A new group exhibition opens this Saturday at the Kelowna Art Gallery and it features works by Indigenous artists Ursula Johnson, Meagan Musseau, Meghann O’Brien, and Tania Willard.
Each of these artists’ work explores basket weaving as a way to examine interwoven narratives and histories with Woven Together. These artists consider weaving a reflexive practice where the makers’ hands create interlaced actions through learned, contemplative, and repetitive processes that bind layers of knowledge and material, according to a Kelowna Art Gallery news release.
Representing nations from Coast Salish Territory in British Columbia to Ktaqmkuk Territory in Newfoundland, Woven Together entangles practices, unravelling intergenerations and intertribal memories of matriarchal kinship, knowledge, and practice, the release said.
Woven Together is curated by Jaimie Isaac, Curator of Indigenous and Contemporary Art at the Winnipeg Art Gallery.
Johnson comes from a long line of Mi’kmaw artists. She has a background in photography, drawing, textiles, and theatre. In 2017, she won the prestigious Sobey Art Award, for her work as an emerging artist in the contemporary Canadian art scene.
Musseau is an interdisciplinary visual artist of Mi’kmaq and French ancestry from the community of Curling in the Bay of Islands, Newfoundland and Labrador— Elmastukwek, Ktaqmkuk territory of Mi’kma’ki. She works with customary art practices and new media, such as beadwork, basketry, land-based action and installation, the release said.
O’Brien is a Northwest Coast weaver from the community of Alert Bay, B.C. She works with an innovative approach to the traditional art forms of basketry, Yeil Koowu (Raven’s Tail) and Naaxiin (Chilkat) textiles.
Willard, of Secwépemc and settler heritage, is a visual artist and MFA candidate at UBCO Okanagan. She has participated in several public art projects and recently has been working on her collaborative project entitled BUSH gallery, a conceptual land-based gallery grounded in Indigenous knowledge and relational art practices, the release said.
Woven Together is on view from July 14 to Oct. 7. An opening reception held today at 6 p.m. will feature a performance by The Salish Sisters, Tracey Kim Bonneau and Cease Wyss.
An Artists’ Panel will be held Tuesday, July 17, at 6 p.m.
For more information about current exhibitions, public programming or special events, visit the Kelowna Art Gallery online or call 250-762-2226.
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