The latest exhibition at the Nanaimo Art Gallery will feature works by Stz’uminus First Nation artists.
Record, (Re)create: Contemporary Coast Salish Art from the Salish Weave Collection showcases a selection of works by artists of Coast Salish ancestry from the Salish Weave Collection privately held in B.C.
The exhibition, which runs from Jan. 10 to April 12 at the Nanaimo Art Gallery’s Campus Gallery, features work by Jane Marston, Angela Marston, Luke Marston, John Marston, Thomas Cannell, Kelly Cannell, Charles Elliott, Andy Everson, Stan Greene, Maynard Johnny Jr., lessLIE, Chris Paul, Susan Point and Dylan Thomas.
“The artists in Record, (Re)create represent multiple generations and voices and work in a range of media such as carving, painting, serigraphy, glass, hide, metal, and cedar-bark weaving,” the Nanaimo Art Gallery states in a press release. “This diversity of materials and approaches is employed in the artists’ negotiations between traditional and contemporary aesthetics. To record history and recreate form is central to the re-imagining of culture through art.”
The 14 artists featured in the exhibition represent a number of distinct First Nations that span the southern coast of British Columbia, and extend into Washington and Oregon.
In announcing this exhibition, the Nanaimo Art Gallery states that recent exhibitions held at Canadian art institutions, such as Ebb & Flow: Rande Cooke + Sonny Assu (Nanaimo Art Gallery, 2012), Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop & Aboriginal Culture (Vancouver Art Gallery, 2012), Close Encounters: The Next 500 Years (Winnipeg, various locations, 2011), Man Turned To Stone: T’xwelatse (The Reach, 2011), and Urban Thunderbirds | Ravens in a Material World (Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 2013), demonstrate the role of the exhibition space as one that is “crucial in engaging with the general population on issues of colonization — and decolonization.”
“Additionally, this public space plays an important role in providing opportunities to establish connections between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities,” the gallery states.
Record, (Re)create has been organized and circulated by the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and was curated by Toby Lawrence.
The opening for the exhibition will take place Friday, Jan. 9 at 7 p.m. at 900 Fifth St., Building 330, Entrance 5D.