What Is Welcome? includes works from the Belkin’s collection and long-term residency that question the art institution’s language, boundaries and potential for change. From performance to works-in-process that effect institutional practices, the artists included operate with, and at the same time counter, the institution to address the what, how and the why of gallery operations. Artists include Allyson Clay, Claudia Cuesta, Andrea Fraser, ReMatriate Collective, Holly Schmidt, as well as recent acquisitions of work by Skeena Reece, Kika Thorne and Tania Willard.

This reading room offers resources relating to and exceeding the themes present in this exhibition.

Introductory Texts

Centre for Sustainable Curating. “Using the Resources at Hand: Sustainable Exhibition Design.” Western University, 2022. https://sustainability.uwo.ca/academics/CSC-Resources%20at%20Hand.pdf

Created by the Centre for Sustainable Curating, the Synthetic Collective, Ioana Dragomir and Noémie Fortin, “Using the Resources at Hand” provides tangible options for enacting and sustaining eco-friendly approaches to exhibition making. Directed at students in the Department of Visual Arts at Western University, this guide offers advice for using low-carbon design methods, borrowing and sharing materials, and finding resources in the local community.

Indigenous Curatorial Collective. Activations of Solidarity: Co-Resistance and Care. https://www.iccapublications.com/

This online publication highlights a variety of video, sound and drawing works from the artists Karmella Cen Benedito De Barros, Kiera Boult, Alex Jacobs-Blum, Fannie Sosa and Taryn Walker to uplift ways in which Black, Afro-Indigenous, Indigenous and Indigiqueer artists engage in critical, liberatory and healing work in their communities.

Dymond, Anne. Diversity Counts: Gender, Race, and Representation in Canadian Art Galleries. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019.

Dymond’s quantitative study calls on Canadian art institutions to engage more critically with their records and histories of diversity and equity. Countering a resistance to numeric data in the art world, this text follows Dymond as she explores findings on the representation of varying genders and racialized identities in public Canadian art institutions, while arguing for the relevance of quantitative data in the field of museum and curatorial studies.

Hill, Gabrielle and Sophie McCall, eds. The Land We Are: Artists and Writers Unsettle the Politics of Reconciliation. Winnipeg: ARP Books, 2015.

Split into four sections, this book follows various artists and writers as they define the role of art in shaping contemporary reconciliation discourses in Canada. Through recognizing the multi-faceted problematics and potentials of reconciliation, these contributors assert art as a potent field to promote, contest and reimagine its discourses and practice.

Laiwan. “Notes Against Difference.” 1992. https://belkin.ubc.ca/_archived/ddv/pdf/Notes%20Against%20Difference.pdf

Laiwan interrogates contemporary discourses on “difference” to consider how these applications reinforce the power of a “constant” or dominant position from which difference is measured. Expanding on the limitations of this dynamic in social, institutional and theoretical frameworks, Laiwan considers what living beyond such experiential categorizations may offer.

Robinson, Dylan. “Welcoming Sovereignty.” In Performing Indigeneity, edited by Yvette Noland and Ric Knowles, 5-32. Toronto: Playwrights Press, 2016.

In this chapter, Robinson discusses the ways in which Indigenous sovereignty is constituted through gestures and processes of welcome and inclusion. Rather than expecting welcome practices to be open to both settlers and Indigenous people at all times, Robinson puts forth settler exclusion as a “strategy of sovereignty,” whereby Indigenous knowledge is able to exist without the risk of settler consumption.

Thompson, Nato, ed. Living as Form: Socially Engaged Art from 1991-2011. 1st ed. New York, Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press and Creative Time, 2012.

Alongside a series of commissioned essays, Thompson outlines twenty-years of social art practice from around the globe to provide an abundant and critical look at the questions and concerns that permeate its field. As works that blur the line between art and life, engage with communities and promote a heightened awareness of social issues, these projects interrogate definitions of art while expanding what it means to be an artist and enact social change.

 

Texts about the Artists

Allyson Clay

Brown, Lorna, ed. Beginning with the Seventies, 33-47. Vancouver: Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, 2020.

Clay, Allyson. Interview for SFU School for the Contemporary Arts, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7riRNPyfJM4

Henry, Karen. “Imaginary Standard Distance.” Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 2004. https://aggv.ca/exhibits/allyson-clay-imaginary-standard-distance/

Mastai, Judith. “The Postmodern Flâneuse.” In Allyson Clay: Recent Work. Edmonton: Edmonton Art Gallery, 1993.

Ritter, Kathleen. “Vancouver 1989: Kathleen Ritter in Conversation with Lorna Brown, Allyson Clay, Marian Penner Bancroft, Kathy Slade, Jin-Me Yoon, and Anne Ramsden.” In Desire Change: Contemporary Feminist Art in Canada, edited by Heather Davis, 197–219. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017.

 

ReMatriate Collective

Brown, Lorna, ed. Beginning with the Seventies, 175-181; 190-194. Vancouver: Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, 2020.

Campbell, Tenille. “REMATRIATE.” Canadian Art 34, no. 2 (Summer 2017): 124.

Kindsfather, Erika. “From Activism to Artistic Practice: (Re)Imagining Indigenous Women’s Labour Activism in Contemporary Art.” RACAR: Revue d’art Canadienne / Canadian Art Review 47, no. 1 (2022): 58–71.

Nixon, Lindsay. “Women and Water Illuminate the World.” Canadian Art, July 25, 2019. https://canadianart.ca/interviews/women-and-water-illuminate-the-world/.

