Kelly Richardson: Halcyon Fog

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Kelly Richardson, "Embers and the Giants," 2020

video installation, still 6 m. 30 s.,4K-6K widescreen, 6-12 channels of audioGallery installation commissioned by York Mediale and York Museums Trust with funding from Arts Council England

Kelly Richardson: Halcyon Fog

Artist Talk with Kelly Richardson

The State of the Forests: Tuesday, March 15

2:00 pm PST All ages Online via ZOOM

In conjunction with the current exhibition Kelly Richardson: Halcyon Fog, join us online for an enriching presentation by ecologist Dr. Rachel Holt. Learn about the diversity of British Columbia forests and current policy shifts that may signal a change in approach to forest management. Time for a Q & A will follow the presentation. Register here.

Using digital technologies, Kelly Richardson creates hyper-real, sublime, and spectacular landscapes that communicate underlying unsettling narratives. Richardson is a Canadian artist based in Victoria, BC, where she is a Professor in Visual Arts at the University of Victoria. From 2003 to 2017, she lived in North East England, where she was a Lecturer in Fine Arts at Newcastle University. Widely recognized internationally, Richardson has exhibited her work less frequently in Canada. This solo exhibition presents a view into Richardson’s longstanding exploration of our relationship to nature and how this relates to climate change. 

Halcyon Fog includes two large-scale immersive video projections, Embers and the Giants and Pillars of Dawn. Both were made in 2019 as a response to the imminent extinction of the Coastal Douglas-fir ecosystem and the associated environmental catastrophes as foretold by biologists and climate scientists globally. The exhibition also includes two new video works that suggest a link between unsustainable forest practices and the prevalence of wildfires. These works present a view of an untenable future on Earth. They also offer a call for action that can happen today. 

The exhibition title, Halcyon Fog, draws on the definition of halcyon, which is characterized as our nostalgia for an idyllic past of prosperity and happiness. Evoking natural phenomenon, fog offers a double meaning, referring to our willful ignorance, which allows us to continue to be complicit in negatively impacting our planet while dreaming of an unchanged future for subsequent generations. The exhibition presents a tension between the horrific and the beautiful and suggests a future where we might have to look beyond our current planet for refuge and survival. Ultimately, through Halcyon Fog, Richardson asks us to consider what we truly value and where we might go from here.

Richardson has exhibited her work in North America, Asia, and Europe. Selected exhibitions include Marta Herford Museum, Germany, 2020; Somerset House, England, 2019; Hubei Museum of Art, China, 2017; Dundee Contemporary Arts, Scotland, 2017; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA), USA, 2015; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC, 2014; VOID, Ireland, 2014; Naturhistorisches Museum Wien, Austria, 2013; Towner Eastbourne, England, 2013; with a major survey exhibition at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, USA, 2013. 

Richardson’s work has been selected for the Beijing, Busan, Canadian, Gwangju, and Montréal biennales, as well as major moving image exhibitions internationally, including TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) and Sundance Film Festival. She is represented in the collections of the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, USA; SMoCA, USA; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, USA; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Quebec; Arts Council Collection, England; Southampton City Art Gallery, England; Towner, England; and Arts Council Collection, England, among others. Richardson lives and works in the unceded traditional territory of the W̱SÁNEĆ peoples on Vancouver Island, BC, Canada.

Curated by Charo Neville, Curator, Kamloops Art Gallery