Gabriela Escobar Ari Asinnajaq Patti Bailey, qʷn̓qʷin̓x̌n̓ Randy Lee Cutler Jim Holyoak & Darren Fleet Tsēmā Keith Langergraber Sarah Nance Tara Nicholson Carol Wallace  
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curators statement

Genevieve Robertson & Maggie Shirley

Overburden is the topsoil and vegetation that is removed before mining takes place. It also references our earth’s current condition and the psychological burden that many people experience in the face of climate and other ecological changes.

Overburden brings together a group of artists whose shared concerns address geology and its relationship to shifting climate patterns and resource extraction, in both a regional and global context. Artists respond to mining histories in the Kootenay area, arctic ice melt that is uncovering paleontological data, mining reclamation practices, Indigenous sovereignty and glacial seismic events. While some artists bear witness to harmful extraction practices and an ever more unstable world, others seek to find caring, embodied and imaginative ways to come into relationship with the geologic material under our feet and interwoven into our everyday.

In an installation using moose hide and projection Tsēmā explores the idea of reclamation through the lens of her Tāltān culture in the face of destructive extraction practices.

Carol Wallace imagines a three-dimensional geologic map - and takes viewers inside of geologic imagery - using fabric and photographic projections.

Keith Langergraber recreates mining structures in the Kootenay region to reflect on regional ecologies and histories, speculative futures and climate change.

Sinixt tribal member Patti Bailey, qʷn̓qʷin̓x̌n̓, uses plant material sourced from the Upper Columbia Basin landscape to create traditional and contemporary weavings.

Questioning collective ideals of the Arctic and working to demystify climate research, Tara Nicholson documents climatology outposts in Canada, Greenland and Russia.

Using fibre and installation, Sarah Nance works within the chasm between geologic processes and human experience, locating their entanglements in order to explore a layered perception of place.

Two works by Randy Lee Cutler explore the presence of minerals in our daily environments and their profound but often unacknowledged effect on our experiences and activities.

Gabriela Escobar Ari photographs the biography of a Bolivian landscape revealing mining activities and uncovering associated attitudes and values towards natural resources.

Jim Holyoak & Darren Fleet collaborate on a series of comics that address deep time and climate change through storytelling from the perspective of trilobites.

Asinnajaq offers a score inspired by the fluxus movement and performed by her own body and a pile of rocks, responding to the feeling of burden.

Through these artistic inquiries, the artists included in Overburden both disrupt and mimic methods of scientific research, and explore embodied, performative and material responses. In collecting these works together in these chaotic times, viewers may reflect on questions such as: what are the ways in which the earth is pushing back, disintegrating and metamorphosing in response to our actions? What role might artists play in articulating our anthropocentric paradigm and how can we begin to shift our thinking to one in which interdependence and care are central?

credits

Overburden is a co-production between Kootenay Gallery of Art and Oxygen Art Centre

Val Field, Kootenay Gallery of Art Executive Director

Julia Prudhomme, Oxygen Art Centre Executive Director

Maggie Shirley, Kootenay Gallery of Art Curator

Genevieve Robertson, Guest Curator for Oxygen Art Centre

Genevieve Robertson, Exhibition Essay

Deanna Peters/Mutable Subject, Web Design

Thomas Nowaczynski, Photographs (unless otherwise credited)

Keiko Lee-Hem, Catalogue Design

The Kootenay Gallery of Art is a principal gallery for the visual arts within the West Kootenay region of British Columbia. Located in Castlegar, the Gallery is committed to include, through exhibitions and programming, a diversity of artists and art forms that enrich, challenge and educate the audience.

We're grateful for financial support from the BC Arts Council, BC Gaming, City of Castlegar and other funders.


Located in the town of Nelson, Oxygen Art Centre is an integral and long-standing cultural hub for artists of all disciplines (including youth) in the West Kootenays and Columbia Basin. We provide meaningful professional development opportunities to local artists and brings artists of national and international repute into our communities to produce new work.

Oxygen is grateful for the financial support we receive from:

Canada Council for the Arts

BC Arts Council

BC Gaming

Province of BC

Government of Canada

Vancouver Foundation

Columbia Kootenay Cultural Alliance

Columbia Basin Trust

Osprey Community Foundation

United Way

Nelson Lions Club

Nelson and District Credit Union


Funding for this exhibition was generously provided by:

Canada Council for the Arts

Columbia Kootenay Cultural Alliance

BC Arts Council

Columbia Basin Trust Community Initiatives and Affected Areas Program

Teck

Columbia Power Corporation

Oxygen Art Centre and Kootenay Gallery of Art are grateful for this support.

The galleries would also like to thank the artists who participated in the exhibition and programming, and all our members, donors, board members and volunteers.

Kootenay Gallery of Art

120 Heritage Way

Castlegar, BC V1N 4M5

kootenaygallery[dot]telus.net

250-365-3337

Oxygen Art Centre

#3-320 Vernon St. (alley entrance)

Nelson, B.C. V1L4E4

info[dot]oxygenartcentre.org

250-352-6322

We acknowledge with gratitude that our galleries are located on the unceded traditional territory of the sn̓ʕay̓ckstx Sinixt Arrow Lakes and Yaqan Nukij Lower Kootenay Band peoples in Nelson and the unceded traditional territory of the sn̓ʕay̓ckstx Sinixt Arrow Lakes in Castlegar. We would like to thank the Sinixt, Yaqan Nukiy Ktunaxa, and the many diverse Indigenous and Métis people who live here now for the opportunity to live, work and host cultural experiences within this beautiful watershed.