This exhibition draws on Bartol’s work with dowsing (she comes from a long line of water witches) and the history of dowsing in connection to mining/resource extraction. Specifically, Bartol researched Martine de Bertereau, one of the first (recognized) female mineralogists and mining engineers in 17th century France who traveled Europe in search of mineral deposits utilizing specialized divining instruments and other techniques including botany. Martine de Bertereau was accused of witchcraft and died in France while in prison. The story of de Bertereau is a complex one that points to the violence of resource extraction and the development of capitalism that she both participated in and was killed by. In her artwork, Bartol uses dowsing to ask audiences to reconsider consumption-driven relationships to the earth and what are known as 'natural resources'.

Alana Bartol comes from a long line of water witches. Her site-responsive works explore divination as a way of understanding across places, species, and bodies. Through collaborative and individual works, she creates relationships between the personal sphere and the landscape, particular to this time of ecological crisis. Of Scottish, German, English, French, Irish, and Danish ancestry, Bartol is a white settler Canadian currently living in Mohkínstsis (Calgary), Alberta where she is a sessional instructor at Alberta University of the Arts.

The exhibition Projections addresses perceptions of queerness, sexuality, race, and gender while considering the expanded potential of Indigenous, Black and Queer futurisms.

In their video works, Eshrāghi and Karuhanga express concerns rooted in freedom, defiance, empowerment, presence and self-affirmation, and the disposition and power of the independent projected image brings with it characteristics that align with these concerns.

The artists’ exploration of pleasure and self-care is evident in their videos capturing subjects in nature and/or natural environments, non-verbal narratives, and acts involving touch, desire, movement, ceremony, ritual, and expressions intimate and spiritualized.

Presented within the gallery in spaces created to reference film theatres/projection booths and other voyeuristic contexts, the viewer can watch, observe, consider, anticipate, and dwell in the fantastication of the projected scenarios. In doing so, each work allows the intimate space, within separate alcoves, to assemble personal narratives, individuality, and criticality within the contexts of territory, ownership, and the physical and cultural occupation of space and land.

Léuli Eshrāghi is a Sāmoan/Persian/Cantonese interdisciplinary artist, writer, curator and researcher working between Australia and Canada. Ia/they intervene in display territories to centre global Indigenous and Asian diasporic visuality, sensual and spoken languages, and ceremonial-political practices.

Jessica Karuhanga is a first-generation Canadian artist of British-Ugandan heritage whose work addresses issues of cultural politics of identity and Black diasporic concerns through lens-based technologies, writing, drawing and performances. Through her practice she explores individual and collective concerns of Black subjectivity: illness, rage, grief, desire and longing within the context of Black embodiment.

Gary Varro is a curator and visual artist based in Regina, where in 1996 he established and continues to present Queer City Cinema Festival and Performatorium Festival of Queer Performance. Gary is also a freelance curator.

The exhibition, Particularly Tentative, explores Luther Konadu’s interest in portrait photography as it relates to personal and collective beliefs of identity. He considers making portraits as a way to reflect on ideas with no expected outcome or goal. Luther Konadu considers using images to depict people as a way to question our belief in photographs. Instead of a quick snap of a person’s likeness and presenting it as a portrait, the portrait is a question that is never answered. Konadu considers the portrait as always shifting. The subject can change its meaning with every viewing. Unlike photographs used as tools of facts, proof or for “knowing” something about those depicted, the people in Konadu’s images will always appear in parts, unspecific, and unsettled.

Curated by Alyssa Fearon, Director/Curator and Tomas Jonsson, Curator of Moving Image and Performance.

Showcasing recent process-based works on paper, textile and 360º animation, Otipemisiwak* celebrates the lives and material cultures of three women: the artist’s great-grandmother, Eléanore; her grandmother, Clémence; and her mother, Anita. Works feature a digital-beading technique the artist invented called ‘Berries to Beads.’ The technique mirrors spectacular traditional Métis beading; it is both a meticulous and technically demanding practice and art form.

Curated by Wendy Peart, Curator of Education & Community Outreach

John Peet’s installation is the result of finding a box of old family photographs, including images of his grandfather’s time at the Mount Cashel Orphanage in St. John’s, Newfoundland in the early 1900’s. This institution was operated by the Irish Christian Brothers, a Roman Catholic lay order from 1898 -1990, and has been notably reported as a place where countless youth suffered abuses by those who were entrusted with their care and education. Through this work, Peet develops a posthumous relationship with his grandfather that is deepened by exposing the complex powerful systems that have enabled such tragic conditions. Through his work, he also uncovers the vital interconnectedness of the boys at the school who developed life-affirming friendships and familial bonds.

Curated by Wendy Peart, Curator of Education and Community Outreach

Organized by Dr. Rebecca Caines, multiPLAY features artists from across Canada working in improvisation, sound, new media and performance. Included is radio artist Michael Waterman’s experimental audio collage group “Mannlicher Carcano”, a video installation of archival recordings. John Campbell’s Recognition, is an installation that uses Artificial Intelligence to read human emotion and playfully control real-world objects. multiPLAY artists also include Rebecca Caines, Holophon Audio Arts, James Harley, Helen Pridmore, and Michelle Stewart.

Curated by, Amber Christensen (Sherwood Village Branch Manager), Stacey Fayant (Independent curator), Tomas Jonsson (Curator of Moving Image and Performance) and Wendy Peart, Curator of Education and Community Outreach

Featuring works by Naomi Bebo, Andrea Carlson, Ruth Cuthand, Nicole Dextras, Jude Griebel, Jill Ho-You, Rachelle Viader Knowles, David Opdyke, Geoffrey Pugen, Rolande Souliere, Jeff Wizniak, Pinar Yoldas, and Sylvia Ziemann.

The end of the world has been a human preoccupation since basically the beginning of the world. The exhibition Apocalypse features multiple artists who explore the unimaginable complexity of a cataclysmic crisis. Regardless of the cause, the work in Apocalypse challenges us to consider our own response to a radical change to the world as we know it.

Curated by, Amber Christensen (Sherwood Village Branch Manager), Stacey Fayant (Independent curator), Tomas Jonsson (Curator of Moving Image and Performance) and Wendy Peart, Curator of Education and Community Outreach

Featuring works by Naomi Bebo, Andrea Carlson, Ruth Cuthand, Nicole Dextras, Jude Griebel, Jill Ho-You, Rachelle Viader Knowles, David Opdyke, Geoffrey Pugen, Rolande Souliere, Jeff Wizniak, Pinar Yoldas, and Sylvia Ziemann.

The end of the world has been a human preoccupation since basically the beginning of the world. The exhibition Apocalypse features multiple artists who explore the unimaginable complexity of a cataclysmic crisis. Regardless of the cause, the work in Apocalypse challenges us to consider our own response to a radical change to the world as we know it.