CLAIMING SPACE
Tania Willard
Central Gallery
April 5 to May 24, 2009
As First Nations' land claims slowly grind their way through British Columbia's provincial courts, Tania Willard's art offers a more intimate and passionate probing of territorial issues. Willard's practice has been concerned with cultural displacement, transfer and translation. She uses screen-printing and stencilling processes and oral or written storytelling to probe these concerns. Willard’s grandparents were key interpreters of Secwepemc stories, and Willard’s work often emphasizes the narrative potential of picture-making. Her visual artworks characteristically revive historical elements or contexts within mechanically reproduced images.
The exhibition Tania Willard: Claiming Space extends the artist's previous activist and muralist work, establishing a nuanced focus that assertively claims space. The exhibition includes works of sculpture, painting and basket weaving, several large-scale graphite drawings and a panoramic ochre mural depicting forms based on territorial stone markers in the Thompson-Nicola region. At the physical and spiritual core of this exhibition the Vancouver-based artist reinterprets the Shelly Stone story, tracing the relocation of a six-ton petroglyph rock originally located near Lone Cabin Creek north of Lillooet. The roughly 500-year old artifact acquired a name in 1926 when William Shelly, then the Vancouver Parks Board Commissioner, organized its transport to Stanley Park in Vancouver where it was installed at Brockton Point as a tourist attraction. In a set of drawings and sculptures Tania Willard considers this cultural artifact's historical role as an exemplary object of 'authentic Indian Art' within the mid-20th century tourism industry. Museology and contemporary cultural discourses have directed considerable interest and attention toward the wood-carving arts of First Peoples west of the Rockies; Tania Willard, on the other hand, is interested in lesser-known rock art traditions and the ways in which these art forms have been activated as signs of authenticity.
Tania Willard: Claiming Space
As First Nations' land claims slowly grind their way through British Columbia's provincial courts, Secwepemc artist Tania Willard's work addresses territorial issues. Willard's practice is concerned with cultural displacement, transfer and translation. She uses screen-printing and stenciling processes as well as oral and written storytelling to speak to language and land. Willard’s grandparents were key interpreters of Secwepemc stories, and Willard’s work often emphasizes the narrative potential of picture-making. Her work characteristically revive historical elements or contexts within mechanically reproduced images.
This full colour publication was produced in conjunction with the solo exhibition Tania Willard | Claiming Space at the Kamloops Art Gallery April 5 to May 24, 2009 and includes documentation from the exhibition.
Tania Willard
Secwepemculecw, 2009
inkjet print on paper
Collection of the Kamloops Art Gallery, Gift of the Artist
