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Current Exhibition

Persimmon Blackbridge

Speak No (emergency)

January 18 - March 23, 2025

Above: Detail view of Persimmon Blackbridge, Fire (fighters), 2024, Photo: Della McCreary

Curated by Sean Lee

In this stunning installation Speak No (emergency), artist Persimmon Blackbridge urgently responds to the devastation of and despair around climate change. Covering the gallery walls with dozens of handfashioned figures, she creates a desolate, desperate army who have come together in the face of rampant forest fires, polluted oceans, and climate denial. Blackbridge’s raw, frenetic aesthetic integrates found wood, Barbie doll parts, bits of animal bone, scrap metal, and other recycled materials typically considered trash.

This exhibition is organized in partnership with Tangled Art + Disability.

About the artist: Celebrated as a Canadian trailblazer in socially engaged art, Persimmon Blackbridge has made queer, feminist, and disability art from the late 70s to today. Together with writer Sheila Gilhooley, she created the 1980s exhibition Still Sane, a then groundbreaking combination of sculpture and text and one of the earliest examples of first-person narrative art in Canada, as well as a pioneering exhibit of disability art. She was a member of the Kiss & Tell collective whose installation Drawing the Line was a potent intervention against censorship in the feminist “Porn Wars” of the 1980’s. In the 90s, Blackbridge collaborated with 27 former residents of BC’s large institutions for people with intellectual disabilities on the installation From the Inside/Out, which was instrumental in winning reparations for former residents of Woodlands Institution. From 2015 to 2020, her series Constructed Identities toured Ontario and BC, disputing the social construction of tragic disability.

         

Above: Detail view of Persimmon Blackbridge, Fire (fighters), 2024, Photo: Della McCreary
WATCH: Artist Persimmon Blackbridge introduces the work in her exhibition "Speak No (emergency)".

Audio Recordings

     Artwork Description: Speak No Emergency Introduction
     Artwork Description: 2 Cedars (dying)
     Artwork Description: The Red Forest
     Artwork Description: Speak No
     Artwork Description: Sheltered from the Storm
     Artwork Description: See No
     Artwork Description: Plastic (land)
     Artwork Description: Plastic (ocean)
     Artwork Description: Lytton Sunset
     Artwork Description: I Can Forget
     Artwork Description: Head (life)
     Artwork Description: Heat (death)
     Artwork Description: Fire (fighters)
     Artwork Description: Extincture
     Artwork Description: Beetlekill
     Artwork Description: Wired
     Artwork Description: Wild (fire)
     Artwork Description: Whose Water Is Dying (while mine is so sweet),

Hours

Sunday 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Monday 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM
Tuesday 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM
Wednesday 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM
Thursday 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM
Friday 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM
Saturday 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM

Closed on statutory holidays.

Current Exhibitions

Admission

By donation

Location

Richmond Cultural Centre
7700 Minoru Gate
Richmond, BC  V6Y 1R8
Canada Line Station: Richmond-Brighouse

604-247-8363
gallery@richmond.ca

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