News Releases - 2004
Rebecca Belmore will represent Canada at the 2005 Venice Biennale of Visual Art
Ottawa, June 17 2004 – Vancouver Aboriginal artist Rebecca Belmore will be Canada’s official representative at the 2005 Venice Biennale of Visual Art, the world’s oldest and most prestigious venue for the international display of contemporary art. The Kamloops Art Gallery and the University of British Columbia’s Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery, which proposed Rebecca Belmore as the Biennale candidate, were the institutions selected in a nationwide competition to represent Canadian visual arts at the event. The 51st edition of the Venice Biennale will take place in June 2005.
Born in Ontario, Rebecca Belmore is an Anishinabekwe artist, currently working out of Vancouver. Ms. Belmore’s work has long addressed history, place, and identity through the media of sculpture, installation, video and performance. Her work is marked by simplicity of form and gesture and an understanding of the human need for ritual.
Official Canadian participation at the Venice Biennale is coordinated by a committee made up of the Canada Council for the Arts, Foreign Affairs Canada and the National Gallery of Canada. The Kamloops Art Gallery and the University of British Columbia’s Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery are associated with the committee for the organization and funding of Canadian representation at the 2005 Biennale. The Canadian Embassy in Rome assists in the preparation and launch of the exhibition in Italy. The Kamloops Art Gallery and the University of British Columbia’s Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery are the exhibition’s organizers and Jann LM Bailey and Scott Watson, Directors/Curators of the two galleries respectively, are the exhibition curators.
The Canada Council for the Arts oversees the selection process. The selection was made by a peer assessment committee made up of three experts in Canadian and international contemporary art: Hank Bull, Director, Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art; Shirley Madill, Senior Curator, Art Gallery of Hamilton; and Line Ouellet, Head of Exhibitions, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec.
“In its diversity and richness, Aboriginal art plays an important role in the contemporary artistic life of Canada,” said John Hobday, Director of the Canada Council for the Arts. “Supporting the creation and dissemination of Aboriginal art is one of the Council’s priorities, and I am delighted that the peer committee has selected Rebecca Belmore to represent Canada on the international scene.”
“Rebecca Belmore has produced work of great power and grace”, said Ms. Bailey and Mr. Watson. “Almost always based in performance, her installation works and photographs have a spare, exacting sense of form and presence. Her concerns centre on history, memory and justice. The Venice Biennale is one of the most prestigious international art exhibitions of contemporary art in the world, and we are very proud to represent Canada on this world stage”.
As yet untitled, the work to be created for the Biennale and presented by Rebecca Belmore will be developed over a period of months in the summer and fall of 2004 and completed in the spring of 2005. It is characteristic of her projects that they include performance elements carried out at sites other than gallery spaces.
Rebecca Belmore
Rebecca Belmore has produced installations and performances internationally since 1987, including Creation or Death, We Will Win, at the Havana Biennial, Havana, Cuba (1991) and Vigil, at the Aboriginal Arts Festival, Vancouver (2003). Her installations have been in numerous group exhibitions: Site Santa Fe, Santa Fe, New Mexico (1995), Liaisons, Power Plant, Toronto, and Houseguests, Art Gallery of Ontario (2001). She previously represented Canada at the Sydney Biennale, in Australia in 1998, in a group exhibition format. Earlier this year, Ms. Belmore received the VIVA Award from the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation. She has a residency with MAWA (Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art) in Winnipeg, in September of 2004.
Statement by Rebecca Belmore on her work
My way of working is largely based on immediate experience. The performances I have created over the years often directly responded to the place in which I found myself. Location and memory are key elements in my approach to making art. I have always had a strong interest in trying to imagine where we have been.
When I was a young girl, our mother took us to a tiny island in Northern Ontario to show us where she was born. About ten years ago, long after our mother’s death, my sister and I went on a canoe trip with the intent of revisiting this island. Navigating by childhood memory we could not find the place. But, it was enough to be in the midst of a beautiful absence.
This journey, driven by the desire to witness again, had a profound effect on my creative process. I recall my mother taking us to a small clearing on this island and showing where the cabin had been. We looked at the ground and I could see where the foundation of her birthplace had rotted into the land. A square was drawn by time like a memory onto the earth.
I like to think that this entire experience illustrates how I work. I am aware of the elusive nature of memory. Creating in the presence of the absent makes me a witness. I believe I am just beginning to understand my role, particularly as an artist who has inherited an indigenous history.
General information
For more information on the role of the Canada Council for the Arts at the 2005 Venice Biennale, please contact Doug Sigurdson, Visual Arts Officer, at 1 800 263-5588, ext. 5268, or (613) 566-4414, ext. 5268.
In addition to the selection and organization of Canada’s representation at the Venice Biennale, the Canada Council for the Arts administers and awards several prizes in the visual arts, including the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts, the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Awards, the York Wilson Endowment Award, and the Duke and Duchess of York Prize. For more information on these awards and application details, please contact Janet Riedel Pigott, Acting Director of Endowments and Prizes, at (613) 566-4414 or 1 800 263-5588, ext. 5041.
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