Roadside Occupations

Roadside Occupations is a collaborative exhibition between Teresa Vander Meer-Chassé, an Upper Tanana, White River First Nation artist, and myself, an artist of settler ancestry. It's made up of two parts.

Get There From Here includes paintings I created at roadside every 50 km across Canada east to west to north, depicting the road and the landscape it passes through. In Roadside Occupations, they are installed in sequence, with the Indigenous languages and traditional territories the road runs through written on the walls around them in willow charcoal. Teresa helped me research how to best do this.

Scavenging for the Many Faces of Raven occupies the centre of the space, with sculptural installation pieces made in dialogue between Teresa and myself, using exploded tire fragments collected from the sides of the road, evoking the presence of Raven. Development of this work was supported by the Canada Council's Creating, Knowing and Sharing grant, as well as by the Yukon Advanced Artists Award and Touring Artists Fund.

Roadside Occupations was well received at the Grimsby Public Art Gallery, and we hope to find it other venues.

Click here to see a TV news item about the show.

Click here to see more about the Scavenging for the Many Faces of Raven project.​