Faculty + Alumni Featured in the Surrey Art Gallery's Ground Signals

Panel Discussion and Opening Reception
Saturday, September 23 | 6:30pm Panel Discussion | 7:30pm Opening Reception with performances by V&B (Valérie D. Walker, and Bobbi L. Kozinuk) and Charlene Vickers and Cathy Busby

This Fall, artists from across Canada explore the question of how to represent the land other than by its scenic topography. Through sculpture, video, and audio art, this question is answered in a group exhibit, Ground Signals, presented at Surrey Art Gallery from September 23 to December 10.

Featured artists include: Ruth Beer (ECU Professor), Roxanne Charles, Marie Côté, Lindsay Dobbin, Richard Fung, Brandon Gabriel (ECU alumnus) and Ostwelve, Farheen HaQ, Peter Morin (ECU alumnus), Valérie d. Walker and Bobbi L. Kozinuk (ECU Studio Technician), Charlene Vickers (ECU alumna) and Cathy Busby

Gathering works by over a dozen artists from across Canada, Ground Signals features immersive, multi-sensory art that engages with land and water. The exhibition includes ceramic bowls that emit environmental audio recordings and Indigenous songs from northern Quebec; a towering sculpture of woven copper wire that broadcasts shortwave marine radio reports from a proposed pipeline terminus on British Columbia’s coast; a time-travelling shadow machine made of wax, paint, and human hair that transports visitors to the deep past of Tahltan territory; a gigantic mural of found blankets and building materials framed in words and writing about waterways impacted by industrial accidents; composite videos of Southern Ontario vistas morphing into English Romantic landscape paintings; and a solar-powered culture station collects stories in exchange for energy.

Building on several recent Gallery exhibitions that have addressed landscape, ecology, territory, and mapping, Ground Signals challenges viewers to listen and experience the land in fresh and compelling ways through a combination of sounds and images.