Richmond BC, Canada #richmondartgallerybc
What gets stored in a shoebox? Deposited into an archive? Shoved into a corner? Catalogued as important? Fever pitched towards a garbage can? Centered on a pile of marble scraps that possibly once belonged to iconic Canadian artist and experimental filmmaker Joyce Wieland, local artist Hazel Meyer’s The Marble in the Basement untangles issues of power, memory, and inheritance by anthropomorphizing a forgotten object from this influential Canadian artist’s domestic archive.
The Marble in the Basement looks to the legacy of Joyce Wieland to work across questions of inheritance, while asking how a notable and supported figure like Wieland, can nonetheless direct us to lesser-supported histories of art, land, representation, and care.
Hazel Meyer is an artist who works with installation, performance, and text to investigate the relationships between sexuality, feminism, and material culture. Her work recovers the queer aesthetics, politics, and bodies often effaced within histories of infrastructure, athletics, and illness.
Hazel gratefully acknowledges support from the Canada Council for the Arts, Shannon Cochrane of FADO Performance Art Centre, who first commissioned The Marble in the Basement in 2020, and to Western Front who brought Alysha Seriani and I together and supported the development of Marble presents “It’s my House.” Special thanks to Zoë Chan and the Richmond Art Gallery. Hazel would also like to give deep appreciation to Kelsey Steeves, Calla Soderholm & the Shumka Centre’s Art Apprenticeship Network, Eric Tkaczyk, Anita Rochon, Ben Evans James, Cait McKinney, Alysha Seriani, and performers past and present: Moe Angelos, Stephen Jackman-Torkoff, & Marbie.
