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13/3/2003

A way of making

Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto

Rebecca Belmore and Bently Spang
Curated by Reona Brass

TORONTO, Canada ... Fado is proud to announce A WAY OF MAKING, a First Nations performance art residency project curated by Reona Brass and featuring artists Bently Spang and Rebecca Belmore. Members of the public are invited to view the artists' creative process during daily Open Studio hours, 11:00 am to 1:00 pm from Tuesday, March 11 to Friday, March 14. The resulting performance will take place at OCAD on Friday, March 14, 2003 at 7:30 pm. The artists will also be available from 11 am - 1 pm on Saturday, March 15 to discuss their work. All events are free.

Curator Reona Brass writes of this project:

A WAY OF MAKING brings together Northern Cheyenne artist Bently Spang and Anishnabe artist Rebecca Belmore in a residency that examines how ritual in performance art functions in fashioning a new self within the cultural body. Taking up residence in a studio at OCAD, the artists will explore the boundary between what we understand as "authentic experience" and what is "merely performed" to discover how this practice functions in creating a cycle of cultural desire, resistance and fertility.

Sharing a desire to address several communities at once with their work, these artists maintain a delicate relationship with the world that surrounds and encroaches upon the world that they were raised in and return to frequently. For these artists, to walk between, negotiate and address these two worlds is simply a necessity they accept, balancing as they do between yesterday and tomorrow. Their interdisciplinary practices, flexible vehicles for engaging very different audiences in a dialogue about the reality of contemporary indigenous life, entail an ancient way of making that assists them in making this connection between the past and the future.

While primarily installation artists, both artists revert to the medium of performance art when the need arises, usually to address barriers and establish signposts of cultural change. Belmore and Spang use their performance work to aggressively, and sometimes humorously, move the viewer away from the defining frame of native people within the colonialist construct of North American society. Creating acts of political defiance and cultural determination with their performance work, Spang and Belmore deliberately subvert the classical values of traditional native art for the flux of contemporary reality. Striking a complicated balance between the aesthetic and the political, the monumental and the transitory, the works of these artists ultimately serve as crucial indicators in the rapid and continual renegotiation of contemporary indigenous identity.

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About the artists

Rebecca Belmore
Rebecca Belmore is originally from Anishnabe territory in Ontario and currently resides in Vancouver, British Columbia. A graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design, Belmore has exhibited internationally over the past 15 years. Recent exhibitions include her self-titled exhibition at the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery at UBC; the solo touring exhibition 33 Pieces by the Blackwood Gallery, U of T Mississauga; and, a group exhibition at the WaveHill Gallery in the Bronx, New York (2002).

In the image : Rebecca Belmore

Bently Spang
Bently Spang is a Northern Cheyenne multi-media artist residing in Billings, Montana. He obtained his Master of Fine Arts-Sculpture from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1996 and has since exhibited across the US and in Canada, Japan, Italy, Columbia, Mexico and Germany. Recent exhibitions include Americas Remixed hosted by La Fabbrica Del Vapore Arts/Openspace in Milan, Italy (2002); and, Staging The Indian: The Politics of Representation for the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Syracuse, New York (2002).

Reona Brass
Reona Brass is a Saulteaux performance installation artist living in Regina, Saskatchewan. Trained at the Ontario College of Art & Design, Brass has shown across Canada and in the US since 1993. Recent exhibitions include Signified: Ritual Language in First Nations Performance Art in collaboration with Bently Spang at Sâkêwêwak Artists' Collective in Regina (2002); and, A Gathering For Her at the Art Gallery of Hamilton in Hamilton, Ontario (2002).

FADO is pleased to acknowledge the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council, the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council, and the Department of Canadian Heritage for their support of our ongoing activities. Special thanks to the Integrated Media area of the Ontario College of Art and Design for their sponsorship of this project.

Performance: March 14, 7:30 pm

Open studio hours: March 11 - 14, 2003, 11 am - 1 pm

Artist discussion: March 15, 2003, 11 am - 1 pm

All events Free

"Art is the demonstrated wish and will to resolve conflict through action, be it spiritual, religious, political, personal, social or cultural." Alastair MacLennan

Ontario College of Art and Design
100 McCaul St., Room 235
Toronto

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