Rebecca Belmore, Susan Blight, Melissa General, Luke Parnell
Reception and Curator’s Talk: Friday 22 June, 7 pm
“P.S.” or “post script” appears as a statement or action at the end of a written document. Often brief and insightful, the post script is where a writer may locate essential or urgent information – the content that may be critical to remember before a recipient crafts their response.
Continuing conversations within the exhibition Carry Forward curated for KWAG’s fall 2017 program, Post Script features artworks that access site and land through sound, language and materials. The exhibition builds on the many conversations started by Rebecca Belmore’s influential artwork Ayum-ee-aawach Oomama-mowan: Speaking to Their Mother.
During the summer of 1992 Marjorie Beaucage invited artist Rebecca Belmore to bring her performative artwork Ayum-ee-aawach Oomama-mowan: Speaking to Their Mother to the Protectors of Mother Earth Wiggins Bay Blockade in Northern Saskatchewan. Belmore had travelled across the country inviting different people to speak to the land with the aid of a large megaphone sculpture. Beaucage’s documentary, Speaking to Their Mother, provides a window into Belmore’s process and motivations for making the artwork, while also documenting community members speaking Cree to the clear-cut forest. If we think of land as a document that can be read, imbued with meaning and understood, then every extraction, every trespass, every indelible mark left on its surface impacts how it is to be read in the future. More than 25 years later, this documentary and Belmore’s sculpture highlight how voice and action speak to land.
As an inspired correspondence, Post Script will unfold over the course of June 2018. From June 1 to June 3 a single work will occupy the Main Gallery: Rebecca Belmore’s Ayum-ee-aawach Oomama-mowan: Speaking to Their Mother. Each Monday beginning June 4, another work will join the gallery, allowing a conversation to incrementally build within the space. Including new and recent work by Susan Blight, Melissa General, and Luke Parnell, Post Script continues a discussion with a particular emphasis on the inextricable link between the body, land and voice.
Lisa Myers, Exhibition Curator
Artist Installation Schedule:
Artist works will be added cumulatively to the exhibition on the following dates:
1 June: Rebecca Belmore
5 June: Melissa General
12 June: Luke Parnell
19 June: Susan Blight
Post Script is presented in concert with CAFKA.18 (Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener and Area)
Supported by the Kitchener Waterloo Community Foundation – The Musagetes Fund and the Jackman Foundation.
Luke Parnell, Remediation, 2017. Digital video, 11 min 48 sec. Image courtesy of the artist.
