Surrey Art Gallery (13750-88 Avenue, 604-501-5566)
Marianne Nicolson will talk about her practice in relation to her new work, The Way In
Which It Was Given To Us, developed for UrbanScreen. She will be joined in
conversation by writer Siku Allooloo, and artist respondents Brandon Gabriel and Peter
Morin. The event will open with Semiahmoo welcoming remarks by artist Roxanne
Charles, and will be moderated by the Gallerys Curator of Education and Engagement
Alison Rajah. An online publication with a commissioned essay by Siku Allooloo, as part
of the Surrey Art Gallery Presents series, about The Way In Which It was Given To Us
will be available.
This event will be held at the Surrey Art Gallery, and those in attendance will be invited
to view the installed artwork with Nicolson onsite at UrbanScreen.
About the Speakers
Marianne Nicolson is a linguist, anthropologist, and a visual artist of Scottish and
Dzawada’enuxw First Nations descent based in Victoria, BC. The Dzawada’enuxw
People are a member tribe of the Kwakwaka’wakw Nations of the Pacific Northwest
Coast.
Siku Allooloo is a writer who is Inuit/Taino from Denendeh (Northwest Territories). Her
work incorporates inherited legacies of resistance, continuity, and creative expression to
support the revitalization and empowerment of Indigenous communities. Siku holds a
BA in Anthropology and Indigenous Studies from the University of Victoria.
Roxanne Charles is a mixed media artist, curator, and art educator at Surrey Art Gallery.
She is currently completing her MFA at Simon Fraser University. She is of Strait Salish
and European descent and an active member of Semiahmoo Nation.
Brandon Gabriel’Klxlstn is a multimedia visual artist from the Kwantlen First
Nation and works and resides with his wife Melinda and daughter Jamie in unceded
Kwantlen territory. He is a graduate of Kwantlen Polytechnic University and Emily Carr
University of Art and Design.
Peter Morin is a Tahltan Nation artist, curator, and writer currently based in Brandon,
Manitoba. He studied at Emily Carr University of Art and Design and completed his MFA
at UBC Okanagan in 2011. In both his artistic practice as well as his curatorial work, he
explores issues of de-colonization through the practice of Indigenous ways of
knowing/knowledge.
About the Artwork
Referencing the pictograph as a way of recording stories on the land, Marianne
Nicolsons newly created animation with sound for UrbanScreen speaks to the pre-
emption of Indigenous lands. Nicolson has explored the pictograph in previous works,
including in her early large scale mural Cliff Painting (1998) and more recently in her
banner project Inquiry to the Newcomers (2017). The originating images for the latter
work are based on a real pictograph that exists at the mouth of the Kingcome River in
coastal BC, home of the Dzawada’enuxw People, and depicts original contact with trade
ships in 1792. Other Nations local to Surrey share histories of contact, reserve
commissions, and processes of dispossession. The artists UrbanScreen work, The Way
In Which It was Given To Us (2017), is informed by this as well as research into
Kwantlen and Semiahmoo pictographs. Nicolsons work celebrates the re-emergence of
Indigenous Peoples voices while articulating that there can be no true reconciliation
between Indigenous and settler societies without an acknowledgement of Indigenous
Peoples displacement from their lands.
More information about UrbanScreen is available at www.surreyurbanscreen.ca.