Andrea Oliver Roberts, u/t (Model for Diagnosis), 2021, mirrored acrylic. Image courtesy of the artist.)

About the exhibition

Andrea Oliver Roberts’ Sickroom is a sound and sculpture-based installation bringing together ideas about healing and protection, property and bodily autonomy, care and control. Taking formal cues from garden architecture, the artist has crafted sculptures that resemble wrought iron gates, trellises, and a  domed gazebo, as well as miniaturized forms that recall amulets or talismans. Potent words and phrases related to health and illness are arranged to form decorative pattern work: an iron garden gate, for instance, offers both CURES and a CURSE to the reader who can decipher its incantations. Another heavily abstracted design reveals the word DIAGNOSIS in the grillwork of a filigreed metal screen, fence, or room divider – fittingly, both are thresholds that must be passed in order to respectively treat or retreat. Mere suggestions of walls and ceilings, these garden structures indicate that a little piece of nature has been tamed, but offer little to no shelter or protection from the elements. And they offer security from trespassers only if tacitly-agreed upon notions of property ownership and privacy are upheld. Drawing on personal experiences of navigating and accessing support as a person with chronic illness, Roberts’ installation reveals the magical thinking that reinforces the permeable, indistinct, and ultimately temporary boundaries between chaos and order, between sickness and health, and between what is yours, what is mine, what is shared, and what can never be owned. 

Andrea Oliver Roberts is a Winnipeg-based, multidisciplinary artist known for sculptural installations and sound works that contend with loss, technology, gender, and language within capitalism.  Roberts has shown at galleries internationally and composes and performs the solo experimental sound project under the name VOR. They hold an M.F.A. in Sculpture from California College of the Arts, and an Honours B.F.A. in Sculpture from the University of Manitoba.

The artist gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Manitoba Arts Council.

Adjunct Programming

The Hologram

Workshop

Anti-Capitalist Peer-to-Peer Health: The Hologram
Saturday, April 30, 2022
1:00 PM to 5:00 PM CDT
Online. Facilitated on Zoom.

The Hologram is a viral four-person health monitoring and diagnostic system where non-expert participants create a three-dimensional “hologram” of a fourth participant’s physical, psychological and social health, and each becomes the focus of three other people’s care in an expanding network. In this workshop, Hologram developer Cassie Thornton and co-facilitator Tina Munroe will teach participants how to give and receive care using a specific protocol developed collaboratively with hundreds of practitioners online over two years of lock-down. This model works on or offline and is meant to make long-term caring relationships sustainable because all caretakers are cared for. If this model resonates, you can access additional support and resources at thehologram.xyz

Liturgies, School of Art Gallery, 2022

Performance

Andrea Oliver Roberts and Anju Singh: 'Liturgies for Chiron'
Thursday, May 5, 2022
7:00 pm
Main Gallery

Featuring electronics (Roberts), drones and strings (Singh), 'Liturgies for Chiron' draws upon the artists’ shared experiences of coming from working-class backgrounds within religious traditions that valorize labour. Reflecting on repetition in both work and worship, Liturgies alludes to the condition of simultaneity: in Greek myth, Chiron is an uncharacteristically wise and well-mannered centaur associated with medicine and healing; in astronomy, it is also the name of a centaur – a small Solar System body with characteristics of both asteroids and comets.

Anju Singh is a multidisciplinary artist (sound art, video art, experimental music) and musician (drums, violin, guitar) based in the unceded and traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Anju’s work explores the tensions and relationship between abrasive and harmonic sounds, images, and textures. Anju has performed internationally in Brazil, across Europe, in Mexico, and across Canada. In 2019, she was a faculty member for Plug In’s Summer Institute I: Trackings and Trappings. Anju’s work dives into the depth and potential of texture while challenging the boundaries of aesthetics and noise. Recent and current projects include The Nausea (solo performance-based work, noise), a number of extreme metal bands including AHNA, working with string quartets coupled with harsh noise, and solo work consisting of sound sculpture/installation, sound art, and composition.

Exhibition Tours

Postponed, new dates TBD
Meet in the gallery lobby for an informative exhibition tour led by Gallery staff.

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School of Art Gallery
255 ARTlab
180 Dafoe Road
University of Manitoba (Fort Garry campus)
Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2

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