Photo courtesy of Emilio Portal
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. More…
During her September 2012 research residency, Belmore spent time tracing the roads that skirt the edges of Sudbury—the borderlands in and around the city. In May, she created a performance for film and installation that considers the lines between the city, the mine, and the reserve.
Belmore explored the territory within and beyond city limits with Emilio Portal (b. New Westminster, BC), an artist based in Sudbury and Toronto. They used video, audio, and still photography to record segments of their fieldwork together. From these explorations Belmore created and documented a private performance-based work. She worked closely with video artist Darlene Naponse on the editing of the audio and video of the film and the final film was presented at La Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario in May 2013. Belmore’s experimental approach drew a conceptual line through the amalgamated areas of Sudbury, the mining territories bordering the city, and the Whitefish Lake First Nations Reserve.