Devon Knowles – Black Diamond Dust, SEPTEMBER 20–DECEMBER 13, 2014
Devon Knowles Black Diamond Dust September 20–December 13, 2014
Nanaimo Art Gallery, Canada
Black Diamond Dust is a multi-site art exhibition, which considers the sedimentary nature of stories and histories. The title Black Diamond Dust refers to the coal mining industry that Nanaimo was built upon; an industry that both formed and fragmented communities through economic development, racial segregation and labour inequity, and served as the foundation of global industrialization.
The artists in Black Diamond Dust look toward forgotten or under-acknowledged histories, while considering both local contexts and the forms of cultural expression that surround global industrial practices. From sculpture, to video, to folk song, Stephanie Aitken, Raymond Boisjoly, Edward Burtynsky, Peter Culley, Devon Knowles, William Notman & Son, Jerry Pethick, Kerri Reid, Scott Rogers and others employ a wide range of creative approaches to articulating the contemporary resonance of material pasts.
These artworks will be shown alongside historical artifacts borrowed from the Nanaimo Museum and the Nanaimo Archives. In addition, the gallery will screen three video works that look to past and present miners struggles in other parts of the world: “The Battle of Orgreave” by Jeremy Deller and Mike Figgis (UK), “To the Light” by Yuanchen Liu (China) and “Dreadful Memories: The Life of Sarah Ogan Gunning” by Mimi Pickering (USA).
The exhibition will be based at both Nanaimo Art Gallery locations, and will also involve a series of off-site public projects including a billboard display, a poetry reading, a newspaper insert, and an artist’s intervention in the Nanaimo Museum, among others. There will also be tours of the gallery exhibitions by Historian Lynne Bowen and curator Jesse Birch. Details below.
The material traces of industry, not only continue to produce the built environment and the objects within it, but also inform the cultural identities of communities that were built on resource-based economies. Through art, Black Diamond Dust enters into a creative dialogue with Nanaimo’s industrial past.
