In early 2012, Musagetes and the Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario (GNO) invited Rebecca Belmore to develop a new project in Sudbury, Ontario. After a research visit in September 2012, Rebecca returned for a production residency in May 2013 during which she created Private Perimeter, a video work and installation first presented at the GNO co-curated by Danielle Tremblay and Alissa Firth-Eagland. The resulting work was a single channel video projected on a large, custom-built screen in the centre of the gallery which replicates the dimensions and materials used in highway signage. The ‘sign’ was installed facing away from the viewer, such that they first encounter the back of it as they enter the space. Installed in the window-front for street level passersby to see is a close-up of a roaring river.

The day after the exhibition opened, Rebecca and Shawn sat on a large black boulder overlooking the Kingsway and discussed her experience of Sudbury, the creation of the work, and her engagement with the world. Later that year, Belmore was granted the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts.