Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts
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Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity 107 Tunnel Mountain Drive, Banff, Alberta T1L 1H5
Tania Willard, "Surrounded/Surrounding," 2018
wood burning fire ring, laser etched cedar woodlogs from SecwépemcTerritory, relief print on paper. Collection of the artist. Gifted to Four Directions Aboriginal Student Centre, Kingston, 2019. Photo: Paul Litherland
Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts
Virtual Exhibition Tour: September 23
In-Person Exhibition Tours: October 6, November 12, and December 1
How can a score be a call and tool for decolonization?
Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts features newly commissioned scores, performances, videos, sculptures and sound by Indigenous and other artists who respond to this question. Unfolding in a sequence of five parts, the scores take the form of beadwork, videos, objects, graphic notation, historical belongings, and written instructions. During the exhibition, these scores are activated at specific moments by musicians, dancers, performers and members of the public gradually filling the gallery and surrounding public spaces with sound and action.
The exhibition is cumulative, limning an ever-changing community of artworks, shared experience and engagement as it travels. Soundings shifts and evolves, gaining new artists and players in each location. Some artworks have multiple parts, others change to their own rhythm as the exhibition grows.
At the core of the exhibition is a grounding in concepts of Indigenous land and territory. To move beyond the mere acknowledgement of land and territory here means offering instructions for sensing and listening to Indigenous histories that trouble the colonial imaginary. Soundings activates and asserts Indigenous resurgence through the actions these artworks call forth. This iteration of the exhibition includes works by Raven Chacon and Cristóbal Martínez, Sebastian De Line, Camille Georgeson-Usher, Maggie Groat, Kite, Germaine Koh, Aaron Leon, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Ogimaa Mikana, Chandra Melting Tallow, Peter Morin, Diamond Point and Jordan Point, Heidi Aklaseaq Senungetuk, Greg Staats, Olivia Whetung, and Tania Willard.
Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts is an exhibition curated by Candice Hopkins and Dylan Robinson, and organized by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University, Canada. The traveling exhibition is organized by Independent Curators International (ICI). The exhibition and tour are made possible, in part, with the generous support from ICI’s International Forum and the ICI Board of Trustees. Additional support has been provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts’ New Chapter Program, the Isabel and Alfred Bader Fund of Bader Philanthropies, the Ontario Arts Council, the City of Kingston Arts Fund through the Kingston Arts Council, and the George Taylor Richardson Memorial Fund at Queen’s University. The presentation at Walter Phillips Gallery has been organized in collaboration with Jacqueline Bell, Reneltta Arluk and Janine Windolph. The presentation of this exhibition at Walter Phillips Gallery is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Outstanding Artist Program