An Opulence of Squander
The Morris and Helen Belkin Art GallerySeptember 3 – December 8, 2024
Installation view, An Opulence of Squander (3 September-8 December 2024), Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia. Photo: Rachel Topham Photography.
Featuring Lorna Brown, Alexandra Dikeakos, Geoffrey Hendricks, Stu Horn, Deborah Koenker, Richard Ibghy & Marilous Lemmens, Mike MacDonald, Robert Rauschenberg, Soft Turns, Howard Ursuliak, and Kelly Wood.
Taking its title from an essay by artist Kelly Wood, An Opulence of Squander brings together works largely from the Belkin’s collection and archive with artists that reflect on concepts of surplus and excess to question the dual ascription of artistic work as a form of both luxury and waste. The works in the exhibition are unified by their critique of the pursuit of perpetual growth under capitalist regimes and its demand for continuous production.
Measures of productivity, such as gross domestic product, gross national income and unemployment rates, are treated as indicators of a society’s collective social, political and cultural well-being. But the ongoing climate crisis challenges the doctrine of productivity, exposing the unfettered waste and excesses that are often a by-product of economic growth.
In lieu of the imperative to produce, An Opulence of Squander brings together artworks by Lorna Brown, Alexandra Dikeakos, Geoffrey Hendricks, Stuart Horn, Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens, Deborah Koenker, Mike MacDonald, Michael Morris, Robert Rauschenberg, Howard Ursuliak, Kelly Wood and the artist collective Soft Turns that recognize both the limits to productivity and the contradictory ideological premises that foster and justify the continued exploitation of people and nature.
For more information, visit the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery.
To read the accompanying curatorial essay, click here.
Public Programs
Conversation Series: Of Other Earths
Sept. 10, 2024 with Soft Turns
Oct. 8, 2024 with Lisa Myers
Nov. 5, 2024 with Dr. Camille Georgeson-Usher
Of Other Earths is a series recuperating forgotten, suppressed and abandoned histories to reconsider capitalist and colonial relationships to the planet and its inhabitants. Multiplying and compounding environmental harms are radically destabilizing earthly habitats, calling into question the viability of existing productivist paradigms that require continuous resource extraction and consumption.
This online conversation series foregrounds practitioners who aim to decentre and unsettle the logic of perpetual growth by examining alternative approaches to human-planetary relations. In each session she will engage an artist or scholar about their work in the context of one of the provocations running through the exhibition An Opulence of Squander. These dialogues will offer a generative way to think about how we engage, care for, and conserve past works of art and artists and the ecological lessons that experience might hold.
Measures of productivity, such as gross domestic product, gross national income and unemployment rates, are treated as indicators of a society’s collective social, political and cultural well-being. But the ongoing climate crisis challenges the doctrine of productivity, exposing the unfettered waste and excesses that are often a by-product of economic growth.
In lieu of the imperative to produce, An Opulence of Squander brings together artworks by Lorna Brown, Alexandra Dikeakos, Geoffrey Hendricks, Stuart Horn, Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens, Deborah Koenker, Mike MacDonald, Michael Morris, Robert Rauschenberg, Howard Ursuliak, Kelly Wood and the artist collective Soft Turns that recognize both the limits to productivity and the contradictory ideological premises that foster and justify the continued exploitation of people and nature.
For more information, visit the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery.
To read the accompanying curatorial essay, click here.
Public Programs
Conversation Series: Of Other Earths
Sept. 10, 2024 with Soft Turns
Oct. 8, 2024 with Lisa Myers
Nov. 5, 2024 with Dr. Camille Georgeson-Usher
Of Other Earths is a series recuperating forgotten, suppressed and abandoned histories to reconsider capitalist and colonial relationships to the planet and its inhabitants. Multiplying and compounding environmental harms are radically destabilizing earthly habitats, calling into question the viability of existing productivist paradigms that require continuous resource extraction and consumption.
This online conversation series foregrounds practitioners who aim to decentre and unsettle the logic of perpetual growth by examining alternative approaches to human-planetary relations. In each session she will engage an artist or scholar about their work in the context of one of the provocations running through the exhibition An Opulence of Squander. These dialogues will offer a generative way to think about how we engage, care for, and conserve past works of art and artists and the ecological lessons that experience might hold.