Spill

MORRIS AND HELEN BELKIN ART GALLERY, Vancouver BC - Sep 3 - Dec 1
by Michael Turner
If one were asked to name liquids mentioned most during news broadcasts, oil, water and blood would likely top the list. No surprise that they are related. Water is essential to life, yet its protection interferes with those arguing for oil pipelines. Heat that up and you get blood, either boiled or spilled. For her current exhibition, the Belkin’s Lorna Brown has taken the latter verb and, like these liquids, run with it, emphasizing artworks that draw attention to “our continental waters and the conditions of their impaired movement, contamination and political rights.”
Comprised of “live” research, installations, performance and radio programming, Spill features work by Carolina Caycedo, Nelly César, Guadalupe Martinez, Teresa Montoya, Anne Riley, Genevieve Robertson, Susan Schuppli and T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss. Spill Response, curated by Martinez, privileges the gallery as a site for embodiment and features a collaboration of visiting artist César, Riley and Wyss. Throughout the project, Spill Radio, curated by Tatiana Mellema, is broadcasting radio episodes in collaboration with UBC’s CiTR 101.9 FM.
In Nature Represents Itself (2018), Schuppli examines the Deepwater Horizon accident through a simulated image built from gaming software. Another video work, Robertson’s Still Running Water (2017), derives from an ongoing project focused on the Columbia River.  Caycedo’s Serpent River Book (2017) compiles images and texts from the artist’s work in Colombian, Brazilian and Mexican communities a ected by the privatization of river systems. And Montoya’s Yellow Water (2016) uses photography to trace the e ects of mine waste discharged into the San Juan River, which flows across the Navajo Nation.
Reception Oct 17, 6-9pm
belkin.ubc.ca