Overburden
Collaborative curatorial project with Maggie Shirley, 2021
Overburden brings together a group of artists whose shared concerns address geology and its relationship to shifting climate patterns and resource extraction, in both regional and global contexts. Artists respond to mining histories in the Kootenay area, arctic ice melt that is uncovering paleontological data, mining reclamation practices, 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 develop relationships with geologic materials. The title of the exhibition, Overburden, references topsoil and vegetation that are removed before mining takes place. It also references our planet’s current condition and the psychological burden that many experience in the face of climate and other ecological changes. Overburden took place at Oxygen Art Centre in Nelson BC and Kootenay Gallery of Art in Castlegar BC.
Overburden: Geology, Extraction, and Metamorphosis in a Chaotic Age
Group Exhibition + Symposium
Artists: Gabriela Escobar Ari, Asinnajaq, Patti Bailey qʷn̓qʷin̓x̌n̓, Randy Lee Cutler, Darren Fleet, Jim Holyoak, Tsēmā Igharas, Keith Langergraber, Sarah Nance, Tara Nicholson, Carol Wallace
Co-curated by Genevieve Robertson + Maggie Shirley
Generously supported by the Columbia Kootenay Cultural Alliance and Canada Council for the Arts.
Permafrost Tunnel, Melnikov Permafrost Institute, Yakutsk, Russia, Tara Nicholson, Archival pigment print, 32” x 40”, 2019
Sealed Dam, Gabriela Escobar Ari, Aerial Photograph, Archival pigment print, 24” x 14”, 2019
Rock Piece (Ahuriri Edition), Asinnajaq, video still of performance, 2015
Nelson Batholith, Photomicrograph research collected by Carol Wallace,Courtesy of Dr. Derek Thorkelson (photomicrograph photographer), Department of Earth Sciences, Simon Fraser University and Dr J.H. Sevigny, 2020
