Ostwelve @ The Bill Reid Gallery

Intangible: Memory and Innovation in Coast Salish Art | Sept. 13 - Dec. 10, 2017

I am honoured to have had the opportunity to contribute to this showcase of amazing Coast Salish artists and to be involved in such amazing conversations. Much thanks goes out to the Bill Reid Gallery, Beth Carter and Sharon Fortney for their hard work and for including me in this great assembly of works.

My piece takes a look at indigeneity and the ideologies around how we identify as Coast Salish and how that creates our art. I walked in sacred spaces and reflected upon what I know to be "Salish" and what I know to be myself in this world interacting with land, water and stars.

I hope you will get to check it out.

Shout outs to the other artists in the exhibit. Go check out their work! Marvin Oliver (Quinault / Isleta Pueblo) is an innovator in contemporary glass work and embeds symbolic knowledge in glass Spirit Boards. Aaron Nelson Moody (Squamish) invokes family knowledge of traditional copper use and combines it with contemporary techniques. lessLIE (Cowichan, Penelakut and Esquimault) focuses on enlarged Salish design elements to magnify issues of identity and colonialism. Tracy Williams (Squamish) explores land sovereignty by experimenting with plant, animal, and mineral components and employing them in her cedar weavings. Roxanne Charles (Semiahmoo) is a fibre artist, who frequently incorporates live performance to engage the public in contemporary issues.

For more information, check out the gallery website:

http://www.billreidgallery.ca/Exhibition/CurrentExhibition.php

Here's some press about it:

BeatRoute Magazine: http://beatroute.ca/2017/09/08/intangible-ronnie-dean-harris-tells-new-story-reflects-respects-ancestral-history/

North Shore News: http://www.nsnews.com/entertainment/dossier/artists-explore-the-intangible-nature-of-indigenous-culture-1.22750960

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