 

Claudia Cuesta

Dufour, Gary. Out of Place: Waltercio Caldas, Panya Clark, Claudia Cuesta, Eugenio Dittborn, Stan Douglas, Doug Hall, Chie Matsui. Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery, 1993.

Rhodes, Richard. Whiteness and Wounds. Toronto: The Power Plant, 1993.

Richardson, Joan. “Claudia Cuesta: True Confessions.” Canadian Art 15, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 73.

Wallace, Keith. Claudia Cuesta: CONFESSION (from a payphone). Vancouver: Contemporary Art Gallery, 1998.

 

Andrea Fraser

Enright, Robert. “Positioning Subjects: Desire and Distance in the Art of Andrea Fraser.” Border Crossings, Issue 161 (March 2023): 64-77.

Fraser, Andrea. “FROM THE CRITIQUE OF INSTITUTIONS TO AN INSTITUTION OF CRITIQUE.” Artforum 44, no. 1 (September 2005): 278-283.

Fraser, Andrea. Report. Vienna: EA Generali Foundation, 1995.

“Lorraine O’Grady and Andrea Fraser Talk Art World Activism and the Limits of Institutional Critique,” Artnews, 2021 https://www.artnews.com/art-news/artists/lorraine-ogrady-andrea-fraser-artists-institutional-critique-conversation-1234596040/.

Watson, Scott.  Exhibition: Andrea Fraser. Vancouver: Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery, 2002.

 

Skeena Reece

Claxton, Dana. “Embellished Indigeneity: The Art Making of Skeena Reece.” In Moss: Skeena Reece. Montreal: Oboro Gallery, 2017. http://www.oboro.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/opuscule-reece-web-en.pdf

Ramsey, Justin. “The Polygon Podcast: Interior Infinite: Featuring Dana Claxton and Skeena Reece.” Interview with Justin Ramsey, Polygon Gallery, August 12, 2021. https://thepolygon.ca/news/the-polygon-podcast-episode-18-interior-infinite-featuring-dana-claxton-and-skeena-reece/.

Reece, Skeena. “Field Trip: Studio Visit with Skeena Reece.” Interview by Josh Heuman, The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, September 15, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtbERyvTnOs.

Reece, Skeena and Dana Claxton, ed. Northwest Coast #1: Skeena Reece. Vancouver: Or Gallery, 2019.

Reece, Skeena. “Touch Me.” Comox Valley Art Gallery, 2018. https://www.comoxvalleyartgallery.com/wp-content/uploads/mp/files/publications/files/takeaway-touch-me-2018-04-06.pdf

 

Holly Schmidt

Chaisson, Caitlin. “Looking Up, Looking Down: An Interview with Holly Schmidt.” Espace (Montréal), no. 119 (Spring–Summer 2018): 52. https://espaceartactuel.com/product/119/

Schmidt, Holly, ed. Grow. Vancouver: Other Sights for Artists’ Projects, 2014.

Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery. “Holly Schmidt: Fireweed Fields.” https://belkin.ubc.ca/events/holly-schmidt-fireweed-fields/.

Schmidt, Holly and Justin Langlois, eds. Float School: Pedagogical Experiments and Social Actions. Vancouver: Living Labs, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, 2023.  https://research.ecuad.ca/livinglabs/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/02/FloatSchool_FullBook_102620-reduced-web.pdf

Prasad, Marcus. “Fireweed Fields: Resilience and Resurgence After Crisis.” SAD Mag, no. 33 (Summer 2022): 46-47.

 

Kika Thorne

Blackwell, Adrian and Kika Thorne. “Experiments in Collective Form.” Canadian Art, November 8, 2018. https://canadianart.ca/essays/experiments-in-collective-form/.

Diana Beresford-Kroeger in Conversation with Kika Thorne, ” Quantum Violin,” Scapegoat Journal, Issue 5 (September 2013): 65-75. http://www.scapegoatjournal.org/docs/05/SG_Excess_064-075_F_BERESFORDKROEGER.pdf

DiRisio, Michael. “Kika Thorne: The WILDcraft.” C: International Contemporary Art, Issue 117 (Spring 2013): 45.

Heather, Rosemary. “Kika Thorne/medicine: Thinking about the Position Inside,” September 23, 2021. Writing Archive. https://rosemheather.com/2021/09/23/kika-thorne-medicine-thinking-about-the-position-inside/.

 

Tania Willard

Baysa, Jeff, Satomi Igarashi, Nivi Christensen, Erin Vink, Tania Willard and Manuela Well-Off-Man. Exposure: Native Art + Political Ecology. Santa Fe: Radius Books and IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, 2021.

Combe, Jennifer and Tania Willard. “Art Mom Reflections Interruption/Disruption/Eruption.” Visual Arts Research 48, no. 2 (2022): 28-36. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/870457.

Decter, Leah and Tania Willard. “Directions to BUSH Gallery.” C: International Contemporary Art, Issue 150 (Winter 2022): 33. https://cmagazine.com/articles/directions-to-bush-gallery.

Willard, Tania, Peter Morin and Gabrielle Hill. “The BUSH Manifesto.” C: International Contemporary Art, Issue 136 (January 2018): 6-7. https://cmagazine.com/articles/bush-manifesto

Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. “Feminist Art Field School: Tania Willard.” 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AudadR1iwE.

 

Image (above): Claudia Cuesta, Culture Cap, 2002. Collection of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia, gift of John O’Brian, 2010