The Kootenay Gallery of Art in Castlegar and the Oxygen Art Centre in Nelson will be opening a unique collaborative group exhibition this month.
Overburden: Geology, Excavation and Metamorphosis in a Chaotic Age will take place in two art centres in two rural communities. The exhibition will be in Nelson from June 1 to July 10 and in Castlegar from June 18 to August 21.
A weekend of special online programming featuring artist panels, performances and workshops will be held on Saturday June 19 and Sunday June 20. All events and workshops are free and open to the public. For more information or register for events, visit www.overburden.ca. Programming events will be recorded and accessible online following the live events.
Organized by artist and curator Genevieve Robertson on behalf of Oxygen Art Centre and Kootenay Gallery curator Maggie Shirley, the exhibition will feature eleven artists, including 2020 Sobey Art award winners Tsēmā Igharas and Asinnijaq. Other participating artists are Gabriela Escobar Ari, Patti Bailey, Randy Lee Cutler, Darren Fleet, Jim Holyoak, Keith Langergraber, Sarah Nance, Tara Nicholson and Carol Wallace. The included artists are from the Kootenays, across Canada, and the U.S.
The title of the show, Overburden, references 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 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.
For further information contact Oxygen Art Centre at info@oxygenartcentre.org or the Kootenay Gallery at kootenaygallery@telus.net.
Oxygen Art Centre and the Kootenay Gallery of Art would like to thank the primary funders — Canada Council for the Arts, the Columbia Kootenay Cultural Alliance, British Columbia Arts Council and the Government of British Columbia, as well as sponsors Teck and Columbia Power.
