Parallel,
aceartinc. presents
Architecture For A Colonial Landscape, an exhibition
consisting of two video-based works; the video component of
Fountain, presented at the 51st Venice Biennial and a new
video installation called Architecture For A Colonial
Landscape.
Both works reference historic and current cycles of
oppression, greed and theft - theft of land, theft of
language, theft of identity and theft of human rights. Both
works counter such moral abandon with a last-gasp, guttural
act of defiance and self-determination through
gesture and action.
In an interview with Scott Watson she says, One has to keep
I mind that there was a serious attempt by governments to
destroy aboriginal languages. I am part of that plan. She
goes on to say, As a youth, I was witness to a traditional
way of life that I would eventually leave behind. But it was
never about leaving something behind; it was about taking
something into the future at least that is how I see it at
this point in my life.
Belmore imbues a sense of loss; loss of aboriginal culture,
cosmology, nature and language, whilst confronting it head
on. She pro-actively accelerates this loss into powerful,
emotional action through gesture, articulated particularly
through the use of her body in performance and video.
Referring to Fountain, Lee-Ann Martin suggests that,Belmore
seeks to shatter long-held myths embedded in our common
history in order that her Fountain can become a symbolic
oasis in the arid environment of colonial relations.
In Architecture For A Colonial Landscape, Belmore speaks to
our responsibilities through exposing the conflict in all of
us, our conflict through action, conflict through history
and conflict through intellectual discourse. Belmore is
resuscitating, breathing life into
her loss, (our loss) and as Joni Mitchell in Woodstock, so
succinctly put it, And we’ve got to get ourselves back to
the garden.
Belmore has produced installations and performances
internationally since 1987, including Creation or Death, We
Will Win, at the Havana Biennial, Havana, Cuba (1991) and
Vigil, at the Aboriginal Arts Festival, Vancouver B.C.
(2003). Her installations have been in
numerous group exhibitions: Site Santa Fe, Santa Fe, New
Mexico (1995), Liaisons, Power Plant, Toronto, Ontario, and
Houseguests, Art Gallery of Toronto (2001). The Named and
the Unnamed has been shown at the Art Gallery of Ontario,
Confederation Centre, and the Kamloops Art Gallery. She
previously represented Canada at the Venice Biennale, in
Italy in
2005 and the Sydney Biennale, in Australia in 1998, in a
group exhibition format. In 2004, Ms. Belmore received the
VIVA Award from the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation and
completed a residency with MAWA (Mentoring Artist's for
Women's Art) in Winnipeg, Manitoba the same year.
aceartinc. and Urban
Shaman Gallery gratefully acknowledge the support of the
Winnipeg Arts Council, the Manitoba Arts Council, Canada
Council for the Arts, the Winnipeg Foundation, Canadian
Heritage, The Sony Store (Polo Park and St.Vital),
Volunteers, Members and All Our Relations. |
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