Rebecca Belmore: Turbulent Water

Rebecca Belmore: Turbulent Water

25 March – 19 June 2021

Turbulent Water is the first solo Australian exhibition of internationally acclaimed artist Rebecca Belmore. A member of the Lac Seul First Nation (Anishinaabe), Belmore was born in 1960 in Upsala, Canada, and currently lives and works in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Turbulent Water brings together several key installations from the artist’s multidisciplinary practice that address social and political issues faced by Indigenous communities, as well as the connections between bodies, land and language. The works included in Turbulent Water use the medium of video innovatively, questioning official narratives and highlighting the labouring, struggling or missing body. They draw us in with images that are visually seductive and allegorically resonant.

Water is a central motif in this exhibition, carrying both the symbolic power associated with the cycle of life and death that frames human experience, as well as its material power as a precious natural resource required to care for the land.

In this exhibition, the viewer is positioned as a witness to the universal truths of empathy, hope and transformation. The artist's body is a constant presence, enabling her to explore boundaries between public and private; power relations in contemporary society; and the effects of colonisation on Indigenous people, especially women. These themes also parallel in many ways the historical and contemporary experiences of Australian Indigenous peoples.

Canada and Australia share many things in common, including a Westminster based parliamentary system of government and membership of the Commonwealth. They also share a history of colonisation and the forced assimilation of Indigenous peoples.

Turbulent Water is co-curated by Wanda Nanibush, Curator of Indigenous Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, and Angela Goddard, Director of Griffith University Art Museum.

Downloadable exhibition labels

^{Rebecca Belmore The Named and the Unnamed 2002. Video projection, colour, sound, 38m21s, screen and light bulbs. Projection screen: 240 x 316.2 x 31.8cm}

^{Collection: Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver.}

^{Image courtesy the artist.}