PLATFORM centre is excited to announce the group exhibition IN DEEP featuring work by Frédéric Bigras-Burrogano (QC), Lori Blondeau (SK), Emily Critch (NL), Gillian Dykeman (NB), Tsēmā (BC), and New Mineral Collective (NO). This exhibition is curated by our Curator in Residence, Amy Ash (NB).
EXHIBITION | 3 June – 8 July 2022
OPENING RECEPTION | 3 June at 7PM
EXHIBITION TOUR | 4 June at 1PM
IN DEEP is a new group exhibition that observes complex narratives surrounding resource extraction by centring on the impacted sites, both bodies and lands, from diverse perspectives. Through the work of six contemporary artists, the exhibition will present questions rooted in the present, while gesturing toward possibilities for a future where land memory haunts, value scales shift, and the transformation of industrial sites could be led by communities that wrestle to shake themselves free of the capitalist clutch of our current climate. From hollow earth, to LAND BACK, and the depletion of ecosystems, Frédéric Bigras-Burrogano, Lori Blondeau, Emily Critch, Gillian Dykeman, Tsēmā, and New Mineral Collective care for complex and intertwined histories while proffering potential futures.
IN DEEP looks to the nexus between land and body to comment on, and build new adaptations of community and care, reconfiguring ecosystems in the wake of the industrial. In an unromantic but imaginative look at the way we think about the land, industry, and value of place, IN DEEP hopes to probe the potential of contemporary art to ignite small shifts in understanding.
Curator Amy Ash explains, “When it comes to resource extraction, we are in deep, and there is much untangling to be done. Like many people, I have a close and complicated history with extractive industries. As the daughter of a mine worker, the story of our hollow earth is something that has, in all its complexities, occupied my mind and imagination for as long as I can remember. I have benefited greatly from an industry that has harvested our geological time, whittling the future, and the surrounding land out from under us. The mine where my father worked is now closed; it left hundreds reliant but without work and the land with caverns the size of a town beneath it. What will become of these sites? Will they be reclaimed by the earth or other strange new futures? How do communities recalibrate and find new purpose, new values, amid the shifts that need to take place? Who is (or isn’t) telling these stories and why? Going forward, how can we replenish? The artists included in IN DEEP honour these complex questions and offer possibility.”
Masks are mandatory, please ensure social distance is maintained and stay home if you are feeling sick. PLATFORM is an accessible venue. Appointments are not required, please drop in to see the exhibition during regular gallery hours.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Frédéric Bigras-Burrogano(he/they) is an artist and curator based in Tio’tià:ke/Mooniyang (so-called “Montreal”). Their research-creation work is situated in affect theory, Energy Humanities and decolonial practices and evolves through techniques that incorporate photographic traces, documentary methods and experimental cartography. In their delicate and intentional layering of meaning and matter, Bigras-Burrogano’s work acts as a site to deconstruct hegemonic narratives that are core to capitalist, imperialist and neoliberalist understandings of the world(s). In the gaps made visible by this process, they seek to bring forward stories that have slipped between cracks or have been written out altogether. Critiques and refusals of extravicism act as a conceptual grounding for Frédéric Bigras-Burrogano practice. With projects that can span from two to ten years, their slow pacing and long term commitments prioritize care, kinship and patience as modalites to delicately weave stories over time. These processes privilege material agency, enabling the artworks to speak for themselves. This extends beyond individual works and into the contexts created for them. In borrowing and harnessing institutional codes and formulas, Bigras-Burrogano aims to make visible the power structures art itself exists in. These multilayered and fine detailed environments foster a space for viewers to experience the slow unveiling that the work requests.
@analfistofdoom
Lori Blondeau is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in performance and photography. She is Cree/Saulteaux/Métis from Saskatchewan. Her mother is Cree/Saulteaux from George Gordon First Nation, located in Treaty 4, and her late father was Métis from Lebret, Saskatchewan. Blondeau holds an MFA from the University of Saskatchewan. In addition to her extensive exhibition history she has served on the Advisory Panel for Visual Arts for the Canada Council for the Arts. Blondeau has exhibited and performed nationally and internationally, including at the Banff Centre, the Mendel Art Gallery (Remai Modern) in Saskatoon, Open Space in Victoria, and FOFA in Montréal. In 2007, Blondeau was part of the Requickening project with artist Shelley Niro at the Venice Biennale. She recently had a solo exhibition at the Urban Shaman Contemporary Aboriginal Art Gallery in Winnipeg, and was part of the Scotia Bank Contact Festival in Toronto. Her art is held in both public galleries and private collections, and she was a 2021 recipient of the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts.
