A new exhibition by Musqueam artist Susan Point opens at the Kelowna Art Gallery this weekend. This marks the first solo exhibition of her work in the Okanagan.

Over the past three and a half decades, Point has received wide acclaim for her accomplished and remarkably wide-ranging compositions that forcefully assert the vitality of Coast Salish culture, both past and present.

During this time, she has produced an extensive body of prints and an expansive amount of sculptural work in a wide variety of materials that includes glass, resin, polymer, stone, bronze, concrete, steel, wood, acrylic paint, and paper. The scale of her work is also wide in scope, ranging from the intimacy of the jewelry she produced in the early 1980s to the monumental character of the public sculptures she continues to make today.

Susan Point: Spindle Whorl is a touring exhibition from the Vancouver Art Gallery that showcases 40 works, which are accompanied by a special selection of 14 works borrowed directly from the artists’ studio for the Kelowna Art Gallery.

The spindle whorl has been a persistent motif in Point’s work since the beginning of her career. Comprised of a small wooden disk with a rod inserted through its centre, this tool was traditionally used by Coast Salish women to prepare wool that would be woven into garments and ceremonial blankets. Point has drawn upon the spindle whorl to provide a formal structure for her art while combining this motif with a uniquely Salish vocabulary of circles, crescents and curved triangles, elements that distinguish the art of her people from the form line-based art of more northern peoples.

Audiences will have the opportunity to explore Point’s art practice for themselves in this striking exhibition. Susan Point: Spindle Whorlruns from May 18 to August 18, 2019.

The exhibition is organized and circulated by the Vancouver Art Gallery and curated by Grant Arnold, Audain Curator of British Columbia Art and Ian M. Thom, former Senior Curator–Historical.

A talk and tour by curator Grant Arnold will be offered at 5 pm on Friday, May 17. Following this, a reception to celebrate the exhibition’s opening will be held from 6 to 8 pm.

The Kelowna Art Gallery is located at 1315 Water Street in downtown Kelowna. For more information about current exhibitions, public programming or special events, please visit the Kelowna Art Gallery online at www.kelownaartgallery.com or call 250-762-2226.

[images]

Susan Point, Behind Four Winds, 2012, screenprint, 80.0 x 80.0 cm, Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Gift of the Artist, Photo: Rachel Topham, Vancouver Art Gallery

Susan Point, Scanned Salmon, 2008, screenprint, 28.5 x 28.5 cm, Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Gift of the Artist, Rachel Topham, Vancouver Art Gallery

Susan Point, Genesis, 2014, screenprint, woodblock print, 60.0 x 68.0 cm, Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Gift of the Artist, Rachel Topham, Vancouver Art Gallery