Return to: Surrounded/Surrounding

Surrounded/Surrounding at BUSH Gallery, Secwepemcúl̓ecw
Documentation courtesy Kamloops Art Gallery and Garnet Dirksen photographer.
A rest used in musical notation is a taking off point for the making of a
fire at artist Tania Willard’s home at Neskonlith Indian Reserve in
Secwepemcúl’ecw (near Chase, BC).
Among invited guests from the Gallery and the artist’s community, the
fire is lit and intentional rest is called on. The woodpile score is
interpreted through a playlist by the artist’s partner Kevin Adam.
Thinking through relationality and the importance of rest to recovery,
as well as the movement of art objects, spaces, and conversations
towards an Indigenous centred space—the artist’s homeland—the fire
becomes a focal point of engaging and activating Willard’s work,
Surrounded/Surrounding.
In lieu of a live feed or zoom of the event, the artist asks that those
following the work, in particular BIPOC folks and those that identify as
women, take a rest and reflect on rest; as a strategy of radical care,
workers rights (especially in the precarity of creative labour) and
anti-capitalism, that demands the recovery of our eco-systems and
ourselves.
Tania Willard’s work Surrounded/Surrounding is a part of the exhibition Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts, on view at the Kamloops Art Gallery until July 3, 2021.