@lori.blondeau
Emily Critch is a Mi’kmaw and settler artist, curator, and writer from Elmastukwek, Ktaqmkuk Territory (Bay of Islands, NL). She received her BFA in Visual Arts from Memorial University of Newfoundland (2018). She has had solo exhibitions of her work at the Tina Dolter Gallery, Eastern Edge, St. Michaels Printshop (NL), and Galerie Sans Nom (Moncton, NB). Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the Grenfell Art Gallery (Corner Brook, NL), The Rooms (St. John’s, NL), and Hafnarborg (Hafnarfjörður, Iceland), and her art practice has been supported by ArtsNL. Critch has been the recipient of several awards including the 2020 VANL Cox & Palmer Pivotal Point Grant, the 2020-2021 Don Wright Scholarship at St. Michael’s Printshop, and was longlisted for the 2021 Scotiabank New Generation Photography Award. She is based in St. John’s, NL, working remotely as the Program Coordinator with the Indigenous Curatorial Collective, and the 2021-23 Adjunct Curator with the Owen’s Art Gallery.
@emilycritchart
Gillian Dykeman is a multi-disciplinary feminist performance and installation artist based in Fredericton, NB. She has exhibited her work in Vienna, Los Angeles, Anchorage, Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, Halifax, London (On), Charlottetown, and throughout New Brunswick. She has a MVS from the U of T, and a BFA from NSCAD. Working through an intersectional feminist and postcolonial framework, Dykeman seeks to empower her audiences through playful and critical work, often collaborative or participatory in nature. Open to experimental venues, her work has found its way into galleries, exercise studios, a rare book library, and a geodesic dome.
@gilliandykeman
Tsēmā is an interdisciplinary artist and a member of the Tahltan First Nation. She uses Potlatch methodology to create compelling performance work and sculptural installations. Her practice is informed by Northwest Coast Formline Design, her studies in visual culture, and time spent in the mountains. Her unique approach is a way to challenge the colonial value system and relation to the land, and to promote, through methods of care, strategies of resistance. Igharas has a Bachelor’s degree from Emily Carr University of Art and Design and graduated from the Interdisciplinary Master’s in Art, Media and Design program at OCADu. She is a founding board member of the first Tahltan NGO, Tu’dese’cho Wholistic Indigenous Leadership Development for the betterment of youth; serves on the board for the YVR Art Foundation; has won the 2018 Emily Award for outstanding ECUAD alumni and was 1/25 to win the 2020 Sobey award. Igharas has exhibited in numerous places in Canada and internationally in Mexico, the USA, Sweden and Chile.
@tsema_rockmother
New Mineral Collective is a platform that looks at contemporary landscape politics to better understand the nature and extent of human interaction with the earth’s surface. As an organism, NMC infiltrates the extractive industry with alternative forces such as desire, body mining, and acts of counter prospecting. Their work has been shown nationally and internationally, including SIART Bolivia International Art Biennial, Artists’ Film International Season 7, organized by Whitechapel Gallery; the first Toronto Art Biennial; SeMA Seoul Museum of Art; On Earth, Structure and Sadness, at Serpentine Galleries, UK; the Swedish Center for Architecture and Design, Stockholm; Swimming Pool: Troubled Waters, Künstlerhaus Bethanian, Berlin. Since 2015, the artists Emilija Škarnulytė ((born in Vilinus, Lithuania; lives in Tromsø, Norway) & Tanya Busse (born in Moncton, NB, Canada; lives in Tromsø, Norway) run NMC.
@newmineralcollective
Amy Ash (she/they) is a queer interdisciplinary artist engaged with collective care through processes of shared meaning-making. They have exhibited and curated programmes internationally, with projects commissioned by the National Gallery London (UK), the NB International Sculpture Symposium, and the Beaverbrook Art Gallery (NB). A member of the International Association of Art Critics, Ash serves on the board of Sunbury Shores Arts & Nature Centre, the editorial committee for Visual Arts News Magazine, and has acted on juries for APEX Art, The NB Provincial Acquisitions Program, artsnb, and Third Shift, among others. She was recently guest editor with CreatedHere Magazine (March 2022), and is also an instructor with the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design. Of settler ancestry they live in Menahqesk/Menagoesg/Saint John, New Brunswick, on the unceded and unsurrendered territory of the Wolastoqiyik, Peskotomuhkati, and Mi’kmaq Peoples.
@amy_ash